I originally wrote this article in 2019. At the time, none of us had any idea about how 2020 and the pandemic would bring about the most significant set of circumstance and changes to the business of health care that most of us have seen in our lifetimes. I pulled this out because building leadership resilience has proven to be more important now than it was in 2019.

Leaders in organizations around the world all agree; the quantity, quality and frequency of change appear to be growing exponentially. Most contemporary leadership authors and researchers also agree with this assessment. As a result, for researchers, one of the leadership qualities that is moving up the scale of important qualities a contemporary leader must have is resilience. For most leaders, resilience as is not yet on their radar screens. To be more accurate, the word “resilience” is not on their radar. They know the concept, they want the benefits of being resilient, they just don’t use that term to describe their experience. 

In a whitepaper titled “Building Resiliency: The New Business Imperative”, The Human Performance Institute defined resilience as a person’s capacity to respond to chaotic disruption and unforeseen change, by bouncing back with speed and grace. The Center for Creative Leadership says resiliency provides the ability to recover quickly from change, hardship, or misfortune. Resilient people demonstrate flexibility, durability, an attitude of optimism, and openness to learning. Resiliency Sciences Institute, International defines resilience as the ability to withstand, adapt to, or rebound from, extreme challenges or adversity. 

Over the years I have seen at least ten different list of the characteristics/qualities of resiliency that individuals should or do possess. I have seen the”10 most important characteristic, the 8 Most Important Characteristics, the 7 Most Important…. you get the picture. I include the list below as an example of some of the characteristics.

Six Qualities of Resilient People

  1. Optimism, Faith
  2. Integrity
  3. Social support
  4. Decisively Taking Responsibility (attempt to control only those things over which they have control).
  5. Perseverance, Tenacious
  6. Self- knowledge and Self-control

The summation of all of these lists is this – having a positive attitude (and a support system to maintain that attitude) is the key to building your resilience. Early in my career I worked in a Chronic Pain Management Program. I met with patients, individually and in groups, who had experienced a significant work-related injury which left them with a life-time of back pain. After one of my group sessions, I learned that a patient had gone to my boss and also to his boss to demand that I be fired. I had said something to the group that she though was insensitive and intolerable. I had been speaking about having a positive attitude. She was of the opinion that she was in our program to have her pain taken away. I had asked a question that she found very discouraging. I said, “What if there is nothing that can be done to reduce your pain? What if you said to yourself “No matter what happens, I will be able to manage my life?” Her mind set when she entered our program was that she was being admitted to a Pain Elimination Program. I had asked the group that day to think about how they might manage their chronic pain. I admit it is quite a mind-shift to go from trying to change a situation (eliminate pain), to instead changing your mind about a situation (manage it). The Center for Creative Leadership conducted a study on the “key events” that contribute to a leader’s development. The study found that the greatest opportunity for leaders to learn, grow, and further their development came less from successes and more from hardships, failures, and setbacks. If you think about it, leaders are always experiencing some kind of “pain”. Great leaders are people who look at challenges as opportunities to grow, to change, and to learn from their mistakes rather than seeing themselves as victims of circumstances and feeling they are not in control of their own success.

How do you do make that shift in how you think about difficult situations and failures? One tool, suggested by The Center for Creative Leadership, for building resilience is “learning journals” or “reflection journals”. These tools help leaders gain insight into their leadership experiences. The process of writing and reflection builds self-awareness, encourages learning and opens the door to adaptability. The mechanism of journaling that is so powerful is that it slows down your thinking. You cannot write nearly as fast as you can think. You and I have gotten into a habit of thinking in certain ways that we stopped examining a long time ago. And, we think at lightning speed, and we believe whatever negative nonsense we think up. Journaling slows that process down long enough for us to have a chance to be aware of and then critically examine our own negative thoughts. Over time, your thoughts and attitude become more positive and you become more resilient.

Why is it important that as a leader, you develop your resilience? Of course, I have an opinion, but I will wait for you to answer the question for yourself.

The simplest definition of a leader is, someone who has followers. In most cases those who are following you are not doing so voluntarily; they were assigned to you by your organization. They are your followers none-the-less. Your followers not only take directions on the tasks they should do, they also take directions from you on the attitude they should have. When you develop your resilience, they are more likely to develop their resilience. Employees and staff can become discouraged or encouraged by the behavior and attitude of the person who sits in the big chair at the head of the table. 

Resilient organizations are a result of resilient people who work there. Resilient people are a by-product of a resilient leadership.

Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before.

Elizabeth Edwards

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