The Resilient Leader

What is resilience?

the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

If you are a business leader for any length of time you will have experienced a multitude of disappointments, set backs, fears and doubts in running a business.

Throughout any tenure, the importance of being a resilient leader in those times is very critical.

The best leaders over time are able to navigate the great times as well as periods of difficult, dark personal and difficult business times.

Whatever situation you may be in at this moment in time, building a resilient business AND your own resilient personal mindset is key. This is even more important when things are going well.

So a few tips below from my life, and those of my clients, that I hope will be of value to your own personal development and business.

1. Cultivate a Growth Mindset

• Change your thinking, and embrace challenges as opportunities for growth personally and for the business. Remember the opportunity to improve and strengthen relationships with customers or to improve profit should be seen as a gift not a negative.
• It is easy to create fear in your people when things wrong. But learning from failures and creating a no-blame culture in the business will yield fantastic results from your business.

2. Build Emotional Intelligence

• Developing self-awareness and understand your emotions is an important aspect of becoming the best version of yourself as a leader. Creating space in your busy schedule to work on yourself is super important
• In addition practicing empathy and effective communication with your team on a regular basis is just as critical. Reading the 'room' of your business to understand how your people are feeling, experiencing, etc is key in understanding if the business and your key lieutenants are able (mentally and physically) to support your people in navigating any shocks in the business.

3. Foster Strong Relationships

• Your network is your net worth. So build a supportive network of peers and mentors. The ancient proverb says 'in the multitude of advisors there is success'. The importance of having great people to stand with you and to advise in complex and difficult situations is imperative. If you have not got those people who will tell you the 'truth', then they are not the people to have in your network.
• The importance of cultivate a culture of trust and collaboration within your team is extremely critical. When things are difficult, you do not need your team to 'sugar coat' the difficulties. Full transparency, with a solution-led discussion on the matter, should be the point of any such meeting.

4. Maintain a Healthy Work-Life Balance

• I cannot stress the importance of getting into a routine of prioritising self-care, including sleep, physical health and mental well-being in the good times. When things are difficult the first thing to go is to look after oneself as a leader. So keep the routine going. This will allow you be able to sleep effectively and so help your body and mind to be able to cope with the extreme period of stress that you may be under, so avoiding burnout.

5. Lead by Example

• Having strong ethics and integrity in your actions during the GOOD times will help you to demonstrate those same values when things are NOT going well. Ethics and integrity is ALWAYS tested through difficult times. Demonstrate resilience through your actions and decisions.

By focusing on these areas when things are good in your business will help you as a leader build the resilience needed to lead effectively through adversity and drive your business toward sustainable success.

Reach out if you would like support around this key aspect of leadership. Or take our 360 Leadership review which will help you to understand if your leadership skills are able to cope with any future difficult events in your business. Click here for more details.