Here’s a question you have surely been asked in a job interview: Tell us about a time you faced a significant challenge. How did you respond?
There is a reason that leaders conducting job interviews ask this kind of question. If I’m going to hire you, I want to know that you can handle surprises. Your past behavior gives me some indication of how you might respond when circumstances become difficult again.
Now, in a job interview, I would expect people to give their prepared, “guarded” answer. But in an executive coaching session, I often ask leaders to tell a similar story, and to tell me the full, unvarnished truth. I ask my coachee to identify a difficult moment from their career—a failure, disappointment, unexpected change, or setback—and describe how they responded. What did they do? What did they learn? How did the experience change them?
For a leader navigating change, these stories can be powerful. They remind us of capabilities we might otherwise overlook. But I have noticed something interesting about these stories about overcoming adversity: they are much easier to tell once we know how they ended.
The challenge is that when you are living through adversity, you don’t yet know the ending. You don’t know whether the opportunity will appear, or whether the next attempt will work. You don’t know how this disappointment will eventually lead somewhere better. And worst of all, you don’t know how long the uncertainty will last. You are still in the middle of the story.
And when you are in the middle of the story is when you most need to remember the stories you have already lived. In your past, there have been other difficult periods. Times when you have faced disappointments, when you didn’t know how to solve the situation when it first appeared. But somehow, you responded. You learned and adjusted your approach. You found people who could help you, and tried something different. Eventually, you found a path forward.
Those experiences become your evidence. They don’t tell you exactly how to respond to the next challenge. But they remind you that you have responded before, and you have the capacity to figure it out and respond again.
And when you feel like you are experiencing something new, something you have never faced before, you can always borrow from the stories of others. Someone else has faced the layoff, lost the client, been passed over, made the mistake, experienced the failure, or wondered what came next. Their path may not become yours, but their experience can expand your understanding of what is possible.
In my work, I talk a lot about situational responsiveness, which involves how leaders respond to challenging problems. Trusted leaders are recognized for their ability to realistically acknowledge the situation, listen to stakeholders and collaborate on solutions, and express optimism in the path forward. Effective situational responsiveness requires recognizing that different challenges and different circumstances may require different responses.
You cannot predict the challenges you will face. But you can predict, with 100 percent certainty, that you will face challenges.
In the coaching community, we work from a fundamental belief that there is no problem that is not solvable. That doesn’t mean the solution will be easy, immediate, or even the solution we originally hoped for. Sometimes solving the problem means changing the circumstances or altering your approach. And sometimes it means accepting what you cannot change and finding a different path forward.
When you are in the middle of a difficult period, it can be hard to imagine yourself on the other side of it. You don’t know yet what will work. You don’t know what you will learn. You don’t even know how the story ends. And all of that “not knowing” is part of what you are dealing with.
But remember that someday, someone may ask you to tell them about a time when you faced a significant challenge. The situation you are struggling with right now can become the story you tell. You will be able to describe what happened, what you tried, what didn’t work, who helped you, and how you eventually found your way forward. You will be able to describe what you learned about yourself, and your ability to face challenges.
Right now, you’re simply still in the middle of that story.
So the question isn’t whether you will face adversity. The question is: When adversity comes, how do you want to face it?