Finding Fortitude in Frustration
Learning to build one of life’s most critical skills in tough times
One of the most helpful insights I’ve gleaned from all my years of anarchist studies is the belief that the means we use must be congruent with the goals we want to achieve. In other words—contrary to the oft-relied-upon autocratic notion that the “ends justify the means”—in an anarchist approach, the ends essentially are the means. Yes, we begin with the end in mind—and the end is the beginning, and the beginning is the end.
Which is why it makes a kind of circular sense that this particular essay on frustration emerged out of my own recent feelings of frustration—feelings that, fortunately, managed to work their way into a productive and practical exploration of the subject.
The point of this essay, to be clear, is not why I happened to be frustrated last week; rather, the focus is on the very feeling of frustration itself. And while frustration is, of course … frustrating, it’s not, I’ve come to understand, without its upsides. In this case, it resulted in a bunch of good learnings about how to manage frustration and why that can be such a positive part of our leadership work.
Now, we’re certainly all well acquainted with frustration and have expressed it many hundreds of times over—but what is it really? And what do we do about it?
Jennie Steinberg of Through the Woods Therapy writes,
Frustration, in a nutshell, is the feeling of holding back a feeling. Often, that feeling is anger. Expressing untethered anger, in its most raw and unprocessed form, can be damaging to other people. And a lot of people associate anger with frustration because anger is a secondary emotion, which means it’s playing a protective role for something more vulnerable like sadness, fear, or shame.
At first, I naturally began with the assumption that frustration is “bad.” It’s definitely not something I like feeling. On further reflection, though, I realized it’s not actually frustration that’s at issue—instead, it’s about how we handle it. After all, when it’s managed well, a host of wonderful things can emerge from frustration! Without frustration at the state of British society back in the ’70s, there would’ve been no Clash, and Joe Strummer—whom I wrote about last week—would probably have lived out his life as John Graham Mellior. As Mikal Gilmore once noted in Rolling Stone, “The Clash formed as a result of Joe Strummer’s frustrations and Mick Jones’s rock ideals.” Clearly, then, frustration can have its benefits. The question is: how do we access them?
Now that I think about it, nearly every big move we’ve made at Zingerman’s over our 44.4 years in business has, at some level, been instigated by frustration. Joe Strummer and Mick Jones started a band; Paul and I opened a deli. Yes, absolutely, we write inspiring strategic visions of where we want to go and what success will look like when we get there. But the spark, the trigger, the kindling is more often than not what Stas Kazmierski, who taught us visioning over 30 years ago now, called “compelling reasons for change.” This is, I suppose, a sort of far fancier way of saying “frustration.”
A decade or so before the Clash channeled their angst to shake up the music world, the Rolling Stones were doing something similar in the ’60s. In fact, they transformed their frustration into one of the most amazing songs in their repertoire: “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Recorded in one take at Chess Records in Chicago and issued as a single in the U.S. 61 years ago this week, the song has now been performed live by the band over 2,500 times. It’s hard to imagine any future generation that won’t be able to relate to its message!
The Stones’ 1965 “Satisfaction” single was, as nearly all records were back then, released in monophonic sound, or mono—which meant the sound came out of a single speaker and/or through a single channel. If there were two speakers, the same sound emerged from each. Stereo recording, by contrast, has two channels. It didn’t really get going until the ’70s, around the time the Clash were starting to record, and it transformed the listening experience. As the folks at Bose, who’ve been crafting speakers for over 60 years now, say, “Music sounds fuller and deeper in stereo.”
If you’re a sound system buff, you’ll already know this, but I’m not and I didn’t, so … with stereo, it seems as if there’s sound coming from somewhere between the two speakers. I say “seems” because, although we hear it, it isn’t really there. It’s just that the two different channels of stereo, in tandem, create what’s called a “phantom center.” While the sound actually comes from the sides, we perceive it as emanating from that mythical middle.
Thinking about all this, it struck me that when we manage frustration well, we do so in part by creating a comparable “phantom center” in our organizational thinking. What’s coming from one “speaker” is our feelings of frustration—and from the other, the inevitable desire to sit quietly with the safety of the status quo. But when we listen to what’s in the middle, we find something new and productive to focus on and work toward. And over time, we almost forget the frustration and the status quo both.
Frustration in mono is pretty much doomed to failure. We lash out, act out, tear down, insurrect, and, intentionally or not, ruin others’ lives with retribution. The sound from the other metaphorical “speaker”—the status quo—isn’t all that great either: we stick with what already exists out of convenience and a false sense of safety. The hassle seems greater than whatever we might get out of doing all the work it takes to change things.
It’s the space in the center that can make cool things happen. As Strummer advised us all half a century ago,
We must use negative situations to refocus and redirect anger and frustration and fashion music that is powerful to all who listen, always upsetting the status quo.
Here’s one personal example I’ll never forget: I was out in the Bay Area in January 1992 to attend the Fancy Food Show. I was staying with a friend in Palo Alto and borrowed her car to drive into San Francisco for the day. This was long before cell phones, of course, so the conversation occupying my mind while I drove north toward the city was solely in my head. I was going over—again—how frustrated I’d become with the quality of the bread we were buying from other bakeries. I’d gone back and forth about it in my mind for years, talked to others, read a lot, traveled, tasted, and heard a hundred pros and equally as many cons about the idea of making our own in the interest of improvement.
The Bottom Line is that the bread we’d been so happy to get a decade earlier, when we opened the Deli, was, more and more obviously, not as good as we wanted it to be. What had seemed so great in 1982 (we went way out of our way to get it) now seemed, at best, so-so. Greater exposure to better breads, more travel in Europe, deeper reading, and more extensive tasting had all made it clear to me that we could do better. The bakeries we were buying from kept promising us improvement, but no changes ever came. My frustration, as you might imagine, was increasing. I’ve never had a quick trigger, so it’s not as if we needed to see miraculous improvement overnight, but a bit of progress would have been nice. Instead, we got nothing—our hopes kept climbing higher, but the reality of what was being delivered hadn’t changed one iota.
Anyway, that day in January, as I drove north on the 101, the frustration overflowed, and, thoughtfully but firmly, I made a decision. Customers weren’t complaining about our current bread offerings—to the contrary, most of them were already very happy with what we had—but again, I knew we could do better. And it was time to take the next step on that journey.
I talked to Paul. He agreed. When I got back from California, I called my friend Frank Carollo about becoming the managing partner of a not-yet-existent bakery.
Long story short, nine months later, we opened Zingerman’s Bakehouse. And now, thirty-two years later this coming September—thanks to the hard work of Frank, Amy Emberling, Jaison Restrick, and so many thousands of others—the Bakehouse is one of the best artisan bakeries in the country, and an Ann Arbor institution. In fact, in many settings, it’s just as well known as the Deli.
Our decision to do this, I feel confident saying from this vantage point, was not overly reactive. It wasn’t one of those sudden, unthinking explosions of angry expression we see so much of nowadays on social media. To the contrary, my frustration with our bread had been building for years, and, after reflection and review—and relatively patiently pushing our existing suppliers to improve—that frustration told me it was time to “do it.”
In a sense, it’s the same thing that led me to give my notice at the restaurant where I was managing the kitchen 10 years earlier, making it possible for me to then partner with Paul to open the Deli in the winter of 1982. It’s the same thing that led Paul and me from the “we-should-grow”-versus-“we-shouldn’t-grow” confrontation to, instead, starting to craft the Zingerman’s 2009 Vision that laid the foundation for what we now know as the Community of Businesses. And it’s the same thing that drove the creation of the Perpetual Purpose Trust as a way to organize succession.
And as for poorly managed frustration? You can see it in the news; you can see it in the classroom. We’ve all been there (or, if someone hasn’t, then, as professor and author Brene Brown says, “I haven’t met that person yet”). It’s led to so many poor decisions, so many ill-advised actions, so many errors in judgment that may feel better for a short time but then take so much longer to repair.
This is, in fact, what happened with the Clash: after six years of stunning success, Joe Strummer essentially booted Mick Jones out of the band. Last month, History Beyond Time posted the story, with the headline “He Fired His Best Friend and Spent Years Regretting It”:
Most people who know the Clash understand that Mick Jones being fired from the band in September 1983 was a turning point the group never recovered from. What most people do not know is how completely Joe Strummer came to own that decision as one of the worst mistakes of his life, and how openly he said so once enough time had passed. In the immediate aftermath of the firing, Strummer gave interviews defending the decision with the language of principle. Jones had become impossible to work with, he said. He was not showing up. When he did show up, it was without any of the commitment the band needed. And parts of that were true. … But years later, when the heat of the moment had cooled, Strummer told the story differently. “It was all my fault,” he said plainly …
[Strummer] recognized that Mick Jones was not just a guitarist but the other half of a songwriting partnership that had produced “London Calling” and every record before it, and that without him the Clash essentially ceased to be what it had been. … Then it was over. He later went back to Jones, worked with him on Big Audio Dynamite recordings, and the two stayed friends. But the reunion on the Clash stage that both men had begun talking about for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction never happened. Strummer passed away in December 2002, three months before the ceremony. What does it cost to be honest about a mistake too late to fix it?
As this sad story illustrates, learning to handle frustration well is, it turns out, vitally critical. Psychologist Becky Kennedy isn’t kidding around when she says, “Frustration tolerance is one of life’s most essential skills.” It’s a burden and a responsibility we take on as leaders.
So if dealing with frustration is one of the most crucial abilities in life—and leadership—why are more organizations not teaching it? What helps to build “frustration tolerance?” Here are some things I think we already do at Zingerman’s that make it easier for all of us to manage our frustrations more effectively:
- Our conviction that asking for help is a good thing. This shows up in our Statement of Beliefs and reminds us that it’s far better to seek assistance and come to a decision together than to act out of frustration and go to war (figuratively or, yes, literally)—or, as Joe Strummer did, let ego get the best of us and end up firing your best friend.
- Having democratic discussions. There’s a quote from a member of the Students for a Democratic Society here in Ann Arbor back in the ’60s that says, “Democracy is just an endless conversation.” When well facilitated with willing participants, these open conversations—where everyone has a voice and a say—really help us, in stereo terms, stay in the center!
- Bottom-Line Change. While we certainly don’t use our organizational change recipe perfectly, it’s a powerful way to keep engagement going, gather more perspectives, and arrive at more holistic outcomes.
- Consensus at the Partner Group level (and elsewhere as well). By definition, true, conscious consensus diminishes the odds of passive, conformist groupthink.
- Teaching long-term thinking. Working on 10-year visions, future planning, the Perpetual Purpose Trust, etc., gets more of us to actively account for the long-term implications of our decisions. Without a long view to be mindful of, acting impetuously out of frustration can almost seem “normal.” With one, we are more inclined to push past momentary frustrations and collaborate to arrive at some pretty darned cool solutions.
- Visioning. We have spent 30 years working on this process, and it continues to inspire us to think not about what we’re frustrated with today, but about what we really want in the long run.
- Honoring human dignity. The six elements of dignity that I detail in “A Revolution of Dignity in the Twenty-First Century Workplace” offer a compassionate framework that helps us avoid acting rashly and angrily toward others.
- Starting with positive beliefs. This one comes up for me over and over again. It’s the fourth of the six elements of dignity, and it’s in our 2032 Vision (“Start with Yes”). As Becky Kennedy says, “Finding the good inside can often come from asking ourselves one simple question: ‘What is my most generous interpretation of what just happened?’”
None of these practices are, of course, a panacea, but each plays an important role in enhancing the quality of our lives and our leadership. Kennedy asserts, “The more we can tolerate frustration, the more we can learn, the more we can struggle, the more we can take on challenges, the more we can bounce back from failure.” And gradually, we build a culture in which someone would step in to stop us from the equivalent of firing Mick Jones. Kennedy describes such resilience as akin to a muscle we can strengthen:
Building resilience is about developing the capacity to tolerate distress, to stay in and with tough, challenging moments, to find our footing and our goodness even when we don’t have confirmation of achievement or pending success.
Kennedy has studied parenting and child development across the world, and her findings seem well aligned with what we need to do in the workplace: as she told The New Yorker, “If we want kids to tolerate frustration, we have to tolerate their frustration.” It would be reasonable to say the same for us as leaders with our fellow staff members!
Another great strategy is telling stories about ourselves—stories in which, though frustration is a key character, we’re nevertheless able to effectively work our way back to a positive, productive center. Maria Popova of The Marginalian puts it well:
When we tell stories about creativity, we tend to leave out this phase. We neglect to mention those days when we wanted to quit, when we believed that our problem was impossible. Instead, we skip straight to the breakthrough. We tell the happy ending first.
The danger of this scenario is that the act of feeling frustrated is an essential part of the creative process. Before we can find the answer—before we can even know the question—we must be immersed in disappointment, convinced that a solution is beyond our reach. We need to have wrestled with the problem and lost. Because it’s only after we stop searching that an answer may arrive.
With this in mind, when I teach at Zingerman’s, I regularly reference times when I felt frustrated—or when others were frustrated with me—to demonstrate what it means to work through that struggle.
As Becky Kennedy writes about her work with families,
I talk to parents from all around the globe and they all want the same thing for their kids—they want their kids to be gritty and to take on challenges and to not give up when things get hard! And what I want parents to know is that kids aren’t inherently born with the ability to do any of these things—but they can learn the skill that enables them to do all of them.
That skill? Frustration tolerance.
In her book Good Inside, Kennedy further describes how she builds this skill in her own children:
Here’s something I start saying to my kids early on: “Did you know that learning is hard? I mean it! Every single time any of us learns something—me, you, everyone—it feels frustrating!” If my child seems to be taking in what I’m saying, I’ll continue: “And also, listen to this, because this is weird … Frustration, that feeling of ‘Ugh, I can’t do it’ or ‘Ugh, I want to just be done already!’ … that’s a feeling that tries to trick our brain into telling us we’re doing something wrong, but actually, this feeling is a sign that we’re learning and doing something right! It’s such a tricky thing. Let’s be on the lookout for that feeling so we can remind ourselves we are learning and that learning is supposed to feel this way.”
One excellent tool we use here at Zingerman’s is what we have long called “The Four Stages of Learning a Skill.” Developed by Maggie Bayless at ZingTrain many years ago, these steps are now deeply embedded in our organizational culture and systems:
- Unconsciously incompetent. We don’t know what we don’t know.
- Consciously incompetent. We now know what to do, but we aren’t able to do it well.
- Consciously competent. With loads of mindful practice, we get good at the skill at hand.
- Unconsciously competent. As Maggie always says, this is “when you can do it in your sleep”!
This is a useful way to remind new folks that, even if they were terrific at their old job (whether as a server, a baker, a host, or an accountant), they don’t yet know how to do that job here! And instead of having them feel frustrated and incompetent, we can help them see that learning simply takes time, and everyone can get better.
As we gain frustration tolerance, and learn to think and work more successfully in stereo, good things happen. As Prasad Bidaye, a Canadian professor of English at Humber College in Ontario, said about a recent essay of his, “[I]t needed more work, and the work needed more time. The delay made me impatient, but the essay is stronger for it.” I have experienced a similar phenomenon many times over the years.
To Bidaye’s point, regular writing—like the kind I do in this weekly newsletter—eventually builds the sort of self-discipline that frustration tolerance depends on. As celebrated author Philip Roth once remarked, “Writing is frustration—it’s daily frustration, not to mention humiliation. It’s just like baseball: you fail two-thirds of the time.”
Finding the “phantom center”—the middle ground, the positive path forward—when it comes to frustration is hard, but it makes all the difference. Martin Sostre, the late Puerto Rican anarchist activist and Buffalo bookstore owner, nailed the dilemma nearly all of us experience in some form or other:
People accept things because … it’s a way of life. But believe me, a lot of things could be changed. You have to challenge them.
All these lessons, I believe, can help to create organizations, and leadership teams, that more and more effectively tune their conversational stereo systems around frustration to get to that phantom middle—to turn frustration into their own equivalent of Zingerman’s Bakehouse. As leadership thinker and writer Margaret Wheatley says about her work learning to manage these feelings:
I still get angry, enraged, and frustrated. But I no longer want my activities to be driven by these powerful, destructive emotions. I’ve learned to pause, come back to the present moment, and calm down. I take no actions until I can trust my interior state—until I become present in the moment and clarity emerges undimmed by hope and fear. Then I act, rightly, I hope.
What Wheatley describes closely parallels my own work learning to own frustration, get centered, blame neither others nor myself, sort through what’s at stake and why it matters, and reflect—through journaling and conversation—on what might make for a more productive way forward. In other words: “frustration tolerance.” Wheatley remains focused on these practices, in the belief that those who develop them—and not the impetuous, drama-making, ego-driven leaders who abound in so much of the modern world—are the ones who will bring about a better future:
My whole purpose of being right now is to create leaders who can stay, leaders who can stay present, leaders who are not overwhelmed by anger and aggression and frustration, leaders who won’t get ill and just withdraw, leaders who will not become cynical and just disappear on us. So I’m really working with leaders. And the whole concept of leadership is: are you willing to commit to staying? Not necessarily in the same job, but staying available for what’s coming, what’s needed already—the large numbers of people who are beside themselves with anxiety and fear, who are suffering terribly. Those are the leaders that I’m working with, and that’s the level of change that’s possible.
As a side note: one interesting challenge at hand—less for me and more for younger students and writers—is that AI seemingly makes it possible to write (and perform many other tasks) without the frustration Philip Roth and others of us are so accustomed to. I’m anything but an expert on artificial intelligence, but the subject got me thinking. As did journalist and author Eve Fairbanks, who published an essay in The Atlantic the other day titled “The Biggest Tell That Something Was Written by AI.” The article’s subhead reads, “Look closely and you’ll see that every part of the text is not quite right.” Fairbanks says,
When writing is hard, it’s often not just because we are tired, underfed, or inefficient but because our mind is trying to tell us crucial things. How many draft texts to colleagues or family members have we all stared at in frustration, wondering why they don’t feel quite right—until we finally realize that they need to be rethought completely, or not sent at all? When a book I was writing became an almost hopeless grind, I tore up 90 percent of the manuscript; it became a far more honest work for having been halted at a conceptual dead end, forcing me to turn back.
AI can’t make that kind of judgment.
Maybe human writing will become like cloth-aged cheese or handloom rugs, an artisanal product created effortfully. Maybe we will come to treasure older writing. Herman Melville, George Orwell, Toni Morrison—all authenticated. Writing like this will be a fossil record for a kind of thought process we buried without realizing it.
Or, in my case, I’ll add the names Joe Strummer, Maria Vargas Llosa, Margaret Wheatley, Becky Kennedy, Prasad Bidaye, and Martin Sostre to this esteemed list. I’m not, to be clear, down on AI; I have much to learn about it. Still, all this makes me smile—and perhaps feel a bit frustrated that some will achieve quick “success” through AI without realizing, per Wendell Berry’s quote up top, that, intellectually and otherwise, “the impeded stream is the one that sings.” The “impediment,” it turns out, is where the flow of inspiration emerges! Our work then shifts, away from simply moving water to arranging whole ecosystems in ways that make beautiful “music” come to the fore.
Turn frustration into positive change
