What Seeds Are You Planting? | On Resilience
© 2018 Martha Wooding-Young, Resilient Executive LLC. Moss and lichen turning a downed tree into usable soil, Thimpu, Bhutan.
The Importance of Building Anti-Fragility in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous World.
It’s been a wild few weeks. I spend a great deal of time thinking about how leaders can cultivate resilience, but in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, I had a couple of weeks off the grid to ponder vulnerability anew and consider how we might all work to enhance our ability to bounce back, not only to recover but to learn to thrive in conditions of challenge and change. Resilience enables organisms and systems to move through the order-disorder-reorder cycles of life and come out the other side stronger and ready for whatever is next.
I have heard from younger members of the coaching community that the word resilience is passé, so overused by management consultants as to be cliché. For me, resilience itself is impervious to conceptual abuse, as important as love or loss, grief or joy. Like all concepts, as the idea of resilience has evolved over time it has been coopted by various specialized fields of endeavor, losing some or most of its meaning in the process. To reclaim it, let’s start with a definition. In conventional terms, resilience is the ability to bounce back, to resist shocks and remain the same. It implies a certain robustness: the ability to endure without change. I focus more on enhanced resilience, the type exhibited by nature, that one writer has dubbed “Anti-Fragile.” Anti-fragile systems benefit from disruptions by becoming stronger and more adaptive. Examples include not just the moss, lichens, and mycelial networks thriving in otherwise inhospitable environments. Closer to home, we build strength and stamina the more we work out. There is also the phenomenon of post-traumatic growth, the other end of the bell curve from the better-known PTSD.
I might have called my business the Anti-Fragile Executive instead of the Resilient Executive, but that fails Strunk & White’s or Orwell’s clarion calls for simplicity in language. As our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world gets less predictable by the day, anti-fragility becomes an essential leadership skill, not just to cultivate in oneself, but also to inspire and to actively foster in one’s team and organization.
First, consider your own resilience. Without thinking too much about it, how would you rate yourself on a scale of one to ten? If you resist change and find yourself struggling to restore prior conditions rather than moving into the new normal with whatever grace you can muster, perhaps resilience-focused leadership coaching would help. Great research by Martin Seligman’s positive psychology lab at the University of Pennsylvania, in cooperation with Gabriella Rosen Kellerman of BetterUp labs has laid out the components of resilience in detail:
These elements are all highly trainable, and well-researched emotional intelligence and coaching interventions and mindfulness programs can lead the way.
How about the company you lead? How well do they respond to unexpected events? A classic example of what not to do has been on display in 2024 as Wall Street sought to respond to their stressed-to-death junior bankers. Rather than deal with the root causes and conditions within the insidious winner take all culture of investment banking, over-stretched human resources departments simply imposed new rules and checklists, overseen by newly anointed wellness officers. Here’s a clue: addition is rarely the answer for complexity as it simply creates further layers of complexity, making an already unpredictable situation less predictable and more fragile.
Cultures can be shifted, with exemplary leadership, training, time, and emotional intelligence. Once you’ve bolstered your own resilience, why not consider paying it forward to help your entire organization become anti-fragile? Resilient leaders play a critical role in navigating organizations through change, uncertainty, and crises. Their ability to adapt, maintain emotional stability, and promote resilience within their teams is linked to improved organizational performance, employee well-being, and a positive work culture. Creating an environment where team members feel safe to express concerns or take risks is another hallmark of resilient leadership. This, in turn, fosters innovation and engagement, both critical to organizational success.
As we continue the months of clean up ahead of us following the eye of Hurricane Helene passing directly over the farm, we are extraordinarily grateful that our home is still standing, and we are looking for ways to make our gardening and conservation more adaptive and resilient, anti-fragile even, in tune with evolving natural cycles. Want to talk about how to become more adaptive and resilient for yourself and/or your organization in this ever-changing world? That’s what we do here at The Resilient Executive.
If you are moved to help impacted communities, consider funding some of the businesses who built Asheville and got wiped out at Love Ashville from Afar. Or buy gift cards from our favorite Ashville-based organic, land-race seed company for actual seeds to grow the way forward at Sow True Seeds.