Discover how resilient leadership behaviors drive successful outcomes, empowering you to overcome challenges and achieve lasting success.
- Introduction
- Patterns of a resilient leader
- External and circular behavioural leadership towards achievement
- Internal behaviors to keep you positive and focused
- Looking forward: focus on the outcome
- Looking back: focus on the trend
- Resilient leaders succeed
Introduction
Resilience is a primary attribute of successful leaders. Strong leaders are able to conceive of a worthy vision, articulate the value to key stakeholders, and coach teams towards the right outcomes. The greater the vision, the more change is required.
Change is difficult for organsiations to navigate. There will be both individual and group challenges for leaders to guide past. Helping an organisation navigate change towards the necessary outcome can be painful for all involved, progress slowly, and at times seem more trouble than it’s worth.
This is where resilience comes in: it is the power to carry on despite challenges, perceived lack of results, or other impediments. To achieve the outcomes required no matter what is in their way, even when it can appear externally to be impossible.
Resilience is a suite of behaviors that can be learned. Building resilience within oneself is necessary to advance a career beyond a certain point, and it can be learned, honed, and taught.
Patterns of a resilient leader
Resilient leaders, more often than not, are successful. This success builds further resilience.
Coming into a new role or chasing a particularly ambitious vision can be daunting. The teams available may or may not be resilient or successful themselves. A leader needs tools to fall back on in cases where success requires building foundations that are missing.
Here are two sets of behavioural models useful to practice when building resilience towards success. One is an external and repeatable pattern of behaviour useful when leading teams away from the abyss and towards success. Finally two internal behaviour patterns are suggested to follow when times are tough to ensure you stay focused, positive, and maintain belief in your vision.
External and circular behavioural leadership towards achievement
These four high-level steps form a useful pattern to follow when leading teams towards a distant outcome they may not yet believe is possible, in situations when there is a sense of learned hopelessness, or for any other time where intervention is required to ensure work progresses at the appropriate pace towards the desired outcome.
- Reframe and repeat the outcome
- Prioritisation, check in, and check out
- Leadership
- Collaboration
Reframe and repeat the outcome
Start by articulating the outcome you want the group to be focused on. Though you will have previously articulated the full vision and outcome the group is seeking, in this case, it is most useful to present the outcome required as a “next step” towards it.
“Thanks for coming. Today we’re going to make sure we’re on the same page regarding the outcome we’re seeking to achieve over this next period.”
The purpose is to make sure everyone understands the short-term goals (while being aware of the long-term outcome) so you can keep people on track and focused.
Prioritisation, check in, and check out
Very early in a forming stage, it is vital to check in regularly. It is common to keep this cadence with critical reports, especially in large organisations when each team member is able to be across only parts of the system.
This should be at least once early and once late in the week.
Use these sessions to:
- Reframe and repeat the outcome, noting the short-term target may change week to week.
- (check in) Understand where the team is at, where they are blocked, and what help they might need.
- (check out) Review the week and set targets for next week.
Leadership
Make yourself available to help and make sure your team knows this. Show up positively and on-message regarding outcomes. Escalate where necessary if you yourself need help. Communicate clearly, concisely, and often.
Showcase your focus by reigning in off-topic discussions or activity.
Remind people frequently of the outcome, both long-term and immediate.
Collaboration
Recognise that you do not have all the answers and collaborate towards creating them. Realize people can need time to come up with ideas and solutions: give it to them.
Even when totally focused on an outcome, teams may get stuck on a decision. If this happens, guide them through the process of analyzing, refining and presenting an options paper.
Internal behaviors to keep you positive and focused
Some key foundational behaviors come from inside and outstrip other internal and external behaviors in terms of criticality. Positive leaders are not deluded: they have adopted a suite of internal behaviors that allow them to focus on what will drive us forward instead of getting scattered by what’s possible or weighted down by what hasn’t worked.
Two key internal behaviours are discussed below: looking forward at the outcomes and looking back at the trends.
Looking forward: focus on the outcome
Spend five to ten minutes reminding yourself what the goal is. What is the vision you are trying to realise, and what near-term outcome will get you and your team closer?
Make sure this is written down; do not delete this near-term outcome when it has been achieved - write your next atop it. You want to build a mountain of success for you to reflect on.
Being crystal clear on the outcome is critical - you are the one to provide the same to your stakeholders and your team.
Looking back: focus on the trend
The road to victory is often long and paved with challenges. Spend five to ten minutes at least once a week reflecting on the trend.
If you’ve followed the advice in the previous section (focus on the outcome), this is as easy as referring to your mountain of success. If not, get started by noting down the past five near-term outcomes you have helped the team achieve and reflecting on what went well, how you could have done better, and what you’d do in a similar situation next time.
Resilient leaders succeed
Think of people you look up to as role models and consider they, like you, are fundamentally bundles of behaviour exhibiting externally depending on input.
You have much the same inputs - the difference is you and your actions. By following some of these simple rote activities, you will build resilient behaviors that will help you succeed in complicated, competitive, and uncertain environments.
You will be better able to lead, inspire, and coach your teams to the success the organisation needs.
