Resilience: Why “Storms” Are Critical to Leadership Development

By Nneka Orji

Resilience is important. The late Elizabeth Edwards, American attorney and health care activist once said: “Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before.” In today’s world of relentless innovation, changing business models, increasing expectations from the workforce, and market surprises, accepting our new and evolving realities through resilience building is now more important than ever.

In a 2014 report by Sarah Bond and Dr. Gillian Shapiro, 99.9% of the respondents said that resilience was “important” to their career success with 56% saying it was “essential”. A separate survey over 520 executives across 20 countries found that 71% of them rated resilience as “extremely important in determining who to retain”. Yet resilience is hard; there is no recipe or quick fix to building resilience. While numerous surveys have found that resilience is a common trait amongst some of the most effective leaders – not just in business but education, politics and other fields – there is no simple handbook to guide aspiring leaders around how to develop resilience. Bond and Shapiro found that only 10% of their research participants felt that their organisations placed enough emphasis on resilience being a differentiating factor in career success. For business leaders looking to identify and develop talent this is important; future leaders who are able to deal with surprises and setbacks, learn key lessons and readjust in a dynamic landscape are more likely to lead effectively and ensure business success.

Women: the (slight) resilience edge

Bond and Shapiro set out to understand if there were any differences between the way man and women view resilience. Surprisingly, they found little difference; 62% of men said they wanted to be more resilient compared to 71% of women. Across both groups, 53% saw themselves as resilient “all or almost all of the time” in their workplace. This subtle difference is supported by the findings of the aforementioned Accenture survey; the leaders identified women as slightly more resilient with 53% reporting women to “very to extremely resilient” compared to 51% identifying men in this category.

While the report didn’t identify significant differences in how resilience is viewed, the researchers found that women were seen to be doing more to support their female colleagues in developing their resilience through specific programmes that broaden and enhance the roles and projects they are assigned, and preparing them for more senior positions. This is encouraging news given the recalibration of gender representation required at most organisations.

The resilient leader

So if both men and women want to become more resilient and better leaders, and women are actively supporting other women to become more resilient, why is it so hard for organisations to develop more resilient leaders?

This year’s Roffey Park report found that organisations need to focus more on “talent preparedness” – investing in a combination of formal and experiential development to address the leadership capability deficit. Aspiring leaders too, many of whom are millennials now, are looking for opportunities to become the best leaders they can be yet organisations are falling short of their expectations around development opportunities. According to a recent Deloitte survey, 63% of millennials believe that their leadership skills “are not being fully developed”.

It’s time for organisations and today’s leaders to act on this insight. Crises come and go, and understanding that the skills required to whether the storms are not just essential to future survival of organisations but also critical to personal development. The life coach and author Tony Robbins describes great leaders as those who “inspire themselves and others to do, be, give and become more than they ever thought possible.” We can all point to leaders who aren’t just good but great; they continue to lead and inspire despite the challenges thrown at them and seem able to bounce back even when it seems impossible.

Building up the resilience bank

The good news is that resilience is “learnable”.Steven Snyder’s HBR article highlights why it is so important to get it right and how others have done so in the past by maintaining a positive outlook, accepting that learning through challenging situations is part of the journey, and acknowledging that it will be difficult.

While there’s no handbook with all the answers, there are a few steps aspiring leaders can take to start building up their resilience bank.

Engage with resilient leaders: Business leaders have good reason to focus on resilience when designing leadership development programmes but also by encouraging senior leaders to share their war stories – the experiences and day to day challenges which help them build up their resilience. Of course aspiring leaders also have a proactive role to play in identifying and engaging with those leaders that inspire them to understand how they too can expose themselves to key developmental opportunities.

Practice mindful resilience: Managing challenging situations and demonstrating resilience requires a strong sense of self awareness and mental control. As Harvard Business School professor Bill George reaffirmed through his interview with the Dalai Lama, practicing mindfulness is a key part of building resilience. Some military schools have developed training programmes which focus on resilience building through mental strength exercises.

Be open to learning (and vulnerability): The founders of Global Health Corps (GHC), a non-profit organisation, wrote in last year’s Stanford Social Innovation Review about the importance of creating “vulnerable community” in building resilience – a community in which programme participants felt able to open up to their peers which facilitated the learning process. As for results, “85% of GHC alumni report that their fellowship experience improved their resiliency skills”.

Pick yourself up, dust yourself down, and keep going.

Career storms – the difficult project, the challenging market environment, the missed promotion – tend to come when we least expect them, so being able to see beyond the immediate challenge is key. It is how you choose to react to these situations that define your long term career success. Persistence and a continued commitment to learning means that we are better able to deal with these surprises.

In the words of one of the best known leaders – Martin Luther King Jr. – “the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” It is our ability to bounce back from challenges and obstacles that will determine the extent of our success.The next generation of leaders deserve the chance to build their resilience and becoming more inspiring and effective leaders for future leaders.