If you’re in a senior leadership role today, you know it’s rare that things feel steady. Currently, it’s market and policy shifts that are driving change, growth and restructures that you need to lead through. All this comes with the job – it’s what you do.
Image: WOKANDAPIX , Pixabay
But what often goes unsaid is the emotional cost of dealing with this level of complexity day-after-day, particularly when it feels relentless. In conversations with leaders, I hear things like:
“I’m not so sure I handled that well.”
“I seem to be losing my patience faster, even over small things.”,
“I feel like I can’t switch off; my mind’s on overdrive even when I’m not actually working.”
This is where emotional resilience - the ability to understand how we react emotionally to challenges and keeping the impact of them to ourselves and others (including our teams) to a minimum - becomes not just a ‘nice to have’, but critical for your own leadership capacity.
It’s not just about managing your own stress but recognising that you’re also responsible for supporting and guiding your team, including when things get tough.
Not just ‘toughing it out’
We often think of resilience as grit — pushing through and holding everything together. But if you’ve been in a senior role for any length of time, you know that this approach has its limits.
Real resilience feels quieter and sometimes counterintuitive. When it feels like everything’s going at a million miles an hour around you, it’s being able to pause, to catch your breath and remember what matters most.
It might be the HR Director who, in the middle of a tricky restructure, resists the urge to jump straight to solutions — and instead creates the time for the team to work through where they are right now to see the best way forward. Or a COO who, faced with supply chain mayhem, deliberately steps back to think properly about the right priorities, knowing they’ll come back to things with a clearer focus.
The ripple effect of resilient leadership
Research from McKinsey shows that resilient leaders don’t just help themselves work positively through uncertainty — they help their teams do it, too. Leaders set the emotional tone so when they can stay grounded, their teams are more likely to remain engaged and focused under pressure.
Other research highlights that resilience is not a fixed trait but a set of skills that can be developed and strengthened over time - things like optimism and being able to regulate our emotions. Through coaching and facilitation, leaders can get the opportunity to develop their capacity to reflect, reset, and embed these behaviours in a way that feels genuine and sustainable.
I recently worked with a leader in a high-pressure environment where priorities were constantly shifting. Through coaching, we focused on helping them strengthen their resilience — not by adding more to their to do list, but by building their ability to ‘roll with the punches’ without being knocked sideways by every change. Over time, they noticed a shift: fewer feelings of stress and a greater sense of steadiness even when things felt like they were continually moving.
This isn’t a ‘fluffy’ nice to have. Strengthening emotional resilience is a strategic approach that can help shape how you lead, inspire and influence. If this is something you’d like to develop, get in touch.
So… I invite you to take a few minutes to consider…
How do you reset after a tough day?
What signals tell you you’re getting near your limits?
Who or what helps you ‘reboot’ when the pressure’s on?
These might feel like personal questions, and they are. But they’ll also help you recognise how well you’re leading. How you manage what’s happening inside, directly shapes how you show up for others and how you help your organisation move forward.
If this sounds familiar, it’s not just you feeling like this. If you want to explore how you can develop your resilience skills, whether it’s through coaching conversations or facilitated sessions with your team, there are practical ways to make this shift so get in touch.
I’d love to have a conversation.