Building Resilience—In Ourselves and In Others
Adam Grant: People who know your story are amazed by how you have managed to thrive in the face of adversity. What has been the key for you?
Sheryl Sandberg: The fact is, I got through [the sudden death of my husband] because you and others in my life have been unbelievable friends. You were right there for me emotionally, processing it all with me in real time. As a result of this experience, I know for a fact that we can build resilience in each other.
This is not just about me and my experience. We can also help to build ‘collective resilience’ in our organizations and in our communities. We have a deep responsibility to help prevent hardship, because it is not evenly distributed. People who face poverty and racism have more violence in their lives, more death and more job loss, and all of these things lead to more illness.
A great example of turning that around is a program called the Nurse-Family Partnership, which empowers first-time mothers from low-income families to create better futures for themselves. Nurses from this organization start visiting when the woman first gets pregnant, and this continues until the child is two years old. The results have been amazing: 15 years later, the incarceration rates for these young people have gone way down.
As a society, we have a responsibility to do a lot more than we’re doing. You have joked that there is a whole section in bookstores for self-help to launch a help-others category.
