Using Career Adversity as a Stepping Stone

In a series of stories published in Fast Company, entrepreneurs and go-getters describe some of the ups and downs of their careers. While successful now, they did not all start out that way, and some are still dealing with adversity in their careers.

While tough times are never fun, they serve as stepping stones to your next goal, your next victory. To successfully deal with career adversity, be willing to consider new possibilities.

Benefits of Adversity in Your Career

Kevin McCollum, a Broadway producer, talked to Fast Company about how he overcame the disappointment of not winning the Tony for Best Musical for Something Rotten! Instead of taking the loss on the chin, he placed a humorous ad in The New York Times โ€œcelebrating his show as a โ€˜Loser!โ€™โ€“ and won a lot of good will for it.โ€

Owning โ€œloss like a bossโ€ is the articleโ€™s first piece of advice, using McCollum as an example. While he evidently cultivated goodwill while dealing with adversity, the challenge is not always easy to overcome.

Career adversity can ultimately help with the following:

  • Building strength.
  • Developing resiliency.
  • Facilitating future success.

Try to Learn from Every Experience

Nisha Asher learned to โ€œredefine failure and successโ€ while studying for an MBA at Duke Universityโ€™s Fuqua School of Business. She began her graduate degree journey expecting to sail through the coursework but ran into an academic thunderstorm after making a low grade on a statistics quiz. She worried that the low grade โ€” all by itself โ€” would somehow stop her from achieving her goals, including landing her dream job. Eventually she realized the low grade was not the end of the world, and she moved past her mistakes and outgrew her perfectionistic tendencies.

An Online MBA Can Help Turn Around Adversity

Online MBA programs can help you overcome adversity by filling gaps in your skill set, strengthening your general management knowledge and preparing you for future leadership and management opportunities.

Even though Nisha struggled with some of the MBA coursework, adversity transformed her: her definition of success no longer hinged on passing every quiz but rather on deep learning and life application โ€” as she details in a 2014 Huffington Post blog article prior to her graduation. Online MBA programs offer flexibility, convenience and life-changing challenges for those who want to chart a new path through adversity.

Learn more about the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi online MBA program.


Sources:

http://www.fastcompany.com/3054887/how-i-get-it-done/why-adversity-can-be-the-best-thing-for-your-career

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nisha-asher-/how-an-mba-helped-me-rede_b_5078389.html