Resilience, a corporate vaccine for the pandemic

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Resilience, a corporate vaccine for the pandemic

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Monday, 4 january 2021 | Redacción CEU

It is not mere coincidence that the Spanish Royal Academy selected "resilience" as a candidate for 2020 word of the year. Although it was difficult for this word to win by competing against words like "vaccine", "pandemic" or "lockdown" (the latter was the one that finally won), this concept managed to enter the list of the most important terms of 2020 for a good reason. Resilience is a quality that not only enables people to overcome challenges and adversities with success, but to do so by also helping them to emerge from them strengthened. Who would not want to be resilient in the current context of the pandemic? Today, on CEU IAM, we reflect on what resilience is, its place within the business world and the keys to developing resilient leadership.

What is resilience?

We resort again to the Spanish Royal Academy in order to understand the definition of resilience, and we find two meanings. In the first one, resilience is described as the ability of a living being to adapt to a disturbing agent or an adverse state or situation. In the second one, resilience appears as the capacity, on this occasion of a material, mechanism or system, to recover its initial state after the cessation of the disturbance to which it has been subjected.

Sometimes, images work better than words... Imagine that you hold a spring between your fingers and then you exert pressure. In this case, resilience would be the capacity of this object to return to its normal state without suffering any damage despite having been subjected to the force exerted by your fingers.

Resilient leadership

We continue with comparisons. Now, imagine a storm arriving. You have to choose between being a weak and paper-thin rush or a robust and solid oak. What would you rather be? As you no doubt suspect, this question is tricky, and things would not go well if you picked out the second option. Why?

Rushes are able to withstand the storm with hardly any damage. When the gale hits, they can bend practically to their base, while oaks, despite being apparently stronger, may split as a result of one strong blast of wind. Paradoxically, their strength and robustness are not enough to successfully overcome this meteorological event.

If you have read this far, you have probably guessed that resilience is the great advantage of rushes. These humble plants are capable of adapting to the most adverse context, and top of that, they manage to do it when the supposedly stronger ones fall. This situation puts rushes in a very favorable position.

If we bring all this to the business world, we find that the best way to make a company stronger and lead it to overcome adversity is by making it resilient. How to achieve this? Through resilient leadership.

A company is nothing more than a reflection of the people that make it up, and in this system leaders are the ones who inspire and promote a resilient culture. They are also the ones who motivate the employees so that they all progress in the same direction and may overcome together the most difficult obstacles. Therefore, resilient leadership may become the best weapon to fight the pandemic: a corporate vaccine.

The keys to resilient leadership

Ingredients for the corporate vaccine

FLEXIBILITY: The rise of concepts such as "agility", "digital transformation" or "change management" was already a warning sign: in this VUCA environment, being prepared to adapt quickly and effectively to whatever may happen is a priority. Only by being flexible can leaders promote a change in their organizations that leads them to adapt to the new needs of the teams and to develop the right plans for times as complex and uncertain as the ones we are living.
OPTIMISM: This positive approach has nothing to do with leadership based on unachievable goals or fantastic phenomena. Resilient leadership identifies adverse situations as moments of opportunity. Likewise, teams will always feel more confident, motivated and inspired when they have the approach of leaders who believe that problems can be overcome successfully.
BOLDNESS: If we hold on tightly only to what we already know we will not be able to evolve and, in addition to getting stuck, we might even fail. That is why resilient leaders have to be willing to take risks (new scenarios ask for new ideas). Of course, this involves starting with solid knowledge and, in such a volatile and complex environment, this can only be achieved by embarking oneself on a lifelong learning process.
EMPATHY: "Synergy", "creativity", "teamwork" and "transformative culture" are concepts that now acquire greater relevance and that are only achieved thanks to the effort of a united team. In moments of adversity such as these, emotions run high. Empathy at work is always important, but it is essential at times like this. By putting themselves in the place of others, leaders serve as an example and create a favorable climate for understanding, trust, the exchange of ideas and, ultimately, growth.
CONSTANCE: While all this does not seem so difficult, the lack of results can lead to desperation. Resilient leaders do not throw in the towel, they have determination in their goals. Good news may take time, but one way or another, good leadership always yields good.

As we have mentioned before, resilient leadership involves embarking on a lifelong learning process. Therefore, we encourage you to discover our MiM (for professionals with less than three years of work experience) and our EMBA (for experienced professionals who want to take another step in their careers).

If you also live in Álava, we have special training courses for you: our Executive Program for Managers and Entrepreneurs and our Executive Program in Commercial Management and Sales 2.0. Although with different purposes, both programs are aimed at developing resilient leadership.

Finally, if you are interested in delving further into this concept, we invite you to watch the webinar Desarrollar resiliencia en tiempos de cambio y crisis by Gustavo Aguilar de Armas, Head of CEU ILEAD and author of our DHR Index.

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