Resilience for Leadership
Written by John Christopher, PhD
What is resilience and why is it important for leadership?
Resilience plays a crucial role in effective leadership as it enables leaders to navigate change, surmount obstacles, and motivate their teams. Leaders who demonstrate resilience are instrumental in guiding their organizations through disruptions, ensuring sustained growth and success.
In the realm of leadership, resilience embodies the capacity to adapt, recover, and govern effectively amidst adversity, uncertainty, and transformation. It encompasses the ability to maintain composure, make judicious decisions, and instill confidence within a team during challenging circumstances. A resilient leader, while not impervious to stressors or setbacks, possesses the requisite skills to constructively navigate and manage these challenges.
What are the benefits of resilience to leaders and their organizations?
Adaptability: Ability to modify strategies in response to evolving circumstances
Navigating Uncertainty: Embrace uncertainty and thrive in dynamic environments
Emotional Regulation: Effectively recognize and manage their own and their team’s emotions
Problem-Solving: Able to convert setbacks into growth and development opportunities
Inspiration: Motivate and support their team clear and compelling visions of success
Learning: Foster a culture of continuous learning and growth within their organizations
Resilient organizations are characterized by effective leadership at every level. Leaders in these organizations value trust, accountability, and agility. These produce high levels of employee engagement and an adaptive workforce that can effectively navigate change.
How to build resilience?
Resilient leaders recognize their strengths and weaknesses and use that awareness to improve. They have a developmental plan that they use to build and strengthen their resilience. They engage in continuous learning, reflection, and wellness practices that sustain their resilience over time.
Enhance self-awareness & build emotional intelligence: Resilience means being aware of your stress triggers. It also means being aware of your physiological and emotional responses. What triggers your stress? How does your body respond to stress? How does being under stress feel emotionally? Make mental notes of your stress triggers, your body’s response, and your emotional reactions to stress. Keep a journal of your success at managing the level of stress you experience across situations and over time. Your ability to recognize your stress triggers and choose how to respond to the emotions you feel, respond to others more effectively and create a positive work environment.
Gain perspective, prioritize, & delegate: Recognize that mistakes happen and every project is not successful. Facing up to mistakes and failures is important but being resilient is about learning from mistakes and moving to the next challenge. Don’t dwell on the past, refocus and learn what will make you successful in the future. Keep a positive outlook by learning how to focus, organize, and streamline your work. Defining your role, clarifying expectations, working ahead of deadlines, and maintaining effective project schedules are a foundation for resilience. As a leader, a big part of focusing your work is to set clear priorities for yourself and delegate tasks to your team.
Strengthen Wellness Practices: Resilient leaders value their physical health, mental well-being, and emotional stability. It is essential to carve out time in your schedule for personal rejuvenation. Once you have identified and eliminated tasks that are unimportant or non-urgent, or delegated them to others, focus on engaging in activities that inspire and energize you. These activities can be as straightforward as adhering to a fitness regimen, ensuring quality sleep, or simply enjoying some time outdoors. Incorporating these breaks into your day will not detract significantly from your work hours; in fact, they can enhance your overall productivity.
Practice Empathy & Gratitude: Resilient leaders are empathetic to others, which helps them connect with their employees. Take time to acknowledge and appreciate small things throughout your day. Deliberately enhance and prolong your positive moods, experiences, and emotions by intentionally savoring them. Neuroscience evidence suggests that we have a natural, negativity bias built into our brains. Biologically it’s there to protect us but it’s easy to overuse. Leaders must be intentional about reaching for positivity and practicing gratitude. Being positive and giving thanks will make you a better leader.
Engage in continuous learning: Resilient leaders value learning and are always on the lookout for new knowledge that enhances their leading knowledge, skills, and ability. They reflect on what they learn from their experiences as well as the knowledge they gain from a wide variety of sources. Building time into your schedule for learning from webinars, written publications, podcasts, conferences, and other sources will fine-tune your leadership skills and prepare you for future challenges. Also, taking the time to reflect and assess how you use your skills can help you improve. Consider how you get feedback from your peers, mentors, supervisors, and your staff. Taking the time to learn will help you develop your ability to adapt your leadership skills to a wide range of situations.
