With the ongoing onslaught of problems leaders face, and change being the only constant in organisational life, leaders must cultivate resilience as an ongoing skill, not just for the 'big moments' of painful setbacks or major change.
We typically imagine bouncing back from major hardship whenever we think about resilience.
Management theorists have increasingly put forward a more nuanced definition, however: resilience as the ability to adapt to complex change. But in today’s world, that means the demand for resilience is almost constant.
There are four strategies you can use to build resilience.
These recommendations stem from a significant study of 167 leaders, which revealed that the most resilient leaders know themselves well — their strengths, their triggers, and their convictions.
Here’s how to build your resilience through deeper self-knowledge:
* In the face of precedent-setting changes, leaders often second-guess themselves to a paralysing degree. Resilient leaders take honest stock of where their skills and experiences have prepared them well for the difficulties they are facing, and what they may be legitimately lacking.
They augment their shortfalls with the skills of others, and prepare themselves as best they can.
* Leaders lacking sufficient awareness of how their behaviour is being affected tend to take out their stress on whomever happens to be in the way. During an onslaught of major change, sources of irritation can often be circumstances outside anyone’s control, like changing regulatory requirements or a market slow down.
Leaders with strong self-knowledge can stop their misdirected harsh reactions before hurting others. They focus on the things they can control.
Push back on unrealistic expectations instead of passing them on. One of the common but unfortunate byproducts of major change is the setting of unrealistic goals. For many leaders, those expectations are set by higher-ups. Leaders who lack a sufficiently strong sense of themselves simply pass those expectations onto those they lead, compounded by their own angry sense of victimisation.
Leaders strengthen their own and their team’s resilience when they impose change or face challenges that they are confident they can realistically execute.
* Many leaders subconsciously succumb to an 'auto-pilot' approach just to cope. The problem is their resulting ambivalence about overcoming adversity or thriving through change causes those around them to also lose hope and withdraw effort.
Leaders mindful of their own flagging tenacity dig deeper and redouble their efforts to push ahead, inspiring those around them to do the same.
Courtesy: www.hbr.org
