central region to the south. Vince had been in this region for 12
years and had developed an incalculable number of meaningful re-
lationships with employees and clients. He was loved and respected
as a leader. The hypocrisy of his company was almost more than he
could bear. They preached that their business success hinged on
building good relationships, yet they were pulling the footings out
from under all the relationships he had built over a dozen years.
“The pain for Vince was profound. He told me, ‘When they
passed me over, they took out my heart, and when they took me
away from all the people I cared about, they took away my soul.’”But Vince is an emotionally intelligent individual. I saw him after the
painful regional switch during his first meeting with his new people. There
was never a word, tone, or nuance of speech to betray his injury. To hear him
talk, you would think that he wanted nothing more than to spend his career
helping this group become successful. He had confronted his disappoint-
ment, dealt with it, learned some difficult lessons, and moved forward with
the sentiments that had helped him become successful in the first place—
empathy for others, the desire to teach, and competitive instincts. As Vince
learned, resilience is not about ignoring reality. It is about dealing with real-
ity and dealing with it in a way that does not poison future relationships.
THIRD-PARTY OPPOSITION
The third source of a discouraged state of emotion is adversity. This is
not trouble of our own or of another person’s doing but a situation where
circumstances beyond our control have conspired to form difficulty. We
can adopt a learning response to adversity as well as to failure and disap-
pointment. Some people draw pessimistic conclusions when they face ad-
versity and basically decide that they are unlucky or that things just always
seem to go bad. Soon they begin to work with the expectation that no mat-
ter how nice a sandcastle they build, the surf is going to come in and wipe
it out. The more resilient individual has an altogether different way of pro-
cessing adversity.
I asked a number of successful and seasoned sales professionals how they
dealt with circumstances beyond their control that affected their success.
Following are some of the notable phrases to come out of that discussion.
- “If it’s hard times in the economy, then that means the weaker play-
ers are going to get shaken out. When the going gets tough.. .”
(This is a time when survival skills are tested and survivors thrive.)
Sources of Discouragement 113