On a brisk winter night, Eric Jackson and his partner sat in an unmarked patrol car and watched as four black males in their early 20s driving a stolen car wheeled past them, stopping to talk to two drug dealers Jackson and his partner had under surveillance. When they pulled off, the two officers hustled over to the dealers they were previously planning to arrest to ask their assistance in nabbing those driving the stolen car. They agreed, said Jackson, realizing that arresting those four would clear the area of undercover police for a while. Jackson, then a 22-year-old rookie for the Newark, New Jersey, police department, was a recent graduate with an accounting degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, New Jersey. He confesses that crime fighting at times requires some negotiations off the books. “Sometimes you have to let certain things go to get to what you need,” says Jackson. “The degree of crime was much higher there than the guys who sell drugs. They’re always going to be there.”
Jackson’s youthful appearance made him the obvious front man as he stood with the conspirator waiting for the car to return. His partner, a slightly older black male, hid behind a big maple tree. When the car pulled over, Jackson approached the young men offering the passengers $200 for the wheels. From their response, however, Jackson knew they had identified him. Jackson, believing his cover was blown, hit the passenger in the seat closest to him in the mouth, reached in, and put the car in park.
His left-handed partner ambled over to the car with his gun drawn on the driver. “I had my hand on the gear shift so the driver couldn’t move.” But when the driver took his foot off the brakes, the car rolled forward-and so did Jackson, as his torso was bent forward inside the car. “[As it rolled,] the car hit my partner’s hand and I think he just out of reaction tried to shoot the driver or he just pulled the trigger and the gun went off.” The bullet went through Jackson’s left shoulder, two inches from his head, breaking his shoulder and his upper arm.
At the hospital he learned that he suffered 45% nerve damage in his arm and shoulder. “I knew he didn’t shoot me because he wanted to,” Jackson says of his partner’s actions that night. But more than that, Jackson hasn’t let those obstacles hinder his aspirations in his line of work.
According to Paul G. Stoltz, Ph.D., Jackson has exhibited a high AQ or Adversity Quotient. Author of the book Adversity Quotient @ Work (William Morrow; $26), Stoltz describes AQ as “your hardwired pattern of response to all forms and magnitudes of adversity, from major tragedies to minor annoyances. It is how you respond to adversity in the deepest and most automatic recesses of your brain and every cell in your body.
“The challenge of today’s economy is to expand human capacity,” he continues. “Like computers, the demands placed upon every person and enterprise are growing exponentially. Everyone is stretched. Many suffer under the chronic burden or their capacity falls short of what is demanded when it matters most. Others live with a persistent gap between their existing capacity (what they have) and the required capacity (what the world demands), never fulfilling their potential.”
Jackson, now 37, was determined to live up to his desired capacity. His mental and physical tenacity helped him return to work and become a detective. “When you do
this job, you take risks,” he postures. “That’s just the nature of being a narcotic detective or a police officer.” The events of more than a decade ago, however, are vividly ingrained in his memory, and still cause him to have sleep-disturbing nightmares on a regular basis. Nevertheless, Jackson taps into his “spiritual endowment” for strength. “If you don’t have faith in God, you can forget it,” Jackson states. “God has His time for me. If He says it’s time to go, then it’s time to go. That’s what I believe.”Jackson, who was out of work for 10 months, received no emotional support or counseling from his employer. “Mentally you might expect [being shot] as part of the job. But when it actually happens, it’s a shock to your system.”
Stoltz has broken down how workers deal with crisis into four components called CORE (Control, Ownership, Reach, and Endurance). Jackson’s recovery from his shooting is clearly defined in two of those principles:
Control–focus on what you can influence. When adversity strikes, to what degree do you perceive that you can influence the situation at hand? Higher AQ people always perceive that there is something that can be done. The higher a person’s AQ, the more unlikely they are to be able to hear or process the word “impossible.” They tend to be fairly relentless.
At the time of the accident, Jackson remembers a sergeant telling him that he’d never be able to use that arm again. “And this was the only thing that made me cry at that moment,” he recalls. “I was determined that this would not be the case,” says Jackson.
Stoltz says that low AQ people suffer from learned helplessness, which is really the belief that what you do does
not matter. This decimates people. It attacks their immune system and they get sick. It’s a major cause of depression. It also, of course, makes people want to give up at the time when their efforts may mean the most. This CORE dimension, according to Stoltz, correlates most closely to health and vitality.Endurance–imagine what the adversity looks like once it’s passed. When adversity strikes, how long do you perceive it’s going to last? High AQ people always see the light at the end of the longest tunnel. “We’re talking [about] prisoners of war [who,] when given no hope they will ever get out alive, [are] still envisioning what their lives will be like when this is over. Low AQ people tend to see adversity as dragging on forever: ‘The whole world is falling apart. We’ll never get our act together,'” says Stoltz.
Chicago psychotherapist Boris Thomas, M.S.W., J.D., suggests that in overcoming a tragedy, it’s important to create a support system and then use it. It was of utmost importance in Jackson’s case, because the police department was not fully equipped to aid in his mental recovery.
Before his death, Jackson’s father would wait up for him to talk about the day’s occurrences. “From him making me come home and talk about things that were going on, it gave me a pattern to follow-to always be able to talk about it,” he says. For the 10 months he was out of work, Jackson relied on interaction with his friends, girlfriend, other officers, and his family-especially his mother-as his support system.
“Even picking up the phone and talking to a colleague or friend can help you diffuse some stress,” says Thomas. “It seems obvious, but many of us bottle up our frustrations.”
If you
have been injured at work, check with your company’s employment assistant program about working with occupational therapists who specialize in worksite rehabilitation, a process where the patient is treated in the pre-injury work environment. Evaluations take into account physical and emotional progress.The Lead on Adversity
Paul Stoltz, author of Adversity Quotient @ Work, notes that companies are beginning to require that their employees go through adversity training. “It’s used for a lot of reasons,” he offers. “Everything is more complex, more demanding, more uncertain, and faster. It’s equipping people to be able to perform more optimally in highly demanding circumstances.”
From his research on adversity, Stoltz has developed the LEAD sequence as a guideline to develop a capacity for handling the stresses of potential problems:
Listen. Pay attention to your responses to adversity and listen for where you may
be susceptible to areas of weakness.
Establish accountability. Given the whole situation, what’s the one thing you most care about? And where can you step up to have the most immediate and positive impact?
Analyze the evidence. Stoltz says that low AQ responses to adversity are all based on assumptions stated or perceived as facts. He suggests asking yourself, “What evidence is there that any of the things I’m worried about has to become reality?” The answer is always “None.”
Do something. Develop a plan of action. What can you specifically do to minimize the likelihood of a problem developing? What can you specifically do to increase the likelihood of positive things happening? Stoltz suggests listing every possible action and then deciding which ones you can commit to doing first and assigning dates to them. That gives you a personal action plan for demonstrating immediate resilience in the face of adversity.