In the early morning hours of January 5, Steven Good,
age 52, husband, father of three sons, and head of one of
the nation’s largest real-estate auction firms, took his red
Jaguar for a spin. The car was warm and well insulated
from the cold air outside. This was suburban Chicago,
after all, the first week of 2009, and the temperature
was in the teens. Good paid attention to his route that
morning. He couldn’t use the home-to-office autopilot he
normally would on any other workday morning, because
this wasn’t going to be just any other morning. Instead
of heading south from his home in Highland Park to his
office in Chicago, he headed west into Kane County. When he reached
his destination, the Max McGraw Wildlife Refuge near Elgin, the
parking lot was deserted. Peaceful. He put the car in park and shut it off.
The next stretch of time is a mystery. Perhaps he waited for the
first ghost of winter light to come up, taking time to consider the
ramifications of his plan. Perhaps he didn’t wait at all, knowing that
hesitation might deter him. But at some point on that wintry morning,
this hypersuccessful, well-respected real-estate broker, attorney,
author, and family man hauled a rifle over to the driver’s seat, cocked it,
positioned it in the only effective way you can in a car, and shot himself.
A maintenance worker discovered his body at 8: 20 A.M. that day.
Why did Good do it? No one knows. He left no note. What we do
know: The real-estate market nationwide has been a soul crusher. And
while we hear bad news every day on all things financial, a new trend
children, the other a 50-year-old hedge-fund manager and father.
This downturn, or recession, or depression—or whatever historians
will call it when it’s over—hasn’t just crippled, it has killed. It has given
us a new phenomenon that can be called financial post-traumatic stress
disorder, and the condition is indeed that serious. “It’s a good term
because it accurately describes the aftermath of a first-time catastrophic
experience,” says psychologist Leslie Mayer, Ph D, a senior fellow at the
Wharton School of Business and the founder of the Mayer Leadership
Group, an executive-coaching firm. “Financial loss can trigger feelings
of self-loathing, profound shame, shattered dreams, and worthlessness.
In the case of successful, highly driven businesspeople, this is magnified
by the fact that the trauma ties not only to a core fear, but also to a core
piece of their identity. Tough and smart in business does not necessarily
apply to managing one’s own emotions. It might even be argued that
the same quality that created success—a sharp focus on winning—is the
quality that interferes most with adapting to failure.”
“The trauma is very real,” says certified financial planner Thomas
C. Scott, CEO of Scott Wealth Management in Orange County,
California. “I’ve seen my clients lose money, and my own pension has
been cut in half. You spend 20 years on a path of achievement and you
have a sense of accomplishment. That becomes a part of you. To see it
evaporate in the blink of an eye is shocking. There’s a sense of betrayal,
like everything you’ve been working on your whole life has been a joke.”
How much have you lost? How much value has evaporated from
your home, your retirement accounts, your children’s college funds?
This hypersuccessful, well-respected family
man hauled a rifle over to the driver’s seat, cocked
it, and positioned it the only way he could…
has emerged that is almost impossible to believe: Some of the wealthiest
men in the world, successful in everything they’ve ever done, are
choosing to take their own lives.
The same week Good shot himself, billionaire Adolf Merckle,
number 94 on the Forbes list of wealthiest people, committed suicide by
stepping in front of a train. On December 23, 2008, financier Rene-
Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet took some sleeping pills and slashed
his wrists with a box cutter at his desk in New York. He had reportedly
lost more than $1 billion of his investors’ money—and millions of his
family’s—to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Wall Streeters were abuzz
about two other recent suicides: one a 27-year-old stockbroker with two
Everyone has lost something. But how well equipped are you,
emotionally, for managing that loss? Successful men aren’t used to
losing. Not like this. And when you’re one of the more successful
men—one of the guys programmed to win—an eviscerating loss is the
equivalent of an ego amputation with no anesthesia. Some really believe
there is no better answer than the business end of a gun, a few pills and a
box cutter, or a punctual train. In their minds, like George Bailey in It’s
a Wonderful Life, they’re worth more dead than alive. What’s left for the
rest of us who aren’t so tragic with our coping methods?
This: A new way to approach not just stress, but also the deep, dark
anxiety that comes with major losses in both cash and career.
The Resilience Factor
Eight CEO-approved stress-busting strategies
If successful CEOs share one trait, it’s resilience. “They either have a natural hardiness about them or they’ve learned tricks that help them do well
under pressure,” says Michael Kahn, PhD, a psychologist in Maryland. Kahn interviewed more than 60 executives to find out how they handle the
responsibility of leading companies in times of uncertainty. “When I felt frustrated with my own personal challenges as an entrepreneur, I wondered,
How do successful executives handle these challenges?” The result of Kahn’s “CEO Stress Project” is a litany of practices common to nearly all of
his interviewees. He says anyone can adopt them to remain cool and maintain success amid chaos.
Plan more e-mail; preview your week on using the old A-B-C theory: voice,” says Kahn. A good
efficiently. “Planning Sunday nights; and preview the A’s need to be done, B’s ought consigliere can help make you
is the most important thing a
upcoming month every 27th. “I to be done, and C’s can wait aware of certain behaviors that
CEO can do to avoid stress,” learned in the Navy that if you until later. you are trying to minimize.”
says Kahn. Plan by the day, Explain to him that you demand
make a list of all the things that
Use the buddy
week, month, and year—and honesty, even if it stings.
need to be done, you get them
habitualize each planning out of your head and don’t have system. “Select a trusted
session. For, example, check to think about them,” one of colleague and instruct him or
Call a time-out.
your daily schedule every Kahn’s CEOs told him. To gain a her to pull you aside when he Effective leaders don’t spend
morning before reading your sense of control, prioritize tasks notices that you’re raising your a lot of energy on emotional
angst, says Kahn. Just as a
basketball coach will call a
time-out to slow down the
pace of the game and regroup
when the other team is on a
run, good CEOs know when
to disengage in times of high
emotion and reflect on their
core values before making
decisions. When you feel a
