CHAPTER 4

Despair: Devastation
or Glancing Blow

Despair is a state that arrives uncalled and unbidden. It is the hardest of states for leaders. How can you lead when you can’t see the horizon? Leadership by its nature is a journey of successes and challenges. Despair visits from time to time along that journey, resides awhile, then moves on in its own time. The appreciative resilience model brings into focus how leaders can use the power of appreciative inquiry in the darkest of times to fan even the tiniest strengths in order to be more resilient. In this chapter, we explore the nature of despair in general, organizational and team despair, the role of systemic forces in despair, and building capacity during despair.

Exploring Despair

Deep water, dark woods, tiny figure, fierce wind. You are not alone standing there in the shadow of a torn and wounded heart.

The simplest definition of despair is the loss of hope. No one sets out to suffer despair in a leadership life. It is caused by so many factors—change, life circumstances, social injustices, fear, organizational shifts, and, sometimes, simple weariness. For example, in this story, the leader finds herself betrayed. She finds herself being seen by others in radically different ways than she sees herself.

As a leader and a learner, I have experienced despair— almost always unexpectedly and always with shattering and soul-numbing effects. There is the expected despair of unfulfilled dreams, missed opportunities, failed initiatives, and the “road not taken.” These are what I consider the normal ups and downs of life, learning, and leadership. One copes with these and has “tool kits” to explain them and understand them. They are accepted, even if they sometimes don’t seem to be acceptable.

There is another kind of despair that is most devastating for me as a human who leads. That is the despair resulting from betrayal by trusted friends and colleagues.

In the latter part of my current career, I was unexpectedly faced with what I came to call betrayal by a number of valued friends and colleagues whom I cared for and for some of whom I was their leader. Their painful accusations, which ultimately culminated in the beginning of a disciplinary process, were experienced by me as an attack on my very being, not only as a leader but as a person. Through parts of the initial process, I began to see myself as a shunned person, beyond the pale. I was so personally and professionally shattered that I became numb. None of the “normal” reactions to setbacks were evidenced—no tears, no anger, no rage, no excuses, no overt opposition. I was devastated, struck down by my own incredulity at what had and was happening. I felt I was alone and abandoned, except for a few close friends who were wise enough to reaffirm me without advising me. I was in despair!

Early in the process, I consciously made the decision to “get through this” with as much dignity, humility, and compassion for others as I could. I was not sure how I would do this, but I knew that I had to move in the direction of the positive. I absolutely loved the work I was doing, and I thought I was a trusted leader. Despite the accusations, I knew in my being that I was strong in the sense of quiet persistence and resilience. At first, I was so shattered that I questioned mentally my capacity as a leader and a “good” human being. I tried to make sense of what was happening and to explain it to myself and to justify and put right the universe and my place in it. This was not very successful, and I had many many sleepless nights and fruitless internal conversations in which I played out cause-and-effect, “if I had done this rather than that” scenarios.

At the very bottom of the despair was my understanding that I would live through this, and while the world may not be as it was, I would find a place of reconciliation and come to some depth of understanding of the tangled web of intrigue. Somehow I knew that to openly fight and blame would in the long term be destructive. I chose to be silent and to be who I was—a leader and learner. For me this took courage, and I was often tempted to cry out and rail against my fate. For over two years, I lived with and through the despair—quietly gaining strengths and acceptance.

The condition of despair can be life altering for a leader, merely a glancing blow, or a challenge in the day to day of leadership. Despair has its own rhythm and its own time frame. It doesn’t adhere to any rules, nor does it disappear through sheer effort of will or increased persistence. We deeply understand that one can’t hurry despair as much as one may want to. For leaders, what is important is not just moving through despair but also living well with despair during the journey. Leaders can’t escape despair over their lifetime of work. There is so much that they can’t change—betrayal, failure, life events. These things appear without leaders being ready for them.

Despair is deeply personal, and each leader travels the journey differently. When leaders are in despair, their actions, motivations, and feelings are individual. There is no template for acting or being while in despair. Joan tells this story:

I experienced a major life event that caused deep despair. People at work told me to take all the time I needed, but shortly after the event, I wanted to return to work. I felt deeply judged for returning to work as if I wasn’t following some unwritten grieving rules. I didn’t return to work because I was ready. I returned because I needed something, anything in my life to be routine. This was my first and very profound lesson in how despair is individual and leaders must follow paths of their own making, not of the making by others.

As we work with teams and individual leaders in despair, we recognize that no one can dispel another’s despair. All we can do is offer ideas and processes within the storm of despair that might serve as a wee sheltered port. The ability to be resilient within despair can be augmented by the practices of appreciative inquiry, which we explore more fully later in this chapter. As consultants, we don’t have the ability to dispel despair, but we can focus on the strengths and capabilities that leaders have as they traverse despair for themselves and their teams. Jeanie tells this story of traversing the ordinariness of despair:

I’ve been a consultant for many years. It is a life of adventure, and the leadership journey through the adventures has required me to deal with glancing blows of despair. Moving from institutional leadership roles into leading my own company required a lot of hope that the work would be there and would be work that I love—facilitating, training, speaking, coaching, and consulting. I began in a world that I was familiar with and where people knew me. After several years of success with this work, we moved to the other side of the continent. I was hopeful that I could run my consulting business successfully there as well. After moving, I came to the realization that I didn’t know anybody. And consulting can only happen if people know who you are, or at least know what you offer. A glancing blow of despair found me. So I had to relearn the skills of being an entrepreneur from the ground up—building my website, networking, showing up in my new community, joining associations. This was all key to establishing myself in my new community and finding hope in my despair. Since that time, we have moved again, and each of these moves involved feelings of despair as it seemed overwhelming to build connections and reinvent our lives in a new community. I go in and out of despair and keep reminding myself, I’ve done this before and been very successful. So I forgive myself for getting stuck sometimes in despair, and hold on to the hope that the feeling of despair will pass as I move to a more grounded place.

Despair can simply be defined as a loss of hope. We started this section with those words, yet despair is subtle and tricky. It visits when uninvited and stays awhile, eating away at a leader’s hope and direction. Despair can be a small glancing blow or can bring leaders to their knees. It is deeply personal and takes its own form, unique to each person. What causes despair for one leader does not for another. What devastates for one could be business as usual for another. These aspects of despair make it difficult to write about it in a meaningful way for leaders. Despair goes by a different name for each person; it escapes clear definition and form. We do know that when it visits leaders, they experience loss of ability and direction and seek to hold with all their skill to possibilities of movement, however tiny. Joan talks here about her different experiences of despair:

I always thought I was impervious to despair. Not that it hadn’t come calling over a lifetime, but it had never really been more than a challenge, a glancing blow. Over a lifetime, there were so many of these glancing blows. I grew up as a lesbian in a small town when it wasn’t okay to be different; I was an early feminist and was party to the despair of women’s equity; I was a teacher of life skills for people disadvantaged by life and systems and saw their hopelessness; I stumbled many times over a life of leading; as a writer, I had days when the words would not come. All of these and many others were glancing blows of despair. But then a series of very difficult of life events opened the door for a visit from despair like I had never known. I was almost literally on my knees unable to stand up. I longed for that despair to go away, to lessen or to visit someone else—but it didn’t. It stayed with me until it was done with me. As I look back at this time of deep despair, I no longer see the despair but see how my practice of appreciative inquiry allowed me to traverse this landscape. It was an inquiry just for one. Every day, I attempted to discover what was. I didn’t turn away from the despair or try to avoid it; rather, I looked it in the face. Then I offered up to myself the tiniest of dreams of what might be. Most days, this was asking what strengths I could exercise that day—not what strengths I could exercise to dispel the despair but what strengths I had to walk with my new friend despair for another day.

So, we can say that the definition of despair is simple—a loss of hope—but for each leader, despair is a complex experience that is unique and arrives when least expected. One often thinks of journeying through despair. Yes, every leader wishes to escape its grasp and journey through, but there is strength in the notion that despair is an element of leadership we can and do reside in. While leaders reside in despair, they can build many things using their strengths and capabilities. One of the leaders we interviewed stated this:

Feelings of despair, shame, failure are important to acknowledge. . . . Giving them voice, talking with somebody makes them real, so the shame doesn’t eat away at you and the despair doesn’t eat away at you. . . . Number one would be connection—connection is what pulls us out of despair. . . . Sharing our dark times makes us vulnerable . . . and being in vulnerability connects us to people. . . . As leaders we are not always recognized as humans.

If our work of focusing on appreciative resilience does nothing else for leaders, perhaps it can uplift the conversation about despair. Despair is a companion of leadership and is without shame. Joan reflects further on despair and touches on concepts arising in her doctoral research on the inner life of leaders (McArthur-Blair 2004):

When despair has visited me, I find myself losing my inner life—losing that inner life that guides and offers up grace in leadership. Sometimes in despair I feel as if I have misplaced my inner life like a set of keys. I know it is somewhere, but I can’t find it. In all of my leadership work, my inner life has been the place that spiritually, morally, and ethically guided me. I have practiced hard to bring it into the forefront through meditation, compassion practices, exercise, sleep, and just taking care of myself. And yet when despair arrives, it is as though I have misplaced my inner life, and it is difficult to locate that inner compass that guides me. It is not that I stop being moral, spiritual, or ethical. Rather, it is as though these things are no longer at the tip of my leadership; they must be searched for instead of being readily available. It is as if despair has thrown my inner life into darkness, and everything is harder to see or understand.

In the absence of hope, leaders still lead. They still go to work and undertake amazing activities, but they do so with a wounded heart and a quieted soul. There is also for some leaders the experience of organizational despair or an entire team’s despair.

Organizational and Team Despair

Organizational despair is that fateful state in which an entire organization or a team within an organization can’t lift its head to the horizon for some reason. Organizational despair arises when an entire leadership group or the organization as a whole is finding itself blocked. The people involved cannot move forward because of experiences, emotions, and systems that are dragging them to a halt. We are often called to work with leadership teams in organizational despair, and we find the causes varied, but all are rooted in a disconnection that has occurred either gradually or suddenly. Often teams and organizations can’t articulate what is happening, and carry on in the despair. As one leader stated:

We don’t commonly talk about our fears, and most of us are terrified of despair, of depression, of being immobilized forever by these dark feelings, and so we develop all sorts of defense systems. . . . Sometimes they work, work for years, but ultimately they go beyond their sellby date, and it’s only then that you can talk to somebody who is immersed in dark feelings who has successfully avoided them for years. . . . One of the things is about recognizing fear and being able to acknowledge and accept people’s defense mechanisms against those fears and those black holes of despair.

The causes of organizational despair are as varied as organizations. Some organizations fall into despair due to the inability to bounce back after failures, to a lack of coherence between goals and the ability to achieve them, to issues between or among segments of the organization, to supervisory issues, to the power of negative members of the group, to long-term defeat, and to many situations. Sometimes despair arises during otherwise positive change processes, because of complex interpersonal issues. The difference between individual despair and organizational despair is in its scope of impact on people and systems. When individual leaders are in despair, they can use their strengths to weather what is going on. When an organization or team is in despair, shifting is much more difficult because a collective must tap into its strengths to move forward.

For example, we worked with a team in organizational despair. Underneath the despair was a lack of respect for one another. The team members persisted in being critical of one another and assumed others were incompetent. This way of being resulted in an ongoing lack of trust for one another that negatively impacted any strategy or innovation that was brought forward. Although they stated that they wanted to move forward, they were frozen by their lack of mutual trust. Organizational despair requires sustained effort both to understand the roots of that despair and also to focus on what is strong inside the organization and how those strengths can be amplified.

Appreciative inquiry is a powerful force when used for organizational despair. We use AI processes such as the 4-D model (discovery, dream, design, and destiny) supported by an AI approach to mediation, interviews, and visiting and revisiting the smallest of successes in forward movement. The nature of the storytelling and sharing successes begins to shift the feeling that the organization is stuck. To appreciate in this type of situation means to value what is working well, no matter how small, and to be deeply and fully aware of all that is going on. As in the previous example of organizational despair, being fully aware of the issues was an important part of the process. For instance, team members’ lack of trust impacted their ability to lead and move the organization forward, and we needed to hold that issue within the AI processes. During the design phase of the appreciative inquiry in these complex situations, we encourage teams and organizations to develop small steps. Small design steps create room for people to practice their resilience together. Examples of these small steps might be (1) developing agreements for working well together, (2) developing principles for making decisions, (3) implementing structural changes, (4) reflecting on how they are being and doing together, and (5) making changes in how new ideas are presented and discussed. We encourage people to revisit their design steps often to foster, celebrate, and grow the strength of the team or organization. In the example, the team members created design steps to practice trust with each other and be trustworthy with each other. Over time, the team began to move forward and change how it did its work and then was ready for bigger steps.

This example illustrates some of the simple design steps:

An organization asked for appreciative inquiry to be used with a team in great despair. This team was a department of about fifteen people in a large organization. Over a number of years, relationships between two parts of the department had become toxic. These two parts were in separate parts of the building. They referred to each other as “the other side.” Allegations of bullying and harassment were made by people from each side. Several attempts had been made to bring the parts of the departmental team together to improve relationships, without success. It was clear that the toxic environment was creating a severe state of despair.

The organization hired us to work with this team in order to create positive change from a toxic team to a functional team. We worked with a small core group representing both sides, to plan the inquiry for the whole department. We spent a day together to delve deeply into the issues arising as a result of the despair and to reframe those into what they wanted to be and do. All these desires fell under the overarching topic of being a highly effective team, so the second day, the whole department came together to inquire into “this topic” through discovery stories, dream images, and design action strategies to live their destiny.

The day began with considerable tension and resistance as people came into the room and found a table at which to work. To engage people, we used one of our favorite AI activities. Each person selected a magazine picture to represent “being at my best” and presented this metaphor to the whole group; we posted these all together on chart paper. Immediately, tension lessened. They engaged in paired interviews and then in smallgroup sharing of the highlights from these interviews to develop themes for what they already knew, valued, and wished for to be a highly effective team. The tensions continued to dissipate. The participants continued to engage with chatter and laughter as they created visual images and provocative propositions for the themes they chose to take forward into being a highly effective team. And from these, they discussed what they needed to do to make their envisioned future happen.

The following day, we worked with the core group to fine-tune how to take the outcomes from their AI day forward, moving from despair to hope. The core group worked together to explore what was realistic to do to move the department forward as a great team. The first strategy was something they could do immediately: create agreements for working together based on those they had discussed at the whole-department day and the themes, dreams images and provocative propositions, and actions suggested.

The next day, they created laminated cards with their departmental agreements for how to work together well, invited all (both sides) for coffee together (something that hadn’t happened in years), and gave each person an agreements card. We were to provide assistance as they moved through their journey of being a highly effective team. They required very little from us as they had shifted to hope and confidence in their own ability to move along with their visions and actions. The appreciative inquiry had allowed them to see each other as contributors to their department and to begin to shift from despair to hope for their department through the collegial relationship building they engaged in. Their simple actions of sharing coffee together and using the agreements card began the letting go of past grievances and started the journey toward forgiveness.

In this example, the teams and organizations used appreciative inquiry to design small, incremental steps that assisted in the movement from despair to forgiveness and hope.

Personal leadership despair and organizational despair each has its own rhythm and time frame. Organizational despair, however, is accompanied by a sense of urgency in that entire systems are being affected. This urgency often drives very proactive attempts to shift the despair and to practice other ways of working and being together. We use the word practice intentionally with teams and organizations because it is a practice to shift structures and ways of being. It is not a destination that teams and organizations can just decide to arrive at. Rather, it is a daily practice of using the skills of appreciative resilience to either withstand what is going on or to move forward. There have been times in our practice when all we could do was assist teams or organizations with the strength to withstand—a port in the storm—because they could not move to a different way of being at that moment in time.

Despair in teams, organizations, or individuals can be based on events or circumstances that create a powerful disconnection from hope. Among the influences intersecting with these events or circumstances are systemic forces.

Systemic Forces

We wish we worked in a world where there was no discrimination, but that is unfortunately not true. Many leaders live with and experience the despair of discrimination based on age, race, gender, ableism, culture, sexual orientation, and other biases. This is a day-to-day despair that can be relentless and unceasing. Living with discrimination is a powerful daily despair to have to cope with.

In our book Appreciative Inquiry in Higher Education (Cockell and McArthur-Blair 2012), we explore critical appreciative inquiry, which focuses on the intersection of appreciative inquiry and systemic forces. In this book, we continue that exploration of critical appreciative inquiry and its connection to resilience. This exploration brings into the forefront the idea that consideration must be given to the impact of power, privilege, difference, and gender on any AI process. This consideration of systemic forces can positively impact the emancipatory nature of appreciative inquiry work and possibly increase leaders’ resilience during times of change.

The use of “critical” in critical appreciative inquiry is drawn from critical theory and other transformative and emancipatory work. This work evolved out of doctoral research Jeanie conducted on facilitating collaborative processes, which was grounded in appreciative inquiry and transformative education. The primary findings of this inquiry were “the notions of critical appreciative processes, and ‘making magic’ through being present, vulnerable and courageous. These processes could enhance the possibility of magic, the transformation that happens when groups of people collaborate effectively by being interconnected and authentic, present, with each other” (Cockell 2005, ii). Critical appreciative inquiry brings forward the need to see, in the workplace, all forms of diversity and to respond to systemic discriminatory forces. One leader writes about the power of critical appreciative inquiry this way:

My personal and all-consuming rage against systemic misogyny (local and global) made it impossible for me to do women’s liberation work in my day-to-day profession—it was exhausting and filled me with despair. AI dreaming has reconnected me with the motivating and creative power of that rage, and critical appreciative inquiry has given me an appreciative channel to move proactively from despair to hope.

Systemic forces impact both individual leaders and organizations. Early in both of our careers, we spent considerable time working on the issues of diversity and inclusion. We saw, listened to, and experienced the impact of these issues firsthand. Joan, as part of her institutional career, undertook early work in diversity education for the college system and watched how leaders coped with the feelings of exclusion in the workplace and the energy it took from them to deal with the discrimination they experienced. Jeanie, as part of her master’s work, examined the ideas of women’s concepts of power and leadership. Through this research, she added to the traditional top-down norms of formal leadership (power over others) the notions of connected leadership that values and applies power with others (Cockell 1993).

For Joan, defining experiences of her career were both staying in the closet for many years and coming out as a lesbian in her later career. She reflects:

In my early career, people considered me standoffish in coffee circles and casual conversation. I wasn’t standoffish; I just didn’t want to answer the questions about my weekend because my weekend was spent with a partner no one at work knew I had. I lived in fear that if my workplace found out I was a lesbian, I would lose my job. As years passed and I moved up the leadership ladder, I came out because laws and cultural acceptance had moved forward. Also, it became more and more important to be a role model for other people and stand up for my rights and the rights of others. I still felt the brunt of homophobia in the workplace. Sometimes it was subtle and sometimes more overt.

For Joan, the discrimination and systemic forces sometimes had the effect of amplifying the experience of despair, challenging her resilience. The same can be true organizationally. If systemic forces are at play within teams, exclusion or discrimination can amplify the experience of organizational despair. It is difficult to separate the personal and the organizational when writing about systemic forces, because leaders bring who they are to their organizations each day. If leaders are included and uplifted by the people, systems, and structures around them, they can feel safe to bring their whole selves to the workplace. If on a daily basis leaders experience the impact of systemic exclusion and discrimination, it takes great courage and will to be themselves in the workplace. One leader referring to experiencing racism stated:

I’ve had death threats, I’ve had my tires slashed, I’ve had anonymous letters delivered to my home, and when I think about those things, that can be very traumatic. In those times I think about Wilma Mankiller,* who went through hell. She almost lost her life twice, and there was profound change in the world because of her.

*Wilma Mankiller, whose great-grandfather survived the deadly forced march of Native Americans westward known as the “Trail of Tears,” rose to lead the Cherokee Nation more than 150 years later as principal chief—the first elected female chief of a Native nation in modern times. Throughout her reign from 1985 to 1995, cut short only by her own severe health challenges, she advocated for extensive community development, self-help, education, and health care programs that revitalized the Nation of 300,000 citizens (“Wilma Mankiller” n.d.).

In this interview, the leader talked extensively about the power of role models to uplift her; it was also clear the toll it took on her to experience systemic discrimination. There are many leaders in the workplace who experience the systemic biases that exist in our society, and those experiences can have an impact on their journey of despair. For example, female leaders are often described as bitchy and aggressive instead of strong and assertive. First Nations’ leaders are at times criticized for talking about First Nations, Aboriginal, and Metis issues. When leaders express their gender identity or come out regarding their sexuality, sometimes people in their organizations say, “I am okay with that, but you should be careful.”

In our work with organizations and individual leaders, we hear of discrimination and exclusionary experiences. Belonging as a leader is powerful and compelling emotional leadership currency. From belonging comes hope; from lack of belonging comes the loss of hope. One very public example of discrimination was the calling for an end to racial profiling by Mayann Francis, former lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia. A news article stated, “She’s mistreated by retail staff in Nova Scotia stores at least once a month because of the colour of her skin” (Corfu 2016). Imagine having been in one of the most prestigious positions possible, yet experiencing racial profiling when grocery shopping. Similarly, Joan’s experience of leadership was colored by how the organizations in which she led reacted to her sexual orientation with a range of responses from inclusion to outright exclusion. And she was clear that it took energy to be different in a leadership role. One interviewee noted that recognizing systemic forces is important. When asked what allowed her to stand up in times of despair, she stated: “empathy for others . . . realizing that many of us are carrying around systemic hurt.”

Systemic forces have a powerful impact on the experience of despair. We recognize that all leaders show up in their organization bringing all of themselves to that workplace and that some leaders experience more privilege and more inclusion than others.

Building Capacity during Despair

We are clear that despair is not something that can just be swept away because one wants it to disappear. Leaders must reside with despair until it is over. When in despair, they will benefit from finding and using practices that are touchstones for building capacity and hanging on to core strengths. There are many appreciative inquiry practices already described in this book that leaders can apply for building capacity during despair, from living the principles to tracking and fanning. We encourage you to build your own practices and/or adapt the ones found throughout the book. For example, one leader we interviewed offered this concrete example of his personal practice to amplify strengths and capabilities through challenging times.

I have the Optimist’s Creed* on business cards. I have it committed to memory. Once in a while in particularly challenging patches, I’ll put it on the dashboard of my car so that when I get in the car, I can refocus myself on it. And the tenets of the Optimist’s Creed are a lot of the things we’re talking about. For example, “Forgive the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.” In times of despair, you need to be more intentional about amplifying core strengths.

*Written by Christian D. Larson in 1912.

Another very concrete appreciative inquiry model that leaders might want to use in their times of despair is the ALIVE model. We noted in the prologue that one of our early forays into resilience thinking was the development of the ALIVE model for working through challenging times (Cockell and McArthur-Blair 2012). Here, we evolve that work further to focus on its use in times of despair as a springboard for building and reflecting on core strengths and capabilities.

As noted earlier, ALIVE stands for appreciate, love, inquire, venture, and evolve. ALIVE is about recognizing the capacity one has as a leader, even in the darkest of times, and bringing that capacity into the forefront to assist in sustaining oneself.

To appreciate in times of despair is both to fully face what is and to find within the dark even the smallest of possible things to value. The focus on what there is to appreciate can ease the burden of despair ever so slightly. The practice of finding things to appreciate grows over time and can add to capacity in times of despair.

Love is about caring for oneself and others in times of despair. This care can be a pillar of support and can help dispel the loneliness that is a constant companion of despair. When working with leaders, we often ask: “Who will reach down a hand and help you stand up in times of despair?” And, we ask, “Do you know how to reach down your hand and help another leader in despair stand?” Being loved and loving others are powerful supports in despair.

In other sections of this book, we have written in many ways about inquiring. Here we add the idea of inquiring into what small things are possible to do and then celebrating those things. In times of despair, the world can be dark, but the capacity to be curious enables one to explore the despair and reside in it or move forward. In those times, fanning the capacity to inquire into the smallest of steps, events, and ways of being is powerful.

Venture and evolve are about the movement through despair. We believe that leaders have the bravery to rise again. Leaders venturing tap into their courage and the actions that can begin to shift the despair. These actions are highly individual and can be small, yet they evoke the idea that a future is possible after all. Evolving is deeply recognizing that as a leader, one is forever and irrevocably changed by the experience of despair in one’s life. Evolving enables leaders to slowly unfold into the future, taking the lessons of despair with them into new ways of being and doing. Everyone experiences venturing and evolving differently. In an interview one leader talked about venturing and evolving as the movement through despair and believing that nothing lasts:

It’s important to have the ability to stay and be with people’s despair and to hold it with them, not to run away from it. I can be very calm around it and be with it. I know it won’t last; if you can be with it, face it, it will pass like everything passes. Just occasionally, if I’m in despair myself, I can remember that nothing stays the same. We come through despair, but we don’t come through if we avoid it.

Building, practicing, and recognizing capacity in times of despair help bring to the forefront the sustaining strengths leaders have. The more these strengths and capabilities are in the forefront, the easier they are to practice in the day to day of despair.

Final Thoughts on Despair

After despair has passed, leaders can see the movement, see the possibilities that were arising, perhaps even see the positive outcomes, but when they are in that state of despair, they can’t see the journey. It is only after despair has left us that we begin to see that we have been in motion. When in despair, leaders may feel as though they are standing still. They can feel as if despair is a static state, never ending and never moving; but in reflecting back through leadership moments of despair, they can see movement, even if it was small.

A colleague once said to us, “I hate those stories of overcoming; they just make me feel like I am a failure because I can’t overcome despair and have some amazing transformative experience.” Not every leader who travels through despair will or can make it into a big transformative experience. When despair visits, it is all right just to practice small things that can get you through a leadership day. Sometimes as a leader, you just survive until despair moves off and the possibility of forgiveness and hope arrives. Despair is without question a teacher—a harsh and angry teacher—and it teaches each of us in our own way.

As we talked with leaders about using their strengths in times of despair, we discovered no formula for lifting up the practices of appreciative inquiry, but it was clear that appreciative inquiry practices were critical to being resilient. These leaders found their own practices and used these as support when they needed it. We encourage you to do the same.