The value of being a resilient leader

It's likely you've heard it said that the best way to judge the performance of a company's customer service is how it handles problems. The same thing can be said for leaders; their success is often reflected in their resiliency, the ability to persevere, remain focused and move forward with their responsibilities and goals in spite of obstacles and challenges.

The value of being a resilient leader was recently demonstrated in my consultation work with a Fortune 500 company that was experiencing a transformational change in the organizational structure of several divisions. While responsibilities essentially remained the same, these changes had a major impact on the reporting structure for senior leadership.
Many of these leaders were “layered up” and no longer reported directly to the president of their division.

While most of these leaders were initially disturbed by their apparent change in status, some were more focused on the “optics” than others. They became distracted by the politics of the situation, rather than doing the work necessary to achieve their goals. In contrast, those individuals who were able to work through their reactions quickly and create a plan to refocus on achieving their objectives were much more successful in managing this change. Clearly in this case, a leader's ability to cope effectively had a significant influence on the productivity of his team.