Resilient Leadership: The Role of Leaders in Facilitating Positive Adaptation to Adversity

Abstract

Despite the increasing need to understand the processes that underpin resilience in organizations, leader resilience and the role of the leader supporting the resilience of their followers are understudied. Adopting an exploratory and inductive qualitative approach we draw on 32 in-depth interviews with leaders in a wide variety of industries and occupations to advance a model of leading with resilience. We propose that leaders who respond to adverse situations with resilience do so by drawing on their intrapersonal resources so that they can function as affective, behavioral, and cognitive resources for their followers. This, in turn, allows them to strengthen their ability to lead. We conclude by integrating regulatory focus theory, proposing that resilient leaders filter their intrapersonal responses to adverse situations to model resilience for their followers. In turn, they learn from the resulting follower responses, strengthening their ability to lead with resilience.