The Resilience Issue

The Leadership Myth That’s Holding You Back

For decades, we’ve celebrated leaders who embody grit—those who push through adversity, outlast every storm, and grind harder than anyone else. The narrative was simple: tough times require tough leaders. The more pressure you could handle, the longer hours you could work, the more obstacles you could bulldoze through, the better leader you were.

I bought into this completely during my early years at Hewlett Packard. I found myself being a person who stayed latest, pushed hardest, and never backed down from a challenge. It served me well—until it didn’t.

The wake-up call came when I realised, I was so focused on being tough that I’d become blind to what it was costing me—my health, my family, my effectiveness. While I was doubling down on what had always worked, the business environment was shifting beneath my feet. Technology was accelerating, customer expectations were evolving, and my team needed something different from me. But I was too busy being gritty to notice.

That’s when I learned the difference between resilience and stubbornness—and why the most successful leaders today aren’t necessarily the toughest ones. They’re the most adaptable.

The Fatal Flaw of Grit-Only Leadership

Here’s what I’ve observed after 25 years of working with leaders across industries: grit creates stamina, but it can also create tunnel vision. When your primary leadership tool is “push harder,” you miss the signals telling you it’s time to pivot.

I’ve coached executives who wear their 80-hour weeks like badges of honour, leaders who pride themselves on “never giving up” even when their strategies are clearly failing, and senior managers who mistake flexibility for weakness. They’re caught in what I call the “grit trap”—believing that changing course somehow diminishes their leadership credibility.

The Grit Trap in Action:

The sales director who keeps pushing the same pitch approach despite declining conversion rates.

The operations manager who insists on in-person meetings when their team is asking for more virtual flexibility.

The CEO who views any strategic adjustment as admitting failure rather than responding to market signals.

The senior leadership team who dismisses their employee engagement survey results because they don’t like what they’re hearing.

These leaders have incredible determination, but they’ve confused persistence with effectiveness. They’re the oak trees in leadership—strong and impressive, but brittle when the storms of change arrive.

Meanwhile, their teams are watching, waiting for someone to acknowledge that the environment has shifted and it’s time to try something new. And here’s the invisible cost: team members start believing they need to replicate this way of working to advance in the company. The grit trap becomes cultural.

Redefining Resilience for the Modern Era

True resilience isn’t about how hard you can push—it’s about how quickly you can adjust, recover, and redirect your energy toward what actually works. The leaders I work with who consistently thrive aren’t the ones who never bend; they’re the ones who bend without breaking—and who don’t see bending as failure.

Adaptable leaders operate differently:

They reframe setbacks into intelligence. Instead of viewing course corrections as failures, they treat them as valuable data about what the market, their team, or the situation needs.

They shift strategy without losing credibility. They’ve learned to communicate change as responsiveness rather than inconsistency. Their teams trust them more, not less, when they adjust their approach based on new information.

They balance persistence with openness. They know when to dig in and when to pivot. This isn’t indecision—it’s strategic agility.

Think of willow versus oak. The oak tree is strong, solid, and impressive. But when the hurricane hits, it snaps. Willow, on the other hand, bends dramatically in the wind and springs back unharmed. It’s not weaker—it’s engineered for resilience.

Building on Last Month’s Foundation: How Adaptability Amplifies Influence

In our first Executive Edit issue, we explored how modern leaders must master influence across multiple channels—in person, virtually, and across generational divides. Adaptability isn’t just another leadership skill to add to that list; it’s the multiplier that makes everything else more effective.

Adaptability enhances influence because:

It makes you more relatable and trustworthy. When leaders demonstrate that they can flex their style based on what the situation requires, their teams see them as responsive rather than rigid. This builds confidence that the leader will make decisions based on current reality, not outdated assumptions.

It shows strength, not weakness. Contrary to old-school leadership thinking, the ability to change course amplifies credibility. Today’s workforce respects leaders who can say “I was wrong about that approach” or “Let’s try something different” without losing their authority.

It creates followership during uncertainty. When change is constant—as it is in our current business environment—teams are more likely to follow leaders who respond to change rather than resist it. They want someone at the helm who can navigate, not just endure.

Here’s the key insight I’ve developed from coaching hundreds of leaders through major transitions: Grit gives you determination; adaptability gives you influence. Together, they create lasting impact.

The most influential leaders I’ve worked with combine fierce determination with strategic flexibility. They’re committed to their vision but flexible about their methods. They persist through challenges but pivot when their approach isn’t working.

The Adaptability Advantage in Today’s Leadership Landscape

Consider how the leadership environment has shifted just in the past five years:

Technology disruption means strategies that worked last year might be obsolete today. Leaders need to adapt their approaches as rapidly as the tools and platforms their teams are using.

Multi-generational workforces require different management approaches within the same team. The adaptable leader adjusts their communication style, recognition methods, and collaboration preferences based on who they’re working with.

Hybrid work models demand flexibility in how leaders build culture, conduct meetings, and maintain team connection. The leaders struggling most are those trying to force pre-2020 approaches onto post-2020 realities.

Economic volatility requires leaders who can scale up or down, enter new markets or exit struggling ones, without losing team confidence or momentum.

In this environment, adaptability isn’t a nice-to-have leadership trait—it’s survival insurance.

Building Your Adaptability Toolkit

The good news is that adaptability can be developed. Here are the practices I work on with leaders who want to build this capability:

Master the Pause-and-Reframe: When something goes wrong, resist the urge to immediately push harder. Instead, pause and ask: “What is this situation telling me that I didn’t know before?” This simple practice prevents you from doubling down on strategies that aren’t working.

Embrace Scenario Planning: Regularly challenge your assumptions by asking: “What if this key assumption changes?” Build contingency thinking into your leadership approach so you’re prepared to pivot when conditions shift.

Create Feedback Loops: Actively invite input on your leadership style, especially during periods of change. Ask your team: “What do you need from me that you’re not getting?” This keeps you connected to ground-level reality.

Practice Energy Management: Learn to recognize when to push through and when to step back and renew. Sustainable adaptability requires knowing how to conserve and deploy your energy strategically, not just burning it as fuel for grinding harder.

Communicate Your Thinking: When you do change direction, help your team understand the logic. Share what new information led to the shift. This builds trust in your decision-making process and helps them adapt alongside you.

The Competitive Advantage of Adaptive Leadership

In my coaching practice, I’ve noticed something interesting: the leaders who develop strong adaptability skills don’t just survive change better—they create competitive advantages from it.

They build teams that are more innovative because their people feel safe to experiment and fail. They attract top talent because high performers want to work for leaders who can navigate complexity. They maintain stronger stakeholder relationships because they’re seen as responsive and strategic rather than reactive or stubborn.

Most importantly, they enjoy leadership more. When you’re not constantly fighting against change but instead learning to work with it, leadership becomes more energizing and less exhausting.

The Integration Effect

What I find most compelling about adaptability is how it enhances every other leadership capability. It makes your influence more sustainable because you can adjust your approach when it’s not landing. It makes your strategic thinking more robust because you’re building flexibility into your plans. It makes your team leadership more effective because you’re responding to what they actually need, not what you think they should need.

This is why I position adaptability as foundational piece for modern resilient leadership. It’s not just another skill—it’s the meta-skill that makes all your other leadership capabilities more effective in an uncertain world.

Dancing with Change

True resilience isn’t about “never giving up.” It’s about knowing what to give up, when to persist, and how to flex without losing your core identity as a leader.

The leaders who will thrive in the coming decade won’t be the ones who outlast every storm through pure determination. They’ll be the ones who learn to read the weather, adjust their sails, and sometimes change course entirely while maintaining their team’s confidence and their own sense of direction.

For today’s leaders, adaptability is the quiet strength that sustains influence, deepens trust, and multiplies impact over time.

The question isn’t whether change will come to your leadership environment. The question is: when it does, will you be ready to adapt?