After many years studying hundreds of babies born on Kauai, Hawaii, beginning in 1955, psychologists Emmy Werner and Ruth Smith discovered something surprising. Of the children deemed “at risk” due to their family environments, a sizable minority exhibited no negative effects. Even more astounding, most of this “vulnerable but invincible” group had overcome these obstacles by their mid-30s. Instead of succumbing to delinquency, academic difficulties, and health problems, they’d “bounced back” from tremendous adversity. In the decades that followed, researchers like Norman Garmezy created a new field of study around the phenomenon, which they called “resilience.”
In business today, the term retains its developmental psychology origins; it’s still largely considered an individual trait. But if you’re looking to build resilient teams or entire organizations, it’s the resilience of all those relationships that may matter even more. After all, you can hire as many resilient leaders as you like, but they can quit and go be resilient someplace else.
Related: The Resilience Habit I Taught Thousands Of Army Drill Sergeants
Why Resilient Leaders Aren’t Enough
In professional workshops, resilience experts like to mention the British explorer Ernest Shackleton who, on his third expedition to the Antarctic, in 1915, had to abandon his ship–the Endurance–when it became trapped in the ice. And sure enough, it’s a great tale of actual endurance: Shackleton’s persistence and courage in the face of overwhelming odds ensured all crew members got home safely. Unfortunately, the story is a red herring for the way team resilience actually works today.
It’s no surprise that there’s a strong correlation between effective leadership and the characteristics common among resilient individuals–which include self-reliance, an internal locus of control, a growth mind-set, strong problem-solving abilities, and good interpersonal skills. Indeed, resilience experts at Sloan Group International reported in a recent presentation that, based on the available research, “people who self-select into a leadership role tend to have a higher ability to deal with stress and hold a high amount of resilience.” Vindication for the Shackleton model, right?
Sure, but that model may deliver fewer returns as the workplace evolves. The more distributed leadership becomes, and the more collaboratively teams are asked to work, the fewer chances there are for Shackletons to come along and save the day when things go awry. But all isn’t lost; it simply means shifting our focus from developing resilient leaders toward developing collectively resilient groups.
How? The first step is to start thinking of resilience more as a process than as an attribute or an outcome. We already know that resilience is predicated on a combination of internal assets and external resources–which makes it highly contextual. Unfortunately, you can never arm yourself ahead of time with a handy checklist of all the external stressors you’re likely to experience before entering a tough situation.