Unravel the wisdom of the Stockdale Paradox and its profound implications for crisis leadership. Discover how embracing harsh realities while maintaining unwavering faith can guide leaders through turbulent times, fostering resilience and inspiring teams to overcome adversity.
The Stockdale Paradox and the related discipline of survival psychology shine a light on the present moment and contains wisdom for how leaders can manage the unrolling crisis
As CEOs in this crisis, we have no option but to become the wartime CEO, however ill-equipped or prepared we are.
- Admiral Stockdale comes in.
Conclusion: Have faith
Ask yourself: What were your highest values in January 2020? For you as an individual, for your company, or for your organization?
- If you have faith in those ideals, those values, then how might you customize the Stockdale Paradox for yourself? For your organization, or community?
What is the Stockdale Paradox?
Admiral Stockdale was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for seven-and-a-half years.
- He never lost faith in the end of the story, and never doubted that he would get out
- The optimists, however, were the ones who said, “We’re going to be out by Christmas,” and Christmas would come and go, and then Easter and then Thanksgiving
- They died of a broken heart
- You must never confuse faith that you will prevail with the discipline to confront the harsh realities of your current reality
What long-term survival looks like
Success means getting up and fighting each day
- Having a value system, a sense of identity, a purpose for one’s existence increases the odds of survival and resiliency
- A personal sense of spirituality, morality, values, or meaning is also indispensable for maintaining relationships during crisis situations
- Bad decisions, failures, and mistakes are inevitable
- The most important thing is to get up each day with determination, not entrapped by the failures of the previous day
How does it apply?
The pandemic is playing out against a backdrop of extreme economic, political, social, and meteorological instability.
- There may never be a fully effective vaccine or cure; this virus may be something that we live with and manage for years to come. Doing so will mean changing elements of our social interaction in unprecedented ways that may well lead to irrevocable social changes.
Advice and exercises for leaders
Begin meetings by having each person introduce themselves by their name, job title, mission, and their immediate tasks
- Create regular times to discuss facts that don’t seem to fit the narrative
- Crisis leaders must motivate people past the doubt
- Talk of vision and ideals may seem a luxury that a crisis does not allow for
- Angela Duckworth’s concept of grit may be useful here
- Grit is commitment to a high-level goal, purpose, or mission-and the ability to assess and revise lower-level goals and tactics as necessary
Wisdom converges
The Stockdale Paradox-have faith, but confront reality-can be seen in slightly different forms in many cultures
- Stockdale himself was a follower of the ancient Greek Stoic philosophers, who were noted for their concern with understanding reality correctly and shaping one’s response to it optimally
- Therapy techniques such as radical acceptance emphasize the point of letting go of desires and beliefs about what should be and seeing reality as it is
- These approaches do not maintain that people should not try to change external conditions, nor that we should have no emotional responses to them
How does mechanisms of survival work?
The discipline of survival psychology-the study of how people react in disasters-may hold a clue.
- People who survive disasters are able to regain cognitive function quickly after the event, assess their new environment accurately, and take goal-directed action to survive within it
- This is the balance that the Stockdale Paradox facilitates: the realism to let go of intrinsic survival mechanisms and the deep-seated faith to learn the new ones
- Applying survival psychology to the current crisis may be extending the mandate of the discipline-the business leaders who are unlikely to face crises of literal, physical survival.
