a real learning experience, a real time of change and reflection,
and I think I’m just really getting ready to plunge back in
again.... I think getting up in the morning is more exciting
when you’re nervous. If you’re not nervous, you’re dead....
It’s time to change your life or your work the moment you stop
having butterflies in your stomach.”
College president emeritus Alfred Gottschalk is another ad-
vocate of learning from adversity. “I lost some jobs as a kid and
did poorly in some courses, and I learned that the world didn’t
end. Adversity has a great deal to do with the development of
leaders. Either it knocks you out or you become a bigger and
better person.”
On the risks of leadership, Gottschalk said, “Today there are
risks in being at the head of the pack. You can get shot in the
back. People try to trip you. People want you to fail. And at
some point or another, every leader falls off his pedestal.
They’re either pulled down, shot down, or they do something
dumb, or they just wear out.”
According to a study by behavioral scientists Michael Lom-
bardo and Morgan McCall at the Center for Creative Leader-
ship, adversity is as random—and as prevalent—as good luck.
After interviewing nearly 100 top executives, they found that
serendipity was the rule, not the exception, and that the execu-
tives’ ascensions were anything but orderly. Key events included
radical job changes and serious problems, as well as lucky
breaks. Problems cited included failure, demotions, missed pro-
motions, assignments overseas, starting new businesses from
scratch, corporate mergers, takeovers and shake-ups, and office
politics.
Lombardo and McCall concluded that adversity instructs,
that successful executives ask endless questions, that they surpass
Moving Through Chaos