Are you a Resilient Leader?

Here’s a news flash. You will not go undefeated.

You and your teams will not go infinity and Oh.

You can’t win them all. But you can win the next one.

The best leaders I’ve seen recognize this. As an effective leader, you probably do win many, if not most of the challenges you embrace. You come out on top, or at least in a new place that is better than where you started. Your people count on you to lead them to victories. Their confidence in you is the foundation for their own aspirations about elevating their career, their income, their job satisfaction.

But the losses do come occasionally. Setbacks that have the potential to scratch your luster, stall your managerial momentum, even sink your ship. How do you react to those? How does the possibility of failing influence your commitment to the effort? What do others observe in you as these, hopefully rare, stumbles occur?

A term I’ve come to use when talking about the ability to bounce pack is pragmatic resilience. Simply stated, it is the ability to recognize where you stand at the current moment coupled with your intention to move from that spot into a new, positive direction. To be resilient. You don’t forget the past or the factors that led you to your current situation. You learn from them. You use them to inform your next step, without guilt, without worry. They are simply data.

Your ability to bounce back from disappointments depends on your ability to see clearly in good times and bad. It depends on your ability to project your clear thinking in a way that your team can see and appreciate your behavior, and model it in their own work. It depends on your ability to remain a committed, and resilient leader.

Keep these three principles in mind as you construct your leadership brand around your proficiency to bounce back from adverse outcomes.

Stay Positive.

A realistic leader sees that among the possible outcomes from your efforts, success walks with failure. Left to chance, there is a greater likelihood of failure than success, simply because the challenges you embrace involve risk and stretch. You are striving for the results that are hardest to achieve in order to elevate your team to attain extraordinary growth. But it is not simply a random process. It isn’t chance. Your leadership is the reason you and your team win more than you lose. And no, you won’t go undefeated, no matter how effective you are.

Take the positives out of every experience, win or lose. One of my close colleagues loved to emerge from tough meetings and disappointing sales calls and immediately ask our team, “OK, what did we learn in there.” There are always new data, new insights, and positives you can draw from the most disappointing endeavors. Seek them out with a learning mindset and good cheer. Demonstrate to those around you that you’re not immobilized by the defeat, rather you are energized by the chance to do better the next time out.

Don’t Hedge Your Bets.

As positive as you try to be, sometimes the cumulative disappointment can build up inside of you. That’s particularly true if you experience a few successive failures in a short time. There is a natural tendency to hold back. You may decide to shoot for 80% of what you really want because that’s what you’ve handicapped the outcome to be. The next time maybe you go for 80% of that new maximum expectation. After all, you want to feel good about chalking up successes, right?

Watch out. If you get caught in this trap of only reaching for those things that are easily within your grasp, you’ll lose. Your team will lose confidence in your ability to lift them to new heights. Your executive team will lose confidence in your ability to drive the company forward by maximizing the potential of your business unit. You’ll lose your career momentum and slide from lead dog to sled dog in your organization. You’ll lose your rating as a high potential employee and fall back into the pack as a valued contributor, or worse.

You must continue to go all in. Whether that is working with a customer to find that new incremental growth opportunity, developing your team members into high performers, or pulling your company toward the most impactful and challenging business growth opportunities, shoot for the moon. Even if you don’t reach it this time, you’ll launch from a closer position to your goal on your subsequent attempts.

Bring Others With You.

Make sure everyone around you knows who you are, what you’re all about. You are intentional about setting goals that represent the outer limits of what may be possible. Be transparent with your team, your colleagues, and your management. Make sure everyone knows that you’re no sled dog, and that you’re not satisfied with the status quo when it comes to the performance of your business.

When you are in meetings or working side by side with others, be the person who asks the extra question. Did we think of everything? Can we do a little more, or move a little faster? Is there an opportunity we haven’t seen, or one we aren’t talking about because it seems out of reach? This is a key element of your leadership brand. At first, you may feel that others view you as the person who won’t let a quick and final decision happen. Over time though, others will come to you. They will ask you the same questions you put to them, because they know you are resilient and wired to reach higher than others.

These three simple elements of your leadership mindset are essential to carry in your toolbox. Pragmatic resilience means that while you occasionally need to pause and assess your situation before resuming forward motion, you don’t retreat. You accept the result and move promptly into new thinking. You ask new questions. You consider new opportunities. Big ones.

You stay resilient and keep going. You start working to win the next one.

That’s the leader you are.

Lead well.

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“The Modern Compassionate Leader – 12 Essential Characteristics of the Rising Sales Leader”

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