Resilience: The Myth, The Truth & The Work
Running a company is HARD—always has been. But these days, the difficulty level seems to be off the charts. With everything moving faster, changing quicker, and becoming more unpredictable, resilience is absolutely crucial for successful leadership. Interestingly, while the importance of resilience is widely acknowledged as vital for leadership, I have found that many leaders: 1) fundamentally misunderstand resilience and 2) fall short when it comes to intentionally cultivating it.
Most of my clients (and honestly myself in my operating days) believe “resiliency is all about picking yourself up, pushing forward, and powering through.” This definition focuses on the ability to endure and it undervalues - or completely ignores - what I call “the ‘r-e’s of resiliency”: rest, recover, regulate, release, reframe, resource and refocus.
In her book The Five Resets, Dr. Aditi Nerurkar refers to the commonly accepted definition of resiliency as “The Resiliency Myth”. She calls it toxic resilience, which includes “unhealthy behaviors like pushing past boundaries, productivity at all cost, and a mind-over-matter mindset.” Sound familiar?
A recent survey of several thousand senior leaders across the United States found that 72% of leaders reported being burned out.
Unfortunately, many leaders who tout their resilience often exhibit symptoms of chronic stress or burnout, yet either fail to recognize it or choose to ignore it and “power through”. Several closely related factors contribute to this phenomenon:
#hustleculture: Our society values work over rest and play. How busy we are and how much we work are badges of honor.
Addiction to busyness/work: Leaders often unconsciously overwork to avoid feelings like worry and fear and/or they manage their stress and anxiety by over-functioning. Read more here.
Identity: Many leaders’ sense of self-worth is closely linked to their ability to endure hardship. They pride themselves on being able to run through walls. I often find myself reminding clients they are human, not superhuman.
The Suffering Myth: Some entrepreneurs and executives have bought into the myth that building/leading successful companies requires a perpetual state of suffering.
Take a moment to reflect on which of these (perhaps you’ll uncover others) are at play for you and how they impact your view of stress and your definition of resilience.
LET’S TALK ABOUT STRESS
You can’t talk about resiliency without talking about stress, as they are intertwined. To be fair, stress can be tricky because it can be healthy and even beneficial in limited amounts. In fact, many high-achievers thrive off pressure.
What I often observe with my clients, however, is that their stress has shifted course from a tailwind to a headwind and they have failed to recognize it. This poses a significant risk to their mental, physical, and emotional health, which, over time, adversely impacts their resiliency and ability to lead effectively.
Like most things, the power lies with awareness. Try building one or more of these questions into your end-of-day reflections:
Was I using stress today, or was it using me? On a scale of 1-5, how stressed was I today?
Was I mostly feeling tightness and fear or spaciousness and resourcefulness today?
Whether aware or not, research shows that most (53%) leaders react poorly in high-stress situations, becoming more close-minded and controlling instead of open and curious. Another 43% become more angry and heated.
SO WHAT IS RESILIENCE, TRULY?
From a strictly scientific point of view, Nerurkar defines resilience as “your innate biological ability to adapt, recover, and grow in the face of life’s challenges.” Specifically, as it relates to leadership, resilient leaders are skilled at coping in high-pressure environments and aren’t fazed by setbacks or challenges. They can easily navigate ambiguity, uncertainty, and unpredictability and forge ahead rather than get bogged down. Resilient leaders view failures as opportunities for growth and can quickly bounce back from adversity.
The great thing about resilience is that it naturally develops as we face the inherent challenges of work and life. However, because it's such a vital trait, leaders should complement its growth with intentional skill development.
THE WORK
Once I've convinced my clients to see resilience in a new light, it’s easy to convince them why they should have a clear plan for strengthening theirs. For this, we take a multi-layered approach to the work, emphasizing wellness and wholeness and encompassing the physical, mental, emotional, social, and even spiritual.
Prioritize Self-Care: We break self-care down into six pillars: Sleep Well, Eat/Drink Well, Move Well, Think Well, Connect Well, and Disconnect Well. You can go deeper into each pillar and create a recipe for optimal performance by downloading our Self-Care Workbook. Highlights: Tap into the present moment and practice mindfulness so that you spend less time ruminating on the past or worrying about the future. Give yourself grace and self-compassion. Make time for rest and recovery (without guilt). You are a business athlete, and just like a sports athlete rests her muscles, your brain needs rest.
Practice Time & Attention Management: Being more intentional with your time, attention, and energy will help reduce stress and increase happiness and resilience. Check out our Time, Attention & Energy Workbook for tips and tools.
Highlights: Move to a time-blocking calendar system to reduce context-shifting. It exhausts your brain. Set boundaries around your device usage and media consumption (also part of self-care). We underestimate the impact the constant barrage of information has on our mental stability and stress levels.
Mind Your Mind: The more you work to show up with an open and curious mind, the more resilient you will be. Leaders with a “Learner Mindset” welcome obstacles, are comfortable with uncertainty, and are skilled at turning failures and setbacks into opportunities for growth and success.
"The Racket & Reframe" is a powerful tool for shifting from negative, fearful, and stress-based thoughts to positive, compassionate, and courageous ones. When we feel stressed, our Inner Critics get even louder. So when we make a mistake, or the company faces a setback, our mind repeats thoughts, like: “I am an awful leader”, “We are going to fail”, etc. Of course, these thoughts consume brain space and energy and do not serve you or help you move into learning and opportunities mode. Consistently reframing from negative to positive and from Critic to Coach helps rewire our brains and build resiliency. Go deeper on Racket & Reframe here.
Catching and examining the stories we tell ourselves is another extremely powerful tool. When we don’t have all the information about a situation (which we rarely do), our brains make up stories in a quest for clarity. In her decades of research, Brené Brown found that participants who demonstrated the highest level of resilience used some form of these sentences:
The story I’m telling myself…
The story I make up…
I’m making up that…
Practicing gratitude also helps build resiliency by shifting our focus from what's going wrong to what's going right. Tapping into positivity and appreciation helps buffer against stress and adversity. Gratitude also helps us recognize and appreciate the support systems and resources we have.
Feel Your Feelings & Your Body
While being intentional about your mindset and managing your thoughts and stories can be extremely helpful, they are most impactful when accompanied by emotional and somatic (body) work. Many leaders have spent the majority of their lives in their heads and are disconnected from their emotions and bodies. Learning to identify and work through one's emotions rather than ignore or numb them reduces stress and builds resilience. Understanding your sensory stress profile can also be a game-changer. Ask yourself: When I am feeling stressed, anxious, or burned out, where do I feel it in my body?
Many of my clients define high-functioning solely by the level of their productivity and output. This “mind over matter” and “at all costs” thinking perpetuates toxic resilience. I challenge this short-term thinking by asking, “What if high-functioning means listening to your body?” After all, if you don’t have wellness, your ability to produce and achieve will be impaired over the long run.
Tap into Your Why / Get into FLOW: When we experience a barrage of setbacks or are approaching burnout, we can become disconnected from our mission and purpose. Shut your computer, take a walk, and reflect on your “why”. It can be the company’s, yours, or both. It’s also essential to make sure you spend time on professional or personal activities that bring you meaning and purpose, which contribute to what positive psychologists call eudaimonic happiness (the lasting kind).
When clients come to me feeling burned out, I often ask them what percent of their day is spent “in flow.” The answer is usually very little - and sometimes it is none. It is vital to experience flow - also known as a peak state or experience - each day to keep your heart and mind engaged, buffer against burnout and depression, and increase resilience. Note: If you had an adverse reaction to the word spiritual above (as some of my clients do at first) this is some of the work I was referencing. When we connect with our meaning and purpose and experience flow, we often feel a sense of interconnectedness or oneness. It is worth also noting here that research supports spirituality as a component of highly resilient humans.
Acceptance and Detachment
Practicing acceptance and detachment are core skills for developing adaptability and resilience. They may sound simple, but they are two of the most challenging practices to embody. Accepting “what is” requires releasing expectations and attachments to how things were “supposed to be” so that you can move forward from “what is.” This helps you stay centered, calm, and creative, enabling you to handle challenges and change more easily.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Resilient leaders build resilient teams and companies.
In today's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, developing and strengthening resilience - the healthy, non-toxic version - should be a priority for leaders. Going forward, the leaders who know how to manage their stress and regulate their nervous systems will prove the most successful at navigating the choppy waters of business (and life).
The impact of actively cultivating and mirroring healthy resilience for your team cannot be understated. By developing resilience skills, employees can increase their ability to manage stress, solve problems, communicate effectively, and adapt to change. A resilient workforce can lead to increased productivity and higher levels of job satisfaction, which can positively impact company performance.
Given the significant time spent at work and its role as a primary stressor, prioritizing resilience building in the workplace can greatly impact society. According to The 2023 Stress in America Report, seventy-six percent of adults reported they had experienced at least one symptom in the last month as a result of stress—such as headache (38%), fatigue (35%), feeling nervous or anxious (34%), and feeling depressed or sad (33%). Seventy-two percent experienced additional symptoms in the last month, including feeling overwhelmed (33%), experiencing changes in sleeping habits (32%), and/or worrying constantly (30%).
As Dr. Nerurkar acknowledges, “Stress and burnout are two of the biggest and most universal issues plaguing our world.” Leading with resilience and promoting resilience in the workplace can profoundly benefit our individual and collective mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being and contribute to a healthier, more productive world.
To dive deeper into Burnout and get a burnout checklist for your organization Read our BURNOUT PIECE here.