Resilient Leadership
Resilience is a vital quality for effective leadership. I’d like to share a few thoughts with you on what it is and three ways you can cultivate it in your own life so you can take your leadership to the next level.
Resilience is the ability to see failure as a temporary setback that can be recovered from quickly. It’s the ability to maintain a positive and solution-focussed attitude during periods of instability. A resilient leader is one who is able to find ways to move forward during times of uncertainty and avoid getting stuck. It is a vital leadership skill that we can all cultivate in our own lives if we are deliberate about it. There are many ways we can do this but I’d like to share the three most powerful:
Adopt a growth mindset
First and foremost, challenge yourself daily to adopt a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset. One that sees failure and setbacks as opportunities to learn and grow. One that is not afraid to take risks and try new things. One that seeks out challenge and difficulty. And one that sees intelligence, talent and ability as things that are not fixed in stone the day you were born but rather as things that can be developed with deliberate effort.
Ask the right questions
There are many constructive questions we can ask ourselves in the face of difficulty and setback, but the most powerful question I have ever learnt to ask myself is, “what should I be doing differently?”. Asking a question like this helps you think proactively, it helps you look forward toward opportunity and seek out possible solutions. It stimulates creativity and innovation. I would encourage you to begin using this question with the people you lead too when they encounter difficulty and obstacles.
Be decisive
Many of us do not like uncertainty. In fact, according to the Everything DiSC® behavioural profiling tool, that would be at least half of us, if not more. And it’s this dislike of uncertainty that can cause paralysis by analysis. If this is you, you would do well to tell yourself that done is better than perfect and that a bad decision is better than no decision. Decisions keep the ship moving forward and it’s easier to change the course of a moving ship than one that is completely stationery. Hear me out, I am not encouraging you to throw due diligence out the window, but I am encouraging you to realise that a resilient leader is one that is decisive.
Allow me to encourage you to choose one of these actions to deliberately and intentionally work on over the next three months.
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