Author View (Jeffrey Sonnenfeld)

The more risks you take in your career, the greater the likelihood that you will suffer a setback someday. Maybe you will be accused of incompetence after one of your  high-stakes projects fails. Or perhaps your accounting firm will be implicated in some kind of malfeasance and your company’s good name will get smeared in the press. If you suffer a devastating setback, you can’t sit back and wait for the problem to go away. Here’s a five-part strategy to recover quickly and get back on the road to success: Fight, not flight. Face up to the reality of the situation. Distinguish battles that more...

Ambitious people don’t go looking for trouble. But they really know how to handle it when it comes along. Look at Jet Blue CEO David Neeleman. He certainly didn’t want his airline to make front-page news a few months ago when a customer-service disaster struck. And I don’t think that Martha Stewart enjoyed being accused of insider trading. (Unjustly, in my opinion.) But David and Martha certainly knew what to do when trouble knocked at the door. That ability is not innate. It is learned. You can only cultivate it by fighting through at least one major difficulty. Or often, quite a few more...