Leadership in Crisis: Resilience

You mentioned that you learned a lot about yourself. You learned that you were more resilient than you expected. Can you just elaborate on what resilience means to you and how that played out, during the crisis?

Resilience is, you are in an open plan space, where you’re sitting at a desk and you know that you could be a number of days, a number of hours, from administration, but you cannot release this information to your team. You must be strong and not show anything that could, for anybody around you, show any weakness. They look at you as a leader and they look at you as if you think there is a solution. So you convince them there’s a solution and you convince them it’s not only about saying it, it’s showing it and walking the talk.

It’s a capacity to really make sure that you show to your team that you have the behavior of a leader, being convinced about what could be done and showing the attitude and behavior that people expect, because they think it is possible. Creating this hope and this trust that something could be done.

That must be pretty difficult. As you said, maybe you know you are days, hours away from administration, plus you have to have this hard shell or persona. You have to disintermediate the emotional side and what you know and what people can view of you. It’s pretty difficult.

It’s difficult but, again, remember, it’s keeping in mind what you want to do and the purpose and the vision. You know that if you are showing that you’re desperate, it will not work, because people will just lose faith. Some of your team are aware of the situation, but it’s always the same. It’s about emotion and facts. You have people understanding the facts and that the situation is very difficult. But for emotion, if you are showing some strengths and showing that you think it is possible, it’s very challenging and there are many risks around you, but there is a way. We must all work together, to achieve it.

We know what the risks are; we know it’s difficult. We know we could be successful, or not. But we are all on board to make it happen. Let’s do it together. The emotional part of what you have to give is very important, because will go with you, will trust what you want to do and will help you to execute it, if they can not only understand the facts, but also follow somebody who is really fueled by this faith that it is possible.