Gemma and I have added a seventh tool to the strategic toolkit we're building this series, and this one was my proposal: the ability to stay resilient. If you lead a team, you already know that things rarely go to plan. Projects wobble, a board director says no, a key person leaves at exactly the wrong moment. The question is what you do when the pressure goes on, and whether you can stay upright while it does.
Resilience is about flexibility, not toughness
I like a quick and dirty definition: the ability to bounce back when things don't go according to plan. I'll admit I had a big rock on my windowsill while we recorded, and I used it to make a point. A rock is very hard, but it isn't resilient. When pressure is applied, it doesn't bend, it breaks. What we're after is closer to a stress ball. Gemma has a squishy rubber Lego brick in her kit bag, and the lovely thing about it is that it gets squashed out of shape and then goes back.
It also doesn't have to be bad news that knocks us off course. Sometimes something good happens that we weren't expecting, and it still throws us. Either way, we need to be able to get back on track quickly and comfortably.
Gemma brought in a definition from Dr Carol Pemberton that I really liked: the capacity to stay flexible in our thoughts, feelings and behaviours when faced with disruption or extended pressure, so that we emerge stronger, wiser and more able. That's the muscle in the gym idea. We put muscles under pressure to make them stronger, and the same can be true of us. She also used kintsugi, the Japanese practice of mending broken pottery with gold, which makes the point that we don't always spring back to exactly where we were. Sometimes we come back as a different bowl, scars included. Which is why Gemma and I landed on a new phrase by the end: bouncing forward.
Why it matters so much for leaders
Work and home are very hard to separate. Pressure at work, from deadlines, shareholders, projects going wrong or conflict, can come home with us. The same works the other way, because a difficult time outside work can make it harder to cope inside it. But the relationship runs both ways. Plenty of people find real support in work when life outside it is difficult, and a good home life can give you a lot of resilience at work. We are one person living one life, and resilience sits across all of it.
Safety in uncertainty
I use a model called the safety certainty matrix, one of our classic two by twos. By safety I mean psychological safety, the feeling that I'm fundamentally okay even when things around me are going a bit off the rails. We need that to build relationships, take risks, speak the truth to power, collaborate and be creative. It's a given.
Certainty, on the other hand, is just a preference. We don't need it, and in a business environment we're not going to get it anyway. If certainty is a condition for you moving forward, you'll spend a lot of time banging your head against a brick wall. So rather than seeking safety and certainty, we should be seeking safety in uncertainty. Gemma's image of a skyscraper fits here, because skyscrapers in earthquake zones are built to flex. Mine was a yoga tree pose: still wobbling, still upright.
Gemma also brought in the Yerkes Dodson law, dating back to 1908, which says we perform best with an optimum amount of challenge. Too little is stressful in its own way, and too much overwhelms us. The sweet spot in the middle is where we do our best work. Stress in the right proportion is a good thing, much like the stress we choose to put our muscles under in the gym.
Watch out for the words "I'll be okay when". I'll be okay when the project finishes, when the budget's signed off, when the busy season is over. By the time those moments arrive, something else has usually turned up. Gemma made a fair point that the phrase can help us get through a tough moment, so it isn't always unhelpful. It becomes a problem when it keeps pushing everything further into the future.
Four things that help you build resilience
I find it useful to break resilience into component parts. We landed on four that all start with S.
Support. Support you can depend on, at work or outside it. That might be a work ally you can rage with for ten minutes, or a mentor, coach or counsellor. It might be walking the dog, playing football, going for a run or having a hot bath. It doesn't matter how unusual it is, as long as you've got something. Gemma added an important point from her coaching work: if the people you'd expect to support you, like a boss or colleagues, aren't doing that, find support elsewhere while you manage the impact.
Strategies. Little rituals and practices that help in the moment, such as writing a list, taking a ten minute break, or reminding the team what we're trying to achieve and what's going well. Gemma shared Carol Pemberton's idea of strategies that keep you moving, because even small progress builds momentum. I have a real bee in my bonnet about this one. When the pressure is on, taking a proper lunch break, getting fresh air or using your holiday isn't bailing out. It's restoring yourself so you can come back at your best. If you manage a team, make sure they take their holiday too.
Sagacity. A lovely word Gemma introduced, meaning wisdom. It's the little mantras and pieces of insight that keep us going. Gemma's mum used to say "this is what I'm doing today" to settle herself, including on a 26 hour flight to New Zealand. One of my favourites from her is "life's too short to stuff a mushroom", which is a reminder to check the effort to impact ratio. Your sagacity might come from a gran, a song lyric or your own pep talk.
Solution seeking. Asking what I need to bring in to solve this, who I can draw on, and how we replan for the new reality. It includes practical skills like asking for help and flagging that something is going off the rails before it does. Gemma pointed to the power of "yet": "I don't know how to do this" closes things down, while "I don't know how to do this yet" opens them up.
Gemma also reminded me, rightly, that this is easy to say and hard to do. When things are really tough, it can feel like a vortex pulling you in. That's exactly why it helps to build these things before you need them.
Worth a listen if...
You've been treating resilience as a case of gritting your teeth and keeping going, and want a more flexible way to think about it.
You want a practical set of building blocks, support, strategies, sagacity and solution seeking, that you can start using this week.
You're curious about why seeking certainty can work against you, and what to aim for instead.
Fi Craig is the founder of GoodThinking, a Bristol-based team and executive coaching practice working with senior leaders and their teams across the UK and internationally. The Strategic Leader podcast is co-presented with Gemma Bullivant.