This Year, Commit to Being a Resilience Leader

The last two years have been tough. The chronic stress of living through a global pandemic is still taking its toll, and many of us saw our resilience erode as a result.

While there is some hope that the pandemic will end this year, we still have some difficult months ahead. Resilience Leaders, managers who foster a culture of resilience in their organizations and teams, are needed now more than ever.

As a senior leader in the U.S. Department of State, I saw first-hand the value of leading in a way that fosters the resilience of an office or embassy. After I recovered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder due to my service in Iraq, I initially focused on my resilience. As I moved into more senior leadership positions, I realized that being a resilient leader was not enough, and paying attention only to my resilience risked neglecting my team.

I learned that I also needed to model resilience-building behaviors, mentor employees who had low resilience and foster the resilience of my team. When I became a Resilience Leader instead of just a resilient leader, my team's performance improved dramatically.

Here's how you can be a Resilience Leader:

Model Resilience Behaviors

• Actions matter: As a leader, employees are watching everything you do. If they see you exercising over lunch, leaving work on time to attend your daughter’s soccer match, openly grieving the loss of a loved one, or taking a vacation without checking emails, they are more likely to do the same. Spend the next month examining your behavior. What messages are you sending or not sending through your actions?

• Actions speak louder than words: Talking about resilience without behaving in ways that improve resilience can cause harm since employees may perceive you as hypocritical, which can erode trust. While it may be helpful to talk about your behavior as a form of modeling, let your actions speak and minimize your words.

Mentor Employees with Low Resilience

• Build trust: Your employees will be more open with you if they trust you. Build credibility early on by getting to know your employees and demonstrating your commitment to their well-being.

• Ask questions: If you see an employee who is struggling, point out what you are seeing and then ask open-ended questions that indicate a genuine interest in hearing what is going on. Continue to pose follow-up questions that give your employee control over how much they tell you, yet encourage them to talk.

• Listen: Many people just want someone who will listen. If you reach an awkward silence, resist the temptation to fill the silence by talking. While you may want to share some experiences you’ve had that are relevant, the focus of the conversation should be on your employee, not on you.

• Don’t problem-solve: Many of us want to solve problems because it gives us control, especially when we are uncomfortable with an emotional issue. However, jumping immediately into problem-solving can appear to be dismissive or condescending. Instead, encourage your employee to talk. At the end of the conversation, if appropriate, guide them to explore potential ways forward.

Foster Team Resilience

• Foster the 7Cs of Team Resilience: If you are the head of your office or organization, you will have the most significant impact on your team's resilience. Make the 7Cs of Team Resilience one of your leadership priorities.

• Encourage others to build team resilience: Recognize that every member can contribute to their team's resilience and effectiveness. Involve everyone on your team in strengthening the 7Cs.

To learn more about being a Resilience Leader, check out my Udemy Resilience Leadership course. This two-hour course explains how to model, mentor, and foster resilience and is filled with activities that will improve your resilience leadership skills. The course is free for the first 100 people who use this link to register before January 27, 2022.

Are you a Resilience Leader? Have you worked for a Resilience Leader? What do you/they do to model, mentor and foster resilience?

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To learn more about how you and your team can thrive in adversity, visit my website, and follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

How to Help Someone With Low Resilience

The holiday season can be tough on people. With coronavirus, this year is particularly difficult. If you notice that a colleague is struggling, what can you do?

Too many of us do nothing. The worst thing we can do is gossip about the person, trying to figure out what’s going on. Supervisors may confront or discipline an employee for poor performance.

Since low resilience may be causing these changes in behavior, the best thing you can do is talk to the person and find out what is going on.

Many of us are reluctant to delve into a colleague’s personal life. We worry we may infringe on the person's privacy, violate an HR rule, or make matters worse. We also risk becoming too emotionally involved or being manipulated.

Luckily, we can talk to colleagues about resilience in ways that will minimize these risks and manage our fears.

To have a fruitful conversation, your colleague must trust you. That's why it is essential to build trust with colleagues early on. If a colleague doesn't trust you, he may be defensive and suspect you have bad intentions. If there isn't trust, find someone your colleague does trust, and ask him to have the resilience conversation.

If you opt to have the talk yourself, decide ahead of time how much time you can devote to a conversation and find a comfortable environment that allows for privacy. Allow time for your recovery after the conversation in case the discussion ends up being emotional or stressful for you.

When you start the discussion, be clear and direct, describing the behavior changes you’ve been seeing. Show compassion and caring. Communicate that you’re raising this issue because you want to be supportive.

Then, ask open-ended questions. By asking open-ended questions, you're giving control to your colleague to decide how much to tell you. You are not violating a person's privacy if he wants to tell you what is happening. If he doesn't want to talk, let him know that you're okay with that and available to talk later if he changes his mind.

The most important thing you can do is listen. These conversations make many of us nervous, which causes most of us to say more. Fight your desire to speak and instead really listen to what your colleague is saying. If self-disclosure is appropriate, keep your own story short and shift back to your colleague’s story. The focus of the conversation should be on your colleague, not on you.

Most people want to jump into problem-solving much too quickly in these conversations. And, they start telling the person what to do instead of listening to what is going on. Resist the temptation to fix the problem. Instead, after you've spent time hearing the story, ask questions that help your colleague find his way forward. 

Be careful not to make any judgments. For example, telling a colleague that you think he'd benefit from mental healthcare is judging. Instead, use self-disclosure to make suggestions. (When my mother died, I found counseling very beneficial. Where do you think you can get support?) Or, continue to ask questions that help the person reach conclusions. (What do you think is causing this? What have you explored so far?)

Avoid become your colleague's only support or letting these conversations absorb too much of your time. If you feel your colleague is becoming too dependent on you, explain that you cannot provide as much support as he appears to need. Then, offer to help him explore where he can find the help he requires.

These conversations are hard, and it is okay if you make mistakes. Helping colleagues with low resilience is a skill that you'll improve with practice.

Have you talked with a colleague with low resilience? How did it go?

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To learn more about how you and your team can thrive in adversity, visit my website, and follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.