An emerging challenge for leaders is navigating the near-constant rate of change the 21st century marketplace demands. As such, leaders desire to develop an “always-on" mentality when it comes to leading change. But the problem is that most change leadership or change management paradigms assume starting and ending points to change, creating a discrete change “event” and it is just not playing out that way in the real world environment anymore. 

Therefore, to navigate this environment of “always-on change,” leaders need to focus on continually gathering, cultivating, and strengthening a set of internal and external resources upon which both individuals and leaders draw during seasons of change, which is characterized by adversity and uncertainty. This is the concept of developing resilience. What the turbulent organizational environment requires is leaders who are skilled in developing resilience in themselves, in their teams, and in their organizations.

To that end, I am proposing a new model that I’m calling The Resilience Quad, which can be applied at the personal level, the team level, or the organizational level. The model has four elements to it (as you would expect from a model called The Resilience Quad). Picture a Venn diagram with four circles. The top circle is Purpose. The right circle is People. The bottom circle is Process. And the left circle is Perspective. And where those four circles meet in the middle is where resilience exists. Consider each facet of the model individually. 

The top circle is Purpose. Purpose is about being motivated by something bigger than yourself. This can be a sense of personal purpose, professional purpose, or organizational purpose, but the point is, when people encounter adversity or uncertainty, they need to be able to call back to something that’s bigger than themselves. And especially in those extended seasons of adversity, uncertainty, or difficulty, they need to anchor back to a “why” that is bigger than simply “I’m getting paid to do this” or “somebody else told me to do it.” 

The second circle is People. The People circle is about having a strong sense of self (i.e., understanding one’s strengths and opportunities; a developed sense of self-awareness) and a network of trusted interpersonal relationships. Once again, these can be personal relationships or professional relationships, but within a professional environment, it is particularly important to be strongly connected to people that are trusted and can be relied upon. When “change” hits is not the time to begin building trust in relationships. Rather, in times of uncertainty, adversity, or difficulty is when to drawupon trusting relationships. That is why it is so important for leaders to be cultivating trust as a foundational condition for their teams and organizations throughout the year because it is when things are difficult, when things are uncertain, when things are challenging that people need to know that those around them have their back. 

The third circle is Process, and this is about being able to take action to navigate uncertainty. Process takes different forms. At the base level, it is simply not being paralyzed by uncertainty. Rather, it is saying, “All right, we’ve hit a difficult situation, what is the first step …” and then being able to sort through the ambiguity to figure out what needs to happen next and – importantly – what doesn’t need to happen next. In a more developed sense of resilience, the idea of Process is someone who has an internal framework for navigating uncertainty. They encounter difficulty and default to an internal sense of direction, “Here’s the first thing I need to do and here’s a second thing I need to do and here’s the third thing… .” It is a framework that they apply consistently in any number of kinds of situations. 

At the organizational level, having an organizational framework for navigating ambiguity, uncertainty, and change means the organization leaders know: “The first thing we do as an organization is X and then the second thing we do is Y. We gather these people, we have this discussion, we know how to assess the environment, we know how to look at strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. We know how to analyze them, we know how to evaluate them, and then we know who is making decisions and we know how to make decisions, and we know how to communicate those decisions up, down, and through the organization.” These are all parts of Process that need to have been established, refined, and practiced before a crisis hits.

Finally, the fourth circle is Perspective. Perspective is about viewing challenges as opportunities for learning and growth and having an optimistic outlook amid adversity. The word “optimistic” is chosen intentionally here rather than “positive” because positivity can very easily be misunderstood as pollyannaish where everything‘s always sunshine and roses, and a perspective like that can easily turn into toxic positivity. Rather, optimism is acknowledging the difficulty of the moment, while having hope for the future. Optimism is having confidence in oneself, and in the team and organization that the destination will be a better place on the other side of this current situation. And again, in order to have that kind of optimism, leaders must approach difficult seasons as an opportunity to learn and opportunity to grow, and not be easily defeated by setbacks.

Interestingly, much of pop-leadership literature describes resilience as only perspective – an attitude, outlook, or characteristic. But one’s own perspective is too limited to be able to withstand the multi-faceted assaults of “always-on change,” which is why purpose, people, process, and perspective must work together to develop resilience. It is at the intersection of those four circles where resilience exists. 

Resilience is how individuals, leaders, and organizations gather, cultivate, strengthen, and then draw upon these internal and external resources so that they are able to bounce back to normal following adversity. And when they don’t gather, cultivate, and strengthen these resources on a regular basis, that’s when people experience burn out. A recent poll revealed 62% of organizational leaders cite employee burnout or leader burnout as a top obstacle to their leadership effectiveness. People are burned out individually and they are burned out organizationally because they have insufficiently cultivated the resources they need to draw upon during seasons of adversity and ambiguity.

Leaders need all four elements of The Resilience Quad – Purpose, People, Process, and Perspective – to truly develop and practice resilience, and THIS is the piece that is always on. They need to always be truing back to a purpose that is bigger than themselves. They need to always be developing a sense of self and developing a network of trusted interpersonal relationships. They need to always be evaluating, refining, and practicing their process, so they know how to take action to navigate uncertainty, and they need to always be feeding and developing their perspective so they can view challenges as opportunities for learning and growth with optimism for the future. 

The Framework