Forget Type A and Type B. These days, job seekers need to be Type R
Our turbulent and fast-paced world requires a new kind of resilience, writes co-authors Ama and Stephanie Marston. Here’s how you can bounce back from a job setback.
studies and research on people with Type R personalities and lays out a six-step method for becoming more resilient.
Monster recently spoke with Ama Marston about how you can turn adversity, stress, and change into opportunity. things, or our assumptions or behavior, is out of sync with current realities. If we don’t adapt, we’ll stay illequipped, and potentially irrelevant.
Q. You write about the idea of “reframing” an experience — seeing it from a new perspective — Question: Most of us think as essential to resilience. of “bouncing back” from How can you “reframe” a bad experience as geta layoff or a firing? ting back to the way we A. I, myself, was laid off were before. But you from my first two jobs. It When life throws you a cur- define true resilience as was certainly a struggle at veball — a setback at work, a something else. Could you times, but I reframed the job loss, or a painful event explain? situation in my mind daily in your personal life — how Answer: By the time we’ve and sometimes hourly. This do you react? been through something dif- meant interrupting negative
If you use the experience ficult, whether as job seekers thoughts, avoiding harsh as an opportunity to get or leaders, or even as whole judgments of myself or other smarter, stronger, and bet- communities and nations, people, and getting past feel- ter prepared for your next we’ve often been changed ings of disappointment. I move, you may already be by the experience. It’s up to also reflected, both times, what co-authors Ama Marus to tip that change to our on how I had outgrown the ston and Stephanie Marston advantage and learn from it. job I just lost but had ignored call a “Type R”: someone That’s a fundamental part the signs. skilled at using tough times of being a Type R — lookThe space created by those as a catalyst for growth. ing at challenges and see- disruptions in my life gave
We’re all familiar with ing opportunities. me a chance to question my hard-charging Type A perThe world is also movown interests, values, and sonalities and the more laiding too quickly to let us get skills and choose a new direc- back, easygoing Type B. Howback to where we used to be. tion. That led me to graduate ever, according to Type R: We live in turbulent times. school in International Affairs Transformative Resilience Leaders are more stretched at Columbia [University], for Thriving in a Turbulent than ever, while being bomwhich was a game-chang- World, these times call for barded by information and ing decision for me. people who can “accept — emails, so they’re less accesSomething like this hap- and even welcome — change, sible and less responsive pens to anyone who focuses failure, and disruption” and to direct reports and to job on using a setback as a emerge from it in better applicants. springboard to something shape than they were before. And honestly, reverting to better. For instance, Steve
Written by mother-daugh- the past is a waste of adverJobs famously reframed his ter international strategy sity. Difficult, or stressful, firing from Apple. In a Stan- and leadership consultants, experiences often tell us ford University graduation Type R is packed with case that our way of perceiving speech many years after- ward, he said, “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired was the best thing that could ever have happened to me … It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
Q. How does resilience come into play in a job search?
A. A big part of it is asking, after each interview that hasn’t led to a job, “Can I learn something from this rejection, or missed connection, that can help me create the next iteration of myself, or change how I present myself ?”
Especially if you’re in a long, frustrating job hunt, it can really help to carve out a space in each day where you are able to spend time without facing any judgment from others or from yourself. I’m still learning this skill myself, but analyzing what happened, and then letting go of it, can save us an immense amount of wasted energy.