Stop Telling Employees to Be Resilient

Author

David Nour
19 Oct

Building teams that can weather uncertainty and change requires creating systems for support and dialogue.

Have to admit, I was taken back a little by the headline of this MIT Sloan article when I read it. After all, I’m a big fan of resilience and integrate it into my coaching and leadership development programs. And then I continued to read…

Lately, it feels like “resilience” has popped up as the answer to just about everything. Having a hard time because of a toxic environment? Just be resilient. Struggling to homeschool your kids while working 50-hour weeks during a global pandemic? Try some resilience.

Resilience, or the ability to withstand hardship and bounce back from difficult events, is useful when it comes to work. But, too often, it’s presented in a way that overlooks structural issues and instead encourages employees to grin and bear whatever tough stuff comes their way — and to do so on their own, without disturbing their colleagues.

Ahhh – there’s the magic bullet: structural issues in the organization. Those are the thorny, often difficult conversations few people ever want to really have. And you know what takes: the Nour Vitamin Cs: Courage + Commitment by the leadership and a Construct that we bring. I can’t do the first two for any leader. But if they can muster up the first two, then we can help with the third.

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