Resilient Leaders – Resilient Teams

“Leaders feel pressure to bolster others’ resilience, but they should not underestimate the importance of their own leadership resilience. It is important that leaders maintain good habits and make positive lifestyle choices because this will have a ripple effect across the organization. “ – Shelley Winter

by Jim Solomon and Bruce LaRue, Ph.D.

You’ve Seen It All … Well Maybe Not

Just when we think we’ve been hit with everything – economy, global pandemic, cyber-attacks, remote workforce, inability to hire or retain employees, new tax implications, world events – we are slammed with another challenge characterized by VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity).

Two options for leaders when faced with adversity – go under or take it on as a challenge with determination and grit. Its resiliency that allows one to rebound from hardship and to have an optimistic approach when facing the next challenge.

Today’s leaders must have the mindset of an Integrator Leader, one with the ability to recover rapidly, turning each setback or impediment to an opportunity while gaining momentum moving forward. “Challenges and difficult situations are inevitable but under resilient leadership, such stressful situations can become an instrument of success”, according to The 10-Minute Leader.

Begin With PMA

Resilient leaders prepare for VUCA challenges regularly by addressing their own resiliency as well as that of their team. From their own resiliency, they build resilient organizations preparing to face adversity, learning and growing from missteps, and building from each success.

Developing a Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) is a leader’s first step to building resiliency. In his book, Think & Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill introduced the concept of PMA, explaining his philosophy of asserting an optimistic disposition in every situation in one’s life to address positive change and to increase achievement. A PMA approach does not mean being unrealistic or painting a rosy picture on everything. Rather, by taking an approach to focus on good things, addressing challenges and obstacles as opportunities; practicing gratitude; self-awareness by identifying areas of negativity in their own life; and beginning each day on a positive note, sets the stage for the leader and their organization.

Resilience produces confidence and optimism, it’s this mental fortitude that positively influences others. Brent Gleeson, former Navy Seal and author puts it this way; “Resilience is like any muscle. With a solid plan, consistent training, feedback, reflection, and course correction as needed, mental fortitude continues to build in yourself, and then in the team.”

Resilient leaders must have a truthful understanding of themselves which means they own their personal values, their character, their purpose. They must regularly take actions to sustain strong mental, physical, and spiritual health to stay on top of their game. It’s often said that “it’s lonely at the top”, denoting leaders must find mentors, confidants, and others to be able to share ideas, talk through challenges, or to take an introspective look at themselves.

Leaders Influence Resilience

It takes a leader’s influence to build a resilient organization. Kathleen O’Neill, Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) explains that “organizational resilience is the dynamic capacity of the people within an organization to:

Be mindfully aware of their environment;
Respond productively to continuous change, adversity, and disruption; and
Positively adapt and learn from experience in order to drive higher levels of performance over the long term.

O’Neill shares an effective approach for leaders to use to guide their organization to become more resilient. Key to this, she explains, is for this to be “imbedded into the core of routine business as basic operational practices across the entire enterprise, beginning in the C-suite”.

Anticipate — Discern what’s happening in the environment and prepare to act on challenges and opportunities.
Adapt — Mobilize and collectively implement actions by empowering the organization to work and collaborate in new and different ways.
Assess — Review and reflect on progress to collectively learn, evolve, and build capability and capacity.”

Speed Matters

Punit Renjen notes that the 2021 Deloitte Global Resilience Report found similar practices to those of O’Neill’s common in many organizations, however, the differentiator in the most successful organizations was “speed”. This critical element can only come from the team, through the leader’s influence. A team that “owns” its organization, will use their creativity and innovation to not only bounce back, but as Dr. Dan Denison, Ph.D. says, “bounce forward”.

In a current example, “the data from the 2021 Deloitte Global Resilience Report suggests that speed matters. Organizations that made early investments in resilient strategies during the COVID-19 crisis—or, even better, had already made strategic, workforce, and technology investments in capabilities that enhance resilience—outperformed their competition. This finding points to a fundamental lesson that the pandemic brought home: that resilience is as much about thinking ahead as it is about doing what it takes to respond and recover from a crisis.”

Resilience Driven by Ambiguity and Uncertainty

Our research and experience have found that no matter how good the plans are that we create in advance, we are bound to encounter unforeseen obstacles and challenges, particularly in our VUCA world. Yet if we try to prepare for every potential scenario up front, we would be paralyzed and would never act. Resilient organizations remain focused on their mission while remaining flexible in their tactics for achieving it.

While planning is important, we must not allow plans to become a straitjacket that inhibits tactical flexibility in how they are accomplished. Resilient leader’s help their team distinguish WHAT is intended to be accomplished from HOW it is accomplished.

When things fail to go according to plan – which they invariably will – the tendency is to make impulsive decisions that create the illusion of progress but may run counter to long-term goals. It is important that leaders demonstrate agility from the top by pausing to listen to their people, make appropriate course corrections based on their input, and “rally the troops” to charge up the hill from another direction.

In times of uncertainty and ambiguity, do not make the mistake of confusing decisiveness with good decision-making. Rather than coming to premature closure on a path forward, the resilient leader must focus on creating a space within which team members can learn to leverage ambiguity and uncertainty to drive innovation. It is within the space of ambiguity and uncertainty that the field of possibility arises. This is the environment where resilient organizations thrive.

What steps are you taking to build your resiliency, does it begin with PMA?
Do you “feel lonely at the top”, who do you talk to as a leader?
Is self-development, reading, and reflection your routine?
Does your organization improve after each challenge?
Does your team take ownership of setbacks to learn and grow?
Are successes celebrated and not taken for granted?

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