In times of difficulty and trauma, outstanding leaders practice and model resilience—here's how to do it.

Whether you lead a team of 1000 or just yourself, chances are you've experienced some sort of hardship that's made it difficult to bounce back—maybe it was the loss of a loved one, a serious illness, a particularly challenging work situation, or even an external event.

The ability to adapt well and successfully move forward after difficult events like any one of these is called resilience and it's one of the most powerful competencies that leaders in the modern world need to have in their toolkits. When times are tough, people look to leaders to see how to react—and if you model resilience, so too will those around you.

So what can you do to embody and model this practice? Drawing on the psychological research, here are three key strategies that support resilient leadership as well as three exercises that you can do in order to build up your own resilience:

1. Building and Cultivating Positive Relationships in Your Life

These don't have to be work relationships, but surrounding yourself with supportive people who help you to be the best version of yourself is an important factor in developing resilience.

EXERCISE:

Write down the names of 1-3 people in your life whose presence brings you joy, peace, and/or support.

What is one action that you can take right now to let each of these people know how much you value and appreciate their presence in your life? (e.g., write them a quick 3-sentence email, mail them a thank you card/flowers, send them a helpful article, share their work on LinkedIn, etc.).

Set a monthly reminder to spend 5-10 minutes reaching out to these people.

As a leader, how can you empower and enable those around you to develop and nurture these kinds of relationships?

2. Committing to Continuous Learning

While you don't have to know the perfect response to every situation, learning from each experience and drawing on this knowledge base will increase your resilience over time.

EXERCISE:

Briefly jot down your answers to the following questions:

What have been the most stressful or difficult experiences of your life?

What did you do to survive these experiences? (Are there any common themes here that you can draw on in the future?)

Is there anything that you haven’t considered that might be helpful for getting through difficult experiences in the future? (HINT: if you’re drawing a blank here, try asking a close friend or mentor what they might have done in similar situations.)

Which people in your life have been most supportive when you went through a difficult situation? What can you do in order to maintain relationships with them? (See #1 above.)

What structures or processes in your team or organization support continuous reflection and learning? If these don't already exist—what minor tweaks can you make in order to facilitate continuous learning (e.g., implementing After Action Reviews at the close of a big project—here’s a quick-and-easy template that I like)?

3. Practicing Regular Self-Care

In times of challenge or crisis, one of the first practices that falls to the wayside for many of us is self-care—and yet we have strong evidence that practicing regular self-care, rather than being a frivolous time-suck, is actually a key factor in cultivating resilience. Factors like getting enough sleep, exercising, getting outdoors regularly, and spending time with high quality people actually make us more resilient. Not only that—but when the people around us see that we value self-care, they also take it more seriously. This practice supports not just resilient leadership, but a resilient community.

EXERCISE:

What one self-care practice can you do for no more than 5 mins a day every day for the next week (e.g., meditate, go for a walk during my lunch break, spend time with a beloved pet, read fiction before bed, etc.)?

Stick a post-it note on your bathroom mirror (or anywhere else that you’ll see it regularly) with "Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun" written across the top.

Add a check mark for every day that you practice your self-care routine even for a minute.

Whereas in the past, psychologists who studied resilience tended to think of especially resilient people as unusual or uncommon, we now know that resilience is absolutely something that most of us can grow and get better at. The strategies and exercises above will support you in developing your own resilience and that of those around you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Danielle Harlan, PhD, is the Founder and CEO of The Center for Advancing Leadership and Human Potential and award-winning author of the The New Alpha: Join the Rising Movement of Influencers and Changemakers Who Are Redefining Leadership (McGraw-Hill). She is a frequent keynote speaker and has facilitated trainings and workshops for corporate, nonprofit, government, health care, and educational organizations around the world. She is also regularly featured in leading publications such as Fast Company, Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Women's Health.

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