The Relationship Between Resilience and Bravery

Are we born resilient? Or do we have resilience thrust upon us?

Resilient people always have a conscious or subconscious plan to adapt to new circumstances, even when the unexpected happens. They implement the plan and keep going.

My mother was a prime example of a resilient person. The first time they found a tumor in her brain, she went to surgery, did her rehab, and returned to work. She kept living, but lived her life in a new way. She did it again after they found a second tumor. Her resilience was one of her greatest strengths, and she modeled it well and passed it on to her daughter.

Resilience in the Workplace

Our resilience involves how we deal with and adapt to change. Resiliency is a very compelling trait to have in our personal lives but in our professional life too. Resilient leaders are highly valued by their organizations.

Often, we think of resilience as something we need to have to weather the rough times when things happen to us or don’t go our way.  It’s true that in adverse circumstances, resiliency is a must. However, positive things can call upon us to be resilient too. For example, receiving a promotion at work, with additional responsibilities, may be more difficult for people with low levels of resilience. (Luthans, 2002)

Many researchers have studied resilience and it is one of the psychological resources inherent in the model of HEROic leadership. The acronym HERO stems from positive psychology and encompasses the four main elements of psychological capital (PsyCap)—hope, efficacy, optimism, and resilience. (Luthans, Avolio, et al., 2010)

Resilience has always been an important characteristic to have as a manager, but never more than today when environmental and economic factors keep most organizations in constant flux!

How Resilience Affects Us

Psychology researchers have studied resilience for decades, looking for connections between who we are and our resilience. Several studies have examined individuals who learned to thrive in adverse conditions with risk factors. They have found that our personal characteristics often affect our resilience even more than our risk factors!

One such research report examined the relationship between character strengths and resilience. (Martinez-Marti, 2016) The researchers observed six distinct factors related to resilience-- positive affect, self-efficacy, optimism, social support, self-esteem, and life satisfaction—that had a more significant relationship with resilience than risk factors. They hypothesized that further development of resilience might be more effective than reducing the risk factors. (Martinez-Marti, 2016) To begin their research, they looked at the VIA (Values in Action) inventory proposed by Peterson and Seligman (2005). The VIA classified six virtues (wisdom, knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence) and 24 distinct character strengths under each one. The character strengths included curiosity, bravery, zest (for life), self-regulation, hope, religiousness, interpersonal, etc. They hypothesized that all the traits would somehow correlate to resilience, and the results of their study of 363 people proved their hypothesis. All the strength factors yielded significant positive correlations with the six resilience-related factors, except the strength of interpersonal and theological, which only correlated significantly with a few of the strengths. (Martinez-Marti, 2016)

The three strengths that showed the most significant correlation with resilience were hope, zest, and bravery, with bravery leading the pack. This correlates with research from several other psychologists, including Hutchinson, Stuart, & Pretorius (2010) and Jordan (2005,) who believe that resilience involves the development of courage, especially related to the recovery of life satisfaction after physical illness, as was the case with my mother.  

Bravery on the Job

When we think of someone being brave on the job, we think of police officers, fire fighters, and soldiers. However, managers are called to exhibit bravery daily when  presenting ideas and upholding their ethics.

On the job, a resilient leader must often be brave to do what is necessary for the good of the organization. I remember a leader I coached, who I’ll call Rosie. She was a successful manager who had her budget slashed by upper management. Rosie was forced to make staff cuts, which was very painful and challenging for her. She had always worked at financially healthy organizations, and overseeing layoffs was a new experience. However, Rosie was a resilient leader, so instead of wasting time questioning the decision, she immediately began planning a new strategy to keep the remaining staff hopeful and motivated. Ultimately, she did what the organization wanted but didn’t shirk from facing her team. She was brave in carrying out what she needed to do. She also let her remaining staff know their workload would increase, but they would survive together with more efficient processes and workflows.

High-R Leaders

In the concept of the HEROic leadership model, I call managers with a significant amount of resiliency High-R managers. Having High-R does not mean you are necessarily successful. Success isn’t a requisite for a resilient manager, but being resilient gives the manager an advantage in the workplace.

The way you find out whether or not someone is a High-R manager is to watch what they do when they fail.

·      Do they ignore or handle the problem?

·      Do they spend more time blaming others or coming up with a new solution?

·      Do they present a plan to address the adversity or show signs of panic?

·      Do they invoke or shake the confidence of their team?

It takes a resilient manager to emerge with a new plan after the previous plan failed. It also takes great bravery to face the team with conviction and ask to lead them once more. That’s why resiliency is an admirable trait to have, but having bravery will take you to the next level of HEROic leadership.

Resilience is Part of Leading HEROically! 

I encapsulated my exploration of PsyCap and HERO into my Ph.D. dissertation and my upcoming book, HEROic Leadership: The Secret to Developing Stronger High-Performing Teams Using Psychological Capital, soon available on Amazon. In it, I share my research and personal experiences as a business and leadership development coach over the last twenty years. I explore the four parts of HERO and how leaders can develop HERO in themselves as well as their teams. I even include a self-assessment to start working towards more HERO in your life today.

To find out more about the book and book launch, visit heroicleadershipbook.com.

About the Author:

Dr. Melonie Boone is an author, speaker, global business psychologist, executive coach, and entrepreneur. She holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology; a Master of Jurisprudence in Business Law and Corporate Governance from Loyola University of Chicago Law School, an MBA from Florida Metropolitan University; and a Bachelor of Business Administration from Loyola University of Chicago School of Business. 

https://melonieboonephd.com

Sources:

Hutchinson, A., Stuart, A., & Pretorius, H. (2010 ). The relationships amongst temperament, character strengths, and resilience. SA Journal Of Industrial Psychology 36(2) , 1-10.

Jordan, J. (2005). Relational resilience in girls. In E. Goldstein, & R. Brooks, Handbook of resilience in children (pp. 91-105). New York, NY: Springer.

Luthans, F., Avey, J. B., Avolio, B. J., & Peterson, S. J. (2010). The Development and Resulting 

Performance Impact of Positive Psychological Capital. Human Resource Development 

Quarterly, 21(1), 41–67. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.20034 

Luthans, F., & Jensen, S. (2002). Hope: A New Positive Strength for Human Resource Development. Human Resource Development Review, 304-322.

Martinez-Marti, M. L. (2016). Character strengths predict resilience over and above positive affect, self-efficacy, optimism, social support, self-esteem, and life satsifaction. Journal of Positive Psychology (12, 2), 110-119.

Seligman, M., Steen, T., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005 ). Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions. American Psychologist, 60 (5) 410-421.