Why is it important for a leader to be resilient?
Resilience can be understood as composure of various characteristics, which a leader should possess for bringing influencing character in the leadership. Resilience can be defined as an ability to bounce back under any circumstances, which is also the sheer characteristic of an effective leader (Ledesma, 2014). A leader is the one who portrays a character of composed qualities to its followers. Moreover, leadership is such a quality, which is necessary for the betterment of followers. It is an undeniable fact that effective leaders are a good resource to motivation in employees. Resilience helps leader holds firm strong under any kind of adverse situation, which is also the key to their success (Ledesma, 2014).
Resilience in leaders is very necessary for an organization or an institution because it is the source of inspiration for the various followers. Leaders are a source to influence various followers, which actually affect the performance of an organization or an institution. According to Resilient leadership theory, it is very tough to define a broader concept as such. It is not easy to give it a particular generic definition (Buell, 2014). Various researches have proved the benefits of effective leadership on the organizational performance such as motivated employees, satisfactory performance etc. Leadership is the one quality, which knows the practicality of the business world and prepares it for any adverse situation in the near future (Buell, 2014). The adverse situations are bound to happen and they are bound to test the resilience of a leader. Importance of Resilience in leadership can be understood with the help of some examples. The world is full of successful businessperson; however, only few of them could have proved their worth. One of the best examples of an effective leadership can well be found in the leadership of the KFC founder Harland Sanders who challenged the then existing dominance of hamburger. Nevertheless, the founder had started his journey by just supplying some fried chicken to the neighbour homes. The leader had then identified the power of franchise concept, which is why the founder has started the venture. The earning which the founder has made from his first supply, he recycled it for manufacturing some more items. Slowly and gradually, he went up the ladder of success and now the world knows him as one of the most powerful billionaires of the contemporary world.
The above-cited example gives a very good example of a resilient leadership, which inspired many. This is because of such reason that the very small concept as such soon became a widely popular event. KFC was the first fast food chains of America, which also spread to other parts of world such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico and Jamaica in its early days. However, the company is now very much common to the entire world. The resilience was the one quality, which motivated the founder against any odds. Situations were not very favourable as the food industry in America at that time was largely dominated by Hamburger. The motivation to go against any odds and to prove a never highlighted skill of leadership was the one reason behind the resilient approach of the founder of KFC. Resilience in leadership does not only mean to stand firm strong against any adverse situations but it also mean standing up against some challenging situations (Malcolm, 2014). This exactly what the characteristics of the founder of KFC was, which he used with his utter self-confidence and inspiration to become a successful leader.
What are some characteristics of a resilient leader?
According to many authors, resilience can be created in the contemporary leaders with the help if various characteristics such as emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, ability to nurture others, ability to learn from the past mistakes and flexibility to use the various leadership styles (Dartey-Baah, 2015). Based on different leadership styles that are widely known, leadership style can be incepted in the contemporary leaders to bring effectiveness in their leadership. Moreover, the various types of leadership styles that would be mentioned as follows represent the different kinds of characteristics of a resilient leader:
- Transformational leadership: This kind of leadership helps develop high involvement with the management and the employees. This characteristic helps facilitate high-end communication within the organization. They have high visibility and are transformative with any kind of circumstances. They are very productive in nature and this is why they believe in motivating employees. This kind of leadership styles can well fill up the contemporary leaders with numbers of characters that are resilient to most of the circumstances. The particular leadership style transfers some very important resilient character to its bearer such as motivational, inspirational and dictator. These characteristics do help the leaders motivate its employees at the time when they are less motivated because of various reasons. Nevertheless, a motivated employee is a valuable asset for an organization (Howard & Irving, 2013).
- Transactional leadership: This is another very important characteristic of leaders, which encourage them for being resilient against any situations. They maintain their firmness by providing solutions for any kinds of situation such as the success or failure. They believe in productivity, which is why they give rewards to employees on their successful achievement of the task. On other hand, they also punish them if they fail to achieve the target. The kind of leadership characteristics of leaders shows their resilience against any situation. They remain unmoved at any adverse or favourable situation. This particular leadership style provides them firmness against any unwanted situations. They punish their employees when it is required; however, it does not mean that they are not resilient. It rather means that they are motivated towards a particular goal, which they want to accomplish at any cost (Howard & Irving, 2012).
Resilience in an organization is very important for its utter success and resilient show against any adverse or unwanted situation. An organizational resilience refers to a process, which helps its employees enhance their career resiliency (Salanova et al., 2012). An organization, which is committed to produce career resiliency in employees should accomplish on various terms such as openness to communication, encouragement to individual contribution, incepting rewards and recognition program. Resilience in organization can also be achieved with the help of giving timely feedbacks to employees and the management and with the help of intelligence gathering mechanism (Salanova et al., 2012). It can also be created by streamlining the HRM process, which could recruit only such candidates who are resilient in nature (Salanova et al., 2012). However, this is indeed tough for the HRM to recruit only such candidates; however, they can set some identifying characteristics to judge the resilience in employees. The suggested characteristics can be but not limited to such as potential record of accomplishment for the same job role, effective communication skills, confident body language and responsiveness to every queries. According to (Strycharczyk & Elvin, 2014), the development of leadership is a process, which has to pass through any obstacles or hardships. They further say that the capability to bounce back from any adverse situation helps construct competitiveness in employees. Some research does widely indicate towards a fact that organizational commitment to develop leadership qualities in employees is less influential (Strycharczyk & Elvin, 2014). It has less productivity as well. Therefore, it is necessary that organizations should try to develop leadership quality both in the organization and in the employees. The hardship to thrive the leadership quality in the organizational practices needs lot more than that. It rather requires a more comprehensive understanding on how to develop resiliency in the organizational practices (Strycharczyk & Elvin, 2014).
How can resilience be developed and encouraged in an organization?
Some external factors are highly important for bringing resiliency. These factors are such as intrinsic and extrinsic form of motivation, teamwork, excellent internal communication and effective leadership (Llorens et al., 2013). However, it is very unpractical to observe the abidance of every single mentioned factor in the different organizational practices. Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation is very much prevalent across different organizations across the globe. However, effective leadership and internal communication are the two factors, which have become hardships for different organizations largely (Llorens et al., 2013). Nevertheless, effective leadership and the resiliency approach of the organizations and of the employees have now become a challenge to the contemporary world. The high variance in the resiliency is differing one organization from another (Llorens et al., 2013). In a particular industry, there are high differences in the operational success of different organizations. This is very much evident in the competitiveness in the market. The high-end competition in the market is bringing many challenges for the survival strategies. Some of them succeed with their sheer resiliency; however, some of them do not because they have less resilience in them than their competitors. Organizational and employee resiliency is hard to perish in the contemporary world despite of many strategies that they take (Strycharczyk & Elvin, 2014).
Conclusion
Resilience in leadership is highly important for the organizational performance. It is also important for the betterment of employees. Resilience helps leader stay firm strong against any adverse situation, which is very important for imparting encouraging thoughts into employees. It also helps organizations perform exceptionally well under any challenging situation. It also encourages employees for a motivational approach towards any challenging task, which foster them for the desired outcome. A resilient leader helps its team move to a set organizational goal, which helps organization prosper further.
A resilient leader has various characteristics in him such as openness to communication to team members and the management, encouragement to employees for better performance, strategic planning for any challenge and motivating its followers by being intact under any adverse situation. A resilient leader is transformational at times when it motivates its employees, tries to encourage its employees and facilitate excellent internal communication with its followers. The leader is transactional also when it punishes its employees for not meeting up the target, rewarding them on their achievement and conducting strict adherence to business practices to yield maximum results.
It is indeed very challenging to bring resiliency in the organizational practices. It can rather be tried to incept the same with the help of some external factors such as intrinsic & extrinsic form of motivation, excellent internal communication and effective leadership style. However, all the external factors are hard to find in practice. There are high levels of variances in the adherence of different external factors, which is very much evident in the organizational performance of different organizations across the globe.
References
Buell, J. M. (2014). The resilient leader: mind, body and soul. Healthc Exec, 29(6), 10-16
Dartey-Baah, K. (2015). Resilient leadership: a transformational-transactional leadership mix. Journal of Global Responsibility, 6(1), 99-112.
Howard, C. S., & Irving, J. A. (2012). The role of obstacles in leadership formation. ASBBS Proceedings, 19(1), 433.
Howard, C. S., & Irving, J. A. (2013). The impact of obstacles and developmental experiences on resilience in leadership formation. ASBBS Proceedings, 20(1), 679.
Ledesma, J. (2014). Conceptual frameworks and research models on resilience in leadership. Sage Open, 4(3), 2158244014545464.
Llorens, S., Salanova, M., Torrente, P., & Acosta, H. (2013). Interventions to promote Healthy & Resilient Organizations (HERO) from Positive Psychology. In Salutogenic organizations and change (pp. 91-106). Springer Netherlands.
Malcolm, M. J. (2014). Resilient leadership amidst complexity.
Salanova, M., Llorens, S., Cifre, E., & Martínez, I. M. (2012). We need a hero! Toward a validation of the healthy and resilient organization (HERO) model. Group & Organization Management, 37(6), 785-822.
Strycharczyk, D., & Elvin, C. (2014). Developing resilient organizations: How to create an adaptive, high-performance and engaged organization. Kogan Page Publishers.
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