5 Key Elements of a Resilient Leader
Resilience has become an essential component of leadership today, but what makes a resilient leader? Learn the five skills that all resilient leaders possess.
To adapt, advance, and thrive as a leader, you need to cultivate a strong sense of resilience into your identity.
Performing under pressure, bouncing back from failures, and coping with changes are just some of the elements belonging to resilience. But while 83% of Americans in an Everyday Health survey believed they were resilient, only 57% were.
Building resilience is often associated with child development. However, learning how to build resilience during midlife is crucial as that’s the time when people are likely to face most adversity, especially leaders.
So, what are the key skills that incorporate resilient leadership?
5 Elements for Resilient Leadership
The old saying goes, “It’s not how many times you get knocked down that count, it’s how many times you get back up.”
In a nutshell, this saying goes a long way to reflect the essence of resilience. But being resilient as a leader is about learning specific elements that enable you to endure difficulties and overcome obstacles in the face of failure.
- Emotional Intelligence and Empathy
The importance of being a resilient leader is having the power to reflect and assess. This ability includes self-awareness and recognising how our emotions work.
We all know that a negative emotional reaction can be the end of a healthy relationship. Often, these reactions are the result of stress and high pressure, especially in the workplace. Interestingly, 32% of the UK working population have low levels of resilience to stress.
Emotional intelligence allows us to control our emotions and reinstalls our actions are based on logic and rationale rather than passion.
Leaders with emotional intelligence are often successful because as well as understanding and controlling their own emotions, they are also empathetic to others.
An effective resilient manager will often have empathy, as it enables them to connect to their employees in a more meaningful way. This deeper understanding during difficult times can help boost morale and inspire change.
Emotional resilience is a crucial development area for a leader that begins with self-awareness. Understanding how you react in emotional situations is vital before recognising the emotional tendencies of your employees.
- Continual Development
Resilience is not just a switch we can flip. It’s not in our DNA. It requires an enthusiasm to learn and put it into practice. This means we must force ourselves out of our comfort zones.
To become resilient leaders, we must show acceptance to change, adaptability and ambition to continually develop. Being stuck in our ways will only unravel as a weakness when things inevitably evolve.
In a world driven by constant innovation, resilience enables us to be ready with healthy transitions for any alterations on the horizon.
A sure sign of resilience is the way we manage change and challenging circumstances. Our willingness to grow will only contribute to this key characteristic and is facilitated through a process of constant learning.
Whether it’s listening to podcasts, reading, or attending courses that will further your development. Learning new skills can only hone your resilience and improve your openness as a leader.
- Decisive Driven Intentions
As much as resilience relies on our capacity to be adaptable and develop our emotional understanding, it’s also imperative to uphold our integrity in all scenarios. In this case, it might mean taking calculated risks that only you believe will work.
When we’re under pressure as leaders, we might face criticism, doubts, and objection from members of the team. Although we must listen to any complaints, staying true to our principles and not swaying to something we don’t believe in is significant to our resilience development. While being flexible to change, we must also be firm with our principles.
Leading with assertiveness is not about being blind to other ideas. It demands being purpose-driven by knowing what the job at hand entails and setting tasks amongst your team to achieve those goals.
Incentivising work for your employees encourages job satisfaction through organisation and meaning behind their work. With a greater sense of purpose, employees will feel empowered to succeed.
- Nurture Relationships
There’s an assumption that resilient leaders should always act confidently and with integrity, without any guidance from anyone else. But that isn’t true. Just because you’re a leader doesn’t mean you should feel alone.
While a resilient leader is expected to lead by example, no great leader ever achieved their status without advice, support, and greater knowledge granted from others. Leaning on trusted friends, colleagues or a broader professional network will ensure you make more educated decisions.
Share your issues, doubts, and concerns with a diverse support network to become a more capable, well-rounded, and resilient leader.
Hearing your leadership issues shared will reward you with added confidence, gratification, and overall assertiveness.
- Communicate With Conviction
The final key resilient leader element is the ability to communicate effectively. In fact, an Interact/Harris poll found 91% of 1000 employees believe their leaders lack good communication skills.
For a resilient leader, the tone of communication is dependent on a combination of two assets:
- Empathy
- Assertiveness
Communicating too assertively might portray a lack of respect and an approach to leadership driven by fear. If we’re under pressure to get a deadline completed or deliver an important task, then aggression might take hold of our tone. While this approach might force an issue over the line, it will damage relationships and dissolve our overall resilience.
The best leadership communicators show complex understandings for adaptive assertiveness and empathy. An in-depth self-awareness and social intelligence allow them to recognise the listener’s needs before using these skills to engage and empower.
Communicating with conviction requires the leader to speak confidently and straightforward. The language should come from within, not upon the listener. For example, leading with, “I feel”, or “I believe”, over “you” will avoid putting responsibility and blame directly on the listener.
Examples of Resilient Leaders
A big part of the process of becoming a more resilient leader is to learn from the best. Here are three examples of resilient leaders, both past and present.
Jacinda Ardern
New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, uses her acute self-awareness and doubt as a strength to her leadership resilience.
“Some of the people I admire the most have that self-consciousness and that slight gnawing lack of confidence. I have tried to channel that. ‘Why am I feeling a bit worried about that, does it mean I need to do a bit more prep, do I need to think more about my decision making?’”
Nelson Mandela
The former first president of South Africa faced immense challenges throughout his anti-apartheid movement as a political leader.
“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks became a political leader during the civil rights movement in America during the 1960s. She was named “The Mother of the freedom movement”.
“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.”
Resilient Leadership Courses
If you’re looking to improve your overall resilience in life and at work, UKCPD has a specific course that teaches you these key skills.
Building Resilience in the workplace & at home is a three-part course that will enable you to endure adversities, improve self-confidence and social relations, think more creatively and protect yourself from stress.
Get in touch with UKCPD today to start your journey to becoming a better leader so you can face life’s challenges with assurance, adaptability, and renewed ambition.
