Employees will build no team without resilient leaders. Bold and far-seeing. Patient and cunning. Is that you? It should be! And it can be.
We frequently see resilient leaders as fearless, unflappable individuals immune to adversity, failure, or setbacks. Therefore, being able to handle pressure and complex conditions is part of being resilient.
The key to resilience is not “toughing it out.”
Of course, military trainers must physically and mentally equip a student undergoing Navy SEAL training to handle the fundamental features of the training environment. However, athletes who complete their course typically rely on their mental toughness to overcome the intangibles. These often include weather, unforeseen challenges, self-doubt about their abilities, sickness, injury, cold and wet 24/7, and dread of failure.
Resilient leaders build strong teams.
Resilient businesses have strong cultures built on trust, responsibility, and adaptability.
They exhibit high levels of involvement and participation, approach work with a flexible mentality, and effectively handle change.
Resilient teams have fundamental ideals that all members genuinely believe in and a feeling of cohesiveness that many teams lack. Therefore, they also tend to be more profitable than an average year after year.
Bold leaders cultivate resilient employees.
Resilience is the capacity to bounce back rapidly from adversity. Consider challenges such as the hybrid workplace.
Resiliency is the result of a comprehensive view. However, a solid professional and personal network might help you grow used to being uncomfortable. Resiliency depends on your capacity to adapt while also knowing your values, confidence, and optimism.
Maintaining your objectives and well-being while leading others through times of change, stress and uncertainty should be a priority for all leaders.
Resilient leaders:
- keep emotional balance and calm under pressure;
- avoid agitating people by spreading stress and worry;
- accept ambiguity and change quickly;
- handle blunders and failures gracefully;
- reframe distressing events and don’t linger on them;
- invest in their health…and yours;
- exude confidence and stability in challenging circumstances; and
- foster hassle-free emotional overload support.
Odds-Defying Resilient Leadership
Embrace the Suck: The Navy SEAL Way To An Extraordinary Life is a book all about resiliency. Mental health, productivity, and relationships may all suffer without it.
You may also be slower to recover from setbacks, which may be problematic in volatile situations.
In other words, a culture of resilience cannot exist without leadership. Identify any of the following that you feel prevent you from gaining resilience.
- You have trouble prioritizing and saying no to requests. Leaders must avoid this.
- You ruminate after a stressful discussion or fight, which keeps you anxious. Therefore, less seems like more.
- You sense some ignorance of your over-commitment and it plagues you.
- You operate in a highly competitive environment where action trumps thought.
- Your job gives you little control over your duties. For example, leaders know titles are merely froth.
- Toughness regularly trumps empathy.
- Your positivity is misunderstood.
- Dependency inhibits you from trusting people.
Any or all of these means you don’t take time to learn new talents.
So now what? What can leaders do about this?
Gain self-awareness.
Take note of your body’s stress reaction.
What causes stress, and what are the physiological responses? Is your heart rate increasing? Do you sweat? Do you clench?
Therefore, the sooner you detect pressure in your body, the sooner you can handle it.
Boost focus and discipline.
When a task gets difficult, organize and simplify it.
Effective tactics are defining responsibilities and expectations, maintaining a project timetable, and finishing work on time. It reduces tension before or during a task.
Set up wellness routines.
Leaders know this is essential. For example, the emperors in Rome didn’t build for a day and call it quits.
Wellness routines might be as easy as exercising, sleeping well, or just getting fresh air. However, these little breaks won’t disrupt your workday and may even increase your productivity. In other words, you must try harder to take care of yourself and your people.
Get a grip.
Avoid pushing off errors and failures, but do not linger on them. Refocus on what you can learn from the event and apply it to difficult future situations.
- Make a plan. Create a personal resilience development plan with a boss, coach, or trusted peer.
- In other words, seek out that knowledge that helps your team design a “team” resilience strategy.
- Do less multitasking. Schedule recharging time. Let go of non-urgent duties or delegate them.
- Therefore, do something that inspires and rejuvenates you instead.
- Start your day with the most crucial and challenging tasks. Your stamina may seem limitless, but it isn’t.
- However, don’t put the cart before the donkey. Consequently, you’ll do a better job.
- Rethink work-life balance. It’s challenging to balance all elements of your life.
- Demands and interests change, and what seems balanced at one moment becomes obsolete.
- In other words, it’s okay to temporarily emphasize one aspect of your life above another if it centers around who you are and what you value.
- Be a lifelong learner. Read. Listen to podcasts. Learn new abilities and use them in times of stress and change.
- However, many managers resist acquiring new techniques and hang onto old habits and skills even when they no longer work.
- Don’t be like that. It’s a roadmap to failure.
Mental fortitude grows with a strong strategy, constant training, feedback, introspection, and course correction as required. So, get to it!
However, keep your head and stay positive. Over time, you’ll prosper.
