CASCO, Me.–Kevin Hancock, chief executive of his family’s lumber company, thought things could not possibly get worse: The housing market was sputtering, hundreds of lumberyards had shut down and his company had to resort to painful cuts, hiring freezes and layoffs at its sawmills and retail stores.
The future of Hancock Lumber, started in 1848, and the livelihoods of hundreds of workers weighed heavily.
“It was pretty stressful,” Mr. Hancock said.
Then, he lost his voice.
When he tried to talk, his throat would tighten. He sounded and felt as if he were being strangled. What Mr. Hancock initially dismissed as a sore throat was diagnosed as spasmodic dysphonia, an incurable neurological condition that causes spasms in the vocal cords and is made worse by stress.
Mr. Hancock worried whether his work would prevent him from regaining consistent use of his normal speaking voice. He wondered whether he could continue as chief executive.
He did.
That was in 2010. Today he considers the loss of his voice a positive turning point. It prompted a trip to one of the most impoverished corners of the country. And in the five years since, the privately held company has hit record levels of efficiency and productivity, and sales of nearly $140 million in 2015.
It is not known what causes spasmodic dysphonia, which affects an estimated 50,000 people in the United States, including the radio host Diane Rehm and the environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. For some people, like Mr. Hancock, the initial onset follows a stressful event, said Dr. Andrew Blitzer, director of the New York Center for Voice and Swallowing Disorders.
Mr. Hancock got temporary relief from speech therapy, and from injections of Botox into the muscles of his larynx, a standard treatment.
When his symptoms were at their worst, efforts to speak left him gasping and sore. “It was pretty isolating,” he said.
He had to reinvent the way he worked. At meetings he once led, he now sat in the second row, jotting down notes. As he spoke less and listened more, he discovered how many managers and front-line employees had ideas for changes and wanted to take responsibility for them. He began delegating more.
“You see the passion and ideas coming from others,” he said. “People are smart, and they know what needs to happen and they want to do a good job.”
By 2012, the company had regained firm financial footing, and Mr. Hancock was ready to take some time off.
He had always been interested in the history of the American West in the late 19th century. He had read about the severe housing shortage at Pine Ridge, an Oglala Lakota Sioux reservation in South Dakota. He felt drawn there.
At Pine Ridge, Mr. Hancock completely unplugged from his duties as chief executive. And he began to realize how much those duties had come to define him.
“I learned that being C.E.O. of Hancock Lumber was just a role that I played,” he said. “I felt that I acquired S.D. because I had become too consumed in my roles and work responsibilities. I needed to bring more balance into my life, which for me meant that the work would be important but not all-consuming.”
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