Written by Amy Lahti, Senior Consultant, Development Solutions
This is a challenging time for many leaders. Extreme weather events, economic uncertainty, political polarisation, and generational shifts in the workforce are creating challenges with no roadmaps or instructions for navigating. As a result, resilience in the workplace is becoming more of a requirement for all employees to possess, particularly leaders.
This magnifies the importance of an organisation selecting the right leaders. Whether organisations choose to develop ‘home-grown’ talent or bring leaders in from the outside, there are several core competencies that our research has identified as crucial to leadership resilience and overall success.
Why is resilience important in leadership?
Resilience is important for any individual to possess, but when you are in a leadership role it becomes non-negotiable. Not only are you responsible for taking care of yourself, but you have to take your team into account as well. That’s why resilience in leadership is essential as it equips leaders with the ability to navigate challenges, support their teams through uncertainty, and maintain focus on long-term goals.
What is leadership resilience?
Leadership resilience is about creating an environment of support for employee wellbeing, stress management, and overcoming setbacks for all members of your team. It’s important to note that demonstrating leadership resilience is not a one-size-fits-all approach. You have to consider each member of your team as the unique individual that they are, taking into account their particular situation and preferences when it comes to offering your support. As a result, the definition of leadership resilience is one that is constantly evolving to accommodate changing circumstances and employee needs.
How to build resilience in leadership
To hone your leadership resilience and ensure you are ready to meet the challenges that come your way, effective leaders must cultivate three essential competencies: an agile mind, a steady presence, and authentic connection with those around them. These qualities not only enable leaders to steer their organisations through difficult periods, but also to emerge stronger on the other side.
1. Agile mind: Thinking fast while thinking forward
An agile mind is not simply about being quick on your feet. It’s about embracing complexity, being open to new information, and adapting your strategy as circumstances evolve. In turbulent times, rigid thinking and clinging to the mentality of “but this is how we’ve always done it” can be disastrous for both leaders and their organisations. When it comes to resilience and leadership, the ability to pivot, reframe problems, and experiment with solutions becomes a critical advantage.
Key aspects of an agile mind include:
- Breadth of perspective: Leaders with this ability can see the bigger picture and understand what information is useful (or critical) for making decisions vs. what information might just be ‘noise’ in the background that is less useful for making good (and sometimes also quick!) decisions.
- Strategic thinking: Leaders should be able to create a vision for the future which includes an implementable plan for achieving that vision.
- Business sense: Knowledge of business fundamentals and the forces affecting all aspects of the organisation – everything from financials to people management – becomes critical in turbulent times.
- Learning agility: The most successful and resilient leaders are always willing to learn and keep an open mind about learning from anyone in their organisation – from the lowest-level employees all the way up to the board of directors.
To develop an agile mind, leaders can adopt practices like scenario planning, cross-functional collaboration, and reflection. Asking questions like, “What’s changing that we haven’t considered?” or “What might success look like in a different form?” can open the door to fresh thinking.
2. Steady presence: Calm in the chaos
If agility is the ability to adapt, steady presence is the ability to anchor. It’s the calm in the storm that others look to for reassurance and direction. In times of crisis, emotions run high. When fear, anxiety, and confusion are taking over, having a steady leader provides a necessary counterbalance of stability and calm that can help people regain perspective. Resilience in leadership is closely tied to this steady presence, enabling leaders to remain grounded and supportive when their teams need it most.
Key aspects of steady presence include:
- Composure: Leaders need to be able to effectively manage their emotions and tailor their communication style to their audience and current situation.
- Resilience: Resilience in leadership doesn’t just happen – it must be cultivated. The best leaders in turbulent times are aware of what they need to do to maintain their own resilience while simultaneously encouraging those around them to develop resilience and take time for self-care.
- Courage: Making tough decisions, executing difficult plans, and communicating controversial information all require courage – a trait that is easily overlooked when it comes to resilience and leadership. But the reality is that all of these things may be required of a leader, particularly when it comes to leading during turbulent times.
- Personal development: This goes hand-in-hand with both learning agility and leadership resilience. Good leaders understand they must continue to develop their personal capacity, proactively making time in their busy schedules to do so.
To be a steady presence, a leader needs to have high self-awareness. Leaders who take the time to prioritise their own wellbeing are better equipped to support others. Steady presence is tremendously dependent on emotional intelligence – a leader’s ability to “be themselves with skill” and adapt their behaviour to meet the moment they’re in.
3. Authentic connection: Leading with empathy and integrity
In challenging times, resilience and leadership are deeply relational. People don’t just need competent leadership; they need human leadership. Authentic connection is about building trust through empathy, transparency, and genuine concern for others.
Key aspects of authentic connection include:
- Building relationships: Good leaders understand that to be the most effective, they have to prioritise the relationship they have with their team. This requires a balance between driving results and ensuring that their people feel heard, seen, and appreciated.
- Concern for others: Turbulent times require leaders to lean into empathy, not abandon it. When people are experiencing rapid change and uncertainty, they need reassurance, support, and compassion. Resilience in leadership requires them to provide those things to employees and peers, in turn forging bonds that will carry them and the company through tough times.
- Embracing diversity: Diverse teams have been proven by research to be more innovative, more resilient, and better equipped to make good business decisions. Effective leaders consider the diversity of the teams when working on tough problems and take steps to make sure the team has a wide array of viewpoints and skills at-the-ready.
- Integrity: In any scenario, but particularly during difficult times, having a leader who doesn’t follow through with what they said they were going to do will likely create more uncertainty, more confusion, and more unease in the workforce. This can then have a ripple effect across the business, leading to underperformance in crucial areas of operation.
Authentic connection means treating people with respect, dignity, and care. Leaders who make time to check in personally and listen to diverse voices (even if they differ from their own opinions) will not only exhibit leadership resilience to their team, but cultivate an environment of employee engagement and loyalty, even when circumstances are difficult or chaotic.
Start developing your leadership resilience today
When times are tough or unexpected events happen, it’s human nature to look to our leaders for guidance and reassurance. Having leaders in place who demonstrate first-hand what it looks like to navigate through difficult situations in a healthy, rational manner has a major impact on the rest of your workforce. Alternatively, having a manager who easily panics, makes knee-jerk decisions, or lashes out during uncertain times sends the wrong message to their team and will leave them feeling uneasy and anxious.
Resilience in leadership doesn’t mean having all of the answers; it’s about being a stable and reliable asset to those who depend upon you. And the good news is that it’s not a fixed trait – leadership resilience can be developed and improved over time through practice and employing these critical competencies we’ve identified. Having an agile mind, steady presence, and authentic connection will allow you to be the calming, trustworthy guide that your team deserves to have in place to weather any challenge thrown their way.
About the author: Amy Lahti is a senior organisational development consultant at Talogy. Amy is passionate about effective organisational and talent development, and enjoys leading activities and programmes that can truly help organisations elevate to a higher level of efficiency, innovation, and success. She has deep experience in talent assessment and succession planning, coaching for all levels of leaders, organisational diagnosis, performance management, and training and event facilitation.
