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The concept of resilience gained currency in the pandemic and continues to reverberate today amid economic uncertainty. Leaders proclaim the importance of their people and organization being resilient. But longtime leadership development advisor John Maxwell warns before they turn to others and demand resilience they must focus on themselves.
“When the leaders become more resilient, so do the teams and individuals they lead. If your team or organization isn’t as resilient as it needs to be or would benefit from becoming more resilient, then you need to become more resilient,” he writes in The Resilient Leader.
Your growth process starts with changing your perspective. He urges you to acknowledge that adversity is unavoidable. You will face tough times. You will then have the opportunity to learn lessons – and change your actions.
As well, it’s important to accept that failure rarely comes as a single, isolated event. Both success and failure are a process. They result from what you do day to day. Resilience involves bouncing back from adversity and becoming the better for it. Most entrepreneurs, for example, do not succeed initially. But they bounce back and keep pressing. Tulane University business professor Lisa Amoss found entrepreneurs average 3.8 failures before they finally succeed in business.
Mr. Maxwell advises you not to see adversity as the enemy. “Most people try to avoid adversity like the plague. They’re afraid of it. But it takes adversity to create success,” he says. Study any achiever and you will find someone who sees a mistake as an ordinary part of life they must overcome. Most setbacks and stumbles are not irreversible. They are not a verdict of weakness. Similarly, success does not guarantee your future. Every event, good or bad, is just one small step in the process of living. All roads of achievement, he stresses, must pass through the land of adversity.
Self-sabotaging behaviours can dampen resilience. Notably, many leaders expect to fail. And inevitably, sooner or later, they will get what they expect. They also take adversity personally. “Remember, neither your failures nor success have to define you,” he says.
In that vein, don’t join the many leaders who refuse to take risks. Life means risk. Instead of fearing risk, you should worry about the chance you might miss if you are afraid to try.
He crystallizes that advice into specific abilities leaders must embrace:
- Resilient leaders reject rejection: The weight of failure, mistakes and adversity can be crushing if you internalize it. In particular, it can cloud your judgment. “If your focus is on condemning yourself when you make a mistake or experience a setback, you won’t be able to effectively lead others. To keep the right perspective, take responsibility for your actions, but don’t take failure too personally,” he says.
- Resilient leaders see failure as temporary – isolated incidents: Adversity is not a gigantic hole you have fallen into that will trap you forever. He points to Harry S. Truman who in 1922, at age 38, was out of work and in debt; in 1945 he was president of the United States. “Resilient leaders don’t let challenges colour everything they see or convince them that they can’t achieve their goals,” he says.
- Resilient leaders keep expectations realistic: Taking a stroll through your neighbourhood is different from trying to scale Mount Everest. The greater the feat you seek to achieve, the greater the mental preparation you will need to develop sufficient resilience to overcome obstacles and persevere for the long haul. “You must approach each day with reasonable expectations and not get your feelings hurt when everything doesn’t turn out perfectly,” he says.
- Resilient leaders focus on strengths: He argues what distinguishes winners from losers is that winners concentrate on what they can do, not on what they can’t do. Similarly, focus on your team’s strengths. The exception are weaknesses of character; those need attention, in you or others.
- Resilient leaders vary their approaches to achievement: Again, successful entrepreneurs are prime examples. They bob and weave, experimenting with different approaches before finding the right opening. He points to high jumper Dick Fosbury, who instead of aiming to straddle the bar as everyone else was doing, which in his case was not working, he opted for head first with his back to the bar.
- Resilient leaders prioritize action: Adversity can paralyze people. They procrastinate, avoiding action. They try to get through the day without screwing up. “Being resilient doesn’t only mean being able to take a punch. It means having the ability to get back up again, try new approaches to success, and moving to keep from being punched again,” he says.
Resilience begins with you – your mindset and willingness to lead others through adversity and uncertainty. If your thinking and your actions have been rigid for a long time and you’re not used to taking action as a resilient leader, he says getting started may be difficult. But as soon as you start putting the habits of resilient leaders into action, he says it gets easier.
Cannonballs
- The most effective form of marketing isn’t an ad, says entrepreneur Seth Godin. It’s a better product.
- Leaders must be wary of making casual suggestions, warns Sanjay Khosla, a senior fellow and adjunct professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Leaders must be disciplined, confining themselves to passing on truly special, inspirational ideas and not any casual idea that occurs. “Great leaders align teams behind a strategic direction and then get out of the way!” he says.
- Whenever people give you ideas or advice, never begin your next sentence with no, but, or however, advise famed executive coach Marshall Goldsmith and his daughter Kelly Goldsmith, a professor at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management. No matter your intent, those three words tend to shut down open communication.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.