Resilience is not a one-time act but a continuous effort to thrive and sustain in today’s unprecedented world. For the past two years, organizations have been grappling with challenges while making crucial business decisions to stay competitive. As a result, delivering leadership development programs focusing on building resilient leaders has become more important than ever. To face uncertainty, business leaders are highly concerned about how their organization and its people will respond to the change. When leaders are resilient, they can successfully navigate the change and confidently motivate others.
Characteristics of Resilient Leaders
Resilient leadership is the ability to navigate the changing business landscape. Leadership development programs help build resilient leaders who are optimistic, respond effectively to change, foster relationships, and learn from their mistakes. As per McKinsey, organizations exhibiting healthy, resilient behaviors were better able to withstand major disruption in 2020-21. Top five traits of resilient leaders that help businesses and employees navigate change are listed as follows:
- Goal-driven Mindset
Goal achievement is an important aspect that accelerates employee productivity. With a clear purpose and goal, leaders can drive their teams to accomplish the desired vision and empower them to unlock their potential and propel the business. A goal-driven approach leads to improved job satisfaction and higher retention, making leaders more resilient at work.
- Disseminate Information with Candor
Whenever there is a change in the global economy, there comes the need to communicate the changes to everyone within the organization. Here comes the role of resilient leadership with the skills and experience to disseminate information openly to their diverse audience. When employees are cynical in the workplace, resilient leaders motivate their teams and familiarize them with the change.
- Nurture Relationships
With organizations reshaping their business models and strategies during transformation, focus is shifting more towards improving employee mental health. As per the Workplace Learning Report 2022, 62% of L&D professionals believe that employee well-being is among the top five drivers of great work culture. Therefore, resilient leaders build strong bonds with their teams to boost their morale, help them bounce back from their failures, and continue to achieve their goals.
- Be Coachable
Resilient leaders take feedback as a motivating driver. They ask their team members to share feedback to assess failures and achievements. Not only this, but resilient leaders also coach their teams and build a more competent and resilient workforce to navigate the change.
- Be Risk Takers
The technological workplace transformation also brings enormous risks. A resilient leader can take risks while making critical business decisions that favor the company and its employees.
Final Thoughts
Leadership development programs aim to build resilient leaders who hold the potential to make their organization and its people adapt to the change. A huge business transformation involves risks, technology change, a new vision, and the courage to move forward. Resilient leaders are certainly the champions of change. The leadership traits, from a purpose-driven mindset and fostering relationships to communication and risk-taking ability, everything just further strengthens resilience. Undoubtedly, organizations that prosper resilient leadership yield two main advantages- high retention of top talent who will perform better and, in turn, continue to embrace resilience.
