How to LEAD With Resilience (With Examples!)

Resilience is the ability to recover quickly from failure, setbacks, and crises.

Hardiness and resilience is a hallmark of successful leaders, as it allows us to come back from hardship and disappointment more determined and driven than before.

Additionally, individuals who exhibit high levels of hardiness and resilience are more likely to adopt leadership styles that motivate, inspire, and support those around them.

Many people don’t know that we can build on and develop qualities to develop both hardiness and resilience.

LEAD with Resilience: Here’s How

The Hardiness Resilience Gauge suggests that we follow four steps to promote hardiness and resilience in those around us. They are: Listen, Encourage, Address, and Debrief (LEAD).

Listen

Don’t dismiss feedback from your team, and make sure they always have all the resources they need to successfully complete a challenging project or task. 

Take time to listen and celebrate their successes with recognition, rewards, and benefits.

Encourage

Encourage open communication within your workplace. Share successes, hardships, and make yourself visible and available to your team members.

Create a sense of cohesion by creating opportunities for your team to socialize at work, such as organizing lunches or potlucks. Promote professional development days as part of your workplace culture by encouraging employees to find webinars, seminars, and conferences they can attend in order to build their skills.

Address

Don’t avoid discussing setbacks or failures. Discuss them openly with your team and frame them as opportunities to learn and improve.

As a leader, this is your chance to lead by example by accepting responsibility for setbacks: be sure to use these moments as opportunities to reframe challenges as opportunities to learn and grow.

Debrief

Take time to debrief your team after a project has ended: consider what went well, and what didn’t. Ask your team questions such as:

• What new skills were learned throughout the project?
• What were the challenges and bottlenecks?
• What could be improved upon for next time?

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Lead more effectively by clicking here to start your resilience training.

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Examples of How to LEAD With Resilience

• Be decisive. Wishy-washy decision making leads to doubts and uncertainty, so don’t be afraid to make decisions.
   
• Delegate leadership. Part of managing resilience is knowing when we’re taking on too much, and knowing how to delegate. Even better: effective delegation builds trust within workplace teams!
   
• Practice effective communication. Make sure that your employees and peers leave a conversation with a full understanding of your expectations, and their responsibilities.
   
• Be receptive to feedback. Be open to being coached, and to incorporating what you hear from others into your management style.
   
• Build positive and trusting relationships. Create a sense of trust and cohesiveness to create strong workplace teams.
   
• Invest in others’ professional development. Make a point to be as interested in helping your team develop their skills as you are your own.
   
• Set clear performance expectations. Let your team know exactly what’s expected, and be clear in what’s needed to meet those expectations.

Resilience training

If you’re interested in learning more about building your hardiness and resilience, don’t wait – contact us today and start understanding what your Hardiness Resilience Gauge says about your leadership style.

Developing your emotional intelligence is another effective way to enhance your professional abilities. Join us for an in-person EQi-2.0 & EQ360 Certification in Toronto this March!