Leadership and Executive Resilience

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

A key to surviving and thriving in tough times

Business is never ‘plain sailing’. Executives are presented with particularly challenging leadership situations and maintaining resilience in tough times is a key to success. How do leaders remain consistently positive in the face of these challenges? There are six common characteristics of people with resilience and my article outlines them.

I was reminded of these characteristics recently when I was reading the story of Gary Faris, a successful veteran athlete, whose resilience was put to a severe test. His experience and knowledge in this area was to prove vital in his effective recovery from a situation that would have defeated many people.

While out training, Gary was severely injured after being hit by a truck. Doctors advised him that he would not compete again. In order to assist his own recovery and return to competitive athletics Gary decided he would identify common core characteristics of other athletes who had gone through successful rehabilitation.

Gary identified six common mental patterns in successfully rehabilitated athletes. Subsequent research by Gary and others has found these characteristics in different contexts including entrepreneurs, leaders and executives. The more solid their resilience the more they utilised these six components.

Crisis often brings out the best in people. The increased pressure on an executive in hard times brings into stark relief the attributes that make them an effective leader in good or bad times. Whether your business is facing severe difficulties at the moment or whether it is ‘business as usual’ I suggest that an examination of the attributes identified by Gary Faris is helpful. Take a look around at those whom you consider have resilience and notice how they display the core attributes mentioned. And ask yourself a couple of questions. When I am not feeling as resilient as usual, which characteristics are missing? When I am in displaying resilience am I exhibiting these characteristics and how powerfully am I displaying and feeling them?

Email Lynn for the full article which identifies the 6 components of resilience in challenging times.

Contact us to discuss your own leadership resilience or return to the Stepshift Leadership Blog for more business advice.