Guest Blogger: Dr. Heather Grooms Long, PhD, MBA, ACC, BCC
3 Sees, LLC, Founder
Advisor / Coach / Adjunct Professor
Resilience is the ability to recover quickly from difficulties. Difficulty probably isn’t the word you really want to ponder when going into something like a DBA program. But, we all face various challenges and storms in life. I’ve heard it said storms are constant in that you’re either in one coming out of one, or going into one.
Yes, in between times there is calm and we think or wish that is the way it should be all the time. The rest periods between do help build our reserves. But, the more readily we accept that ‘challenge’ is a part of life, the more readily we can manage through it and become adaptable and even stronger because of it.
Whether or not you ascribe to a faith as I do, a scripture from the New Testament book of Romans is relevant to the resilience I developed during my DBA / PhD journey. “….suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” (Romans 5:3-4, NIV)
As I headed into year three of my DBA, which was also year one of the PhD track, I learned something had gone awry in my research. Before I could embark on my third and final study for my dissertation, I would need to address a mismatch in the levels at which my studies had been conducted. Mixing individual and team levels simply wouldn’t work. My program director said I would either need to re-analyze my first study at a team level (team leaders had been interviewed about team projects) or collect an entirely new set of interviews. Suffering.
I could have given up. I could have tried to find someone to blame or even try to create a quick fix. I chose to go forward and do the hard work.
The re-analysis of my data resulted in an entirely different paper as well as an opportunity to add another method – Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). It’s honestly the best of the 3 studies I conducted and wrote for my dissertation. It added a year to my pursuit, but I still believe it was worth it. Perseverance and Character.
That complete re-do, the time spent, the experience, and the new knowledge gained produced new levels of endurance. It built resilience to address life challenges that came later in the form of organizational downsizing and re-orgs that left me looking for new work twice within 4 years. It provided substance for self-reflection, vision, content, and tenacity for solo-preneurship.
The DBA program is an experience that will challenge you in a variety of ways. You will gain a depth of expertise. You will learn more than you thought possible in a short span of time. You will learn how much you don’t know. You will be among the 2% of people with a doctorate. You will meet extraordinary people. And, if you choose to accept the challenge(s), you will develop resilience.
I’m grateful to my program director, who became my committee chair, for seeing me through that redo and final process. I’m grateful for the friends I met in the program and who encouraged me along the way. I’m grateful for all the useful knowledge and skills I gained. Now, nine years after successfully defending my dissertation, I am excited to put it to full use in my own business. Hope.
“When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had” – A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
I wish you the best of tackling obstacles and finding your hidden reserves of courage and resilience in the DBA journey.
