Resilience has become something of a corporate obsession. Everywhere I look, organisations are investing in wellbeing programmes, resilience workshops and mindfulness apps in the hope of boosting performance and preventing burnout. But while these initiatives often have value, they’re also a sign of a deeper problem: we’ve started outsourcing resilience instead of building it.
True resilience doesn’t come from a one-off course or a motivational webinar. It comes from the environment leaders create every day. If people are constantly firefighting, juggling unclear priorities, and working in cultures that reward busyness over reflection, no amount of yoga or resilience training will fix that. We have to look at the system, not just the symptoms.
A good place to start is with clarity. Leaders need to define what their organisations are truly trying to achieve – what matters most, and what can wait. People can only tolerate so much ambiguity and complexity. Without clarity, even the most capable teams will struggle. By helping teams focus on what’s important rather than what’s merely urgent, leaders reduce chaos rather than simply asking people to cope with it.
Another crucial piece is reflection. Too often, leaders – and their teams – are caught in a relentless cycle of doing. We’re constantly reacting, rarely pausing to think. I often tell my clients: stop doing, start thinking. People’s relationship with time is often broken. They feel they don’t have time to think, yet spend all their time fixing mistakes that could have been avoided with proper thought upfront. Reflection isn’t indulgent; it’s essential.
And then there’s motivation. Once people’s basic needs are met, money is rarely what drives them. What truly energises people is achieving, making an impact, learning, growing, and connecting with others. Leadership isn’t about having all the answers – it’s about creating the conditions where your team can find the answers with you. When people feel seen, supported and challenged in the right ways, resilience becomes part of the culture.
Leaders themselves aren’t immune to this conversation. Around 65 percent of CEOs report feeling the burden of responsibility intensely. I see it all the time: leaders isolated at the top, carrying the weight alone. But leadership doesn’t have to be lonely. Bringing others into the conversation fosters engagement, shared ownership and resilience for everyone.
That’s why I’m such a believer in team coaching. It helps groups move from being just collections of individuals to functioning as genuine teams. When we think and work collectively, the challenges don’t necessarily get smaller, but they become easier to navigate, because we’re in it together.
Resilience isn’t something you can delegate or buy in. It’s something you design into the way your organisation thinks, leads and connects. As leaders, we have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to make resilience a cultural strength, not a personal struggle.
The post Rethinking resilience: Why leaders need to stop outsourcing it appeared first on The Oxford Magazine.
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