MBA: Leadership Journal – Adjustment Dimension

Looking at the Five-Factor Model of Personality on page 163 of Hughes, Ginnet, Curphy I see the dimension of “Adjustment” and the behavior of “I remain calm in pressure situations”. I’ve been surprising myself in this dimension over the past eighteen months. An extreme example was something that happened on December 28th, 2005. I had had a major surgery on December 8th and had a very large scar around my waist. Everything was fine and I was at a park with a friend – I was still in recovery from the surgery but moving about fairly well. When we came back to the house I felt wet, I went to the bathroom and a large segment of the sutures had opened. I could pretty much see my soul through the hole which was some six inches in length by four inches wide and went about an inch deep. I supposed lots of people would have lost their head with this – all I did was pick up the phone immediately and call the doctor while I told my friend “Everything is fine, but I’m going to need some help. I’m calling the doctor. I got a little problem with my sutures. Don’t worry, just bear with me here a second.” after talking to the doctor I grabbed saline solution I had bought for my nose and applied it to the area to keep it moist, then sealed it with kitchen plastic wrap. I called another friend and asked her to pick up my daughter from school. I went to surgery the following day. That night when my friend brought my daughter back home she was complaining of pain in her arm and my pain medication was wearing off – I ended up in the emergency room to straighten Sofia’s elbow – she had “nurses’ maid” elbow while I was walking crouched in pain. Fun, fun, fun. Anyway – my observation in this event and some others that followed was that I did not lose my head, but used the crisis situation to focus sharply on solutions. Since then the scar never opened again, though it doesn’t look as good in the area that it had that little “incident”. Of course I’m not made of stone and while I was telling my friend that everything was ok I was thinking to myself how in the world anyone could close that huge hole, that I needed immediate attention and it didn’t look like I was getting it, and wether the hole would keep expanding and I would literally split myself in half, then if the wound would dry what was going to happen. But even though the crisis I realized I needed to act and not be paralyzed, compounding the problem. I really don’t want to think about what people who go to war go through – I had this happen at my house, not in the middle of a jungle with people trying to kill me and animals trying to eat me while miles away from anyone – I had a cellphone!