A lot has been written about the need for leaders to be resilient, and for good reason. Leadership is hard and the business world and life, in general, can be brutal and unforgiving, but what does it really mean to be resilient? Websters’ dictionary defines resilience as:
the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress; and
an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.
Both of these definitions are predicated on reacting to some force, misfortune, or change that has impacted the object, in this case the leader, and the object’s ability to recover and adapt to the force or change.
Despite not having a thick hide or razor-sharp claws and teeth, humans have adapted to natural forces and changes for thousands of years and survived to become the dominant species on the planet.
This has been due, in part, to our large brains, our endurance, and our reliance on our social networks, our tribes. It was also because we were able to evolve and adapt to the harsh climate and environment. Since the origins of mankind, our evolution has aligned perfectly with Darwin’s theory of evolution which states that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual’s ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.
It’s our ability to endure physical and emotional stress and to incrementally adapt to it, that has allowed us to evolve and succeed as a species. In essence, our evolution and survival has really been a case of “what didn’t kill us, truly did make us stronger”.
Resilience is a critical ability needed by all leaders in order to deal with the myriad of forces that impact them on a daily basis.
So why is it some leaders seem to be more resilient than others? What’s their secret?
Well, it might just be that the need to be resilient has been over-stated, as it is far better to build your capacity and strength to deal with these forces and changes at the time and not be impacted in a way that takes you down resulting in needing to get back up. Leaders need to be mentally, physically, and spiritually tough. They need to be able to take a punch and keep punching back. Applying the current guidance, resilience would be the equivalent of being a boxer who gets knocked down and gets back up and continues this cycle until he can’t get back up anymore.
It’s far better to spend time learning how to anticipate the punches, and training to develop your physical strength and mental toughness so you don’t get knocked down at all.
How we respond to modern forces and changes and the stresses they thrust upon us, impact how our bodies cope with the release of stress hormones. The primary hormonal mediators of the stress response, glucocorticoids and catecholamines, have both protective and damaging effects on the body. In the short term, glucocorticoids promote the conversion of protein and lipids to usable carbohydrates. Glucocorticoids also act on the brain to increase appetite for food and to increase locomotor activity and food seeking behaviour (Leibowitz and Hoebel 1997). This can adversely affect regulating behaviours that control energy input and expenditure.
Glucocorticoids can be an essential source of energy if you need to run a kilometre to evade a predator but will likely have negative health effects if the stress is caused by a business deadline that has you stuck behind your keyboard eating junk food and drinking soft drink or coffee, for hours on end.
Being inactive whilst having chronically elevated levels of glucocorticoids can interfere with the action of insulin and reduce glucose uptake causing insulin levels to increase. The combination of elevated levels of insulin and glucocorticoids cause an increase in body fat deposits and can cause the formation of atherosclerotic plaques in the coronary arteries (Brindley and Rolland 1989).
So how do we train ourselves to be better able to deal with stress and be more resilient?
Sports science has embraced and used incremental physical stress (exertion) as a means of adapting the body to ever increasing loads or effort. This exertion has a neurological impact on the body through the nervous system but does not result in the sort of anxiety disorders, depressive illness, hostile and aggressive states, substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), cardiovascular disease (CVD) and other systemic disorders related to mental stress. This is an important distinction as stress is stress, regardless of whether it is physical or mental.
So why doesn’t physical stress cause illness? Well it can and it does; however, the brain will generally not allow the body to accept more physical stress than it’s comfortable dealing with, as a safeguard to prevent injury.
Elite military units and Special Forces know this, and invest heavily in the development of their troop’s mental toughness. They know that the mind will give in well before the body. The Navy Seals have called this the 40% Rule. This is where most ‘normal’ people will give up when physical activity seems too hard, even though they have only used 40% of their energy reserves. It is possible to train your mind to override your natural instinct to quit and keep ‘pushing through the pain’ if you have the determination and grit to do so. This can be very dangerous and it’s critical that you honestly know your limits otherwise, you can suffer from Rhabdo-my-olysis, the breakdown of skeletal muscle commonly known as muscle-meltdown. Muscle breakdown causes the release of myoglobin into the bloodstream. Myoglobin is the protein that stores oxygen in your muscles. If you have too much myoglobin in your blood, it can cause renal failure, kidney damage, and death. This is just one example of how overstressing the body can result in very dire consequences.
But humans often and very deliberately subject themselves to high levels of physical stress we call exercise and the result, very more often than not, is an increase in physical strength, speed, endurance, or whatever physical attribute is enhanced by the specific activity undertaken. The body adapts to the activity. This is known as the SAID principle (Specific Adaption to Imposed Demands). In other words, the body adapts to whatever stress it is subjected to. The more the body is exposed to the activity, the less it is negatively impacted.
It is of course possible to overtrain and become injured. The incremental improvements to the body occur over long periods and require not only the stimulus of exercise but also the recovery provided by adequate rest and nutrition.
The mental stress endured by people working long hours under poor conditions with no ability to take a break from the stress is what causes negative health effects. Unlike exercise where you undertake a high degree of physical stress for a relatively short period, followed by rest and nutrition, people often work under very high stress loads for long periods of time and this is not good.
There are only really three things that can be done to change this. You can quit your job and find something to do that doesn’t cause you a high level of mental stress, but this is not particularly desirable or even possible for most people especially if you have invested a lot of time and effort in advancing your chosen career. The second way is to create a work environment where there is an understanding of the negative effects of stress on workers. In this scenario, the leaders in the organisation must understand the impact they have on the employee’s levels of stress and take real and positive steps to monitor and manage stress levels. The third way is to develop the mental toughness needed to be able to cope with elevated levels of stress so that over time these stress levels become normalised in the same way as incremental increases in exercise effort develops muscle.
In my experience, the best way to deal with stress in the workplace is a combination of good leadership and the development of mental toughness.
Being mentally tough and resilient is critically important so you can weather incremental forces and changes, and adapt to them over time. The way to develop your mental toughness is through exposure to periods of adversity over long spans of time. It’s also worth noting that practicing techniques for reducing stress such as meditation and mindfulness provide rest and recovery for the mind. Keeping fit through regular exercise and eating a healthy diet where you limit or abstain from coffee, soft-drink and alcohol, and definitely from smoking, will contribute to your overall health, well-being, and resilience.
I hope this has given you a different perspective on what it means to be resilient and a couple of ideas for how you can increase your personal resilience. But remember, as leaders it’s our responsibility to ensure that those we lead are kept safe from unnecessary stress and are given the opportunity to develop the mental toughness they need to cope when the conditions that cause stress are unavoidable.
