Four leadership principles to promote employee resilience
Resilience is a key characteristic for companies to survive and thrive in a world of constant change. In an empirical study as part of my master thesis I investigated how leaders can enhance resilient behaviors of employees. This resulted in four leadership principles, which I will present in this article.
Recent literature identifies two key factors influencing organizational resilience:
· empowering leaders who need to navigate their company through the VUCA world
· resilient employees who need to find creative answers to the change they face in their daily work.
Employee resilience is a complex construct. By definition, it is the adaptive capacity of employees to cope with minor and major challenges at work by adjusting their behaviors as well as mobilizing their internal and external resources (e.g., self-efficacy and their social network). Every time an employee copes with a challenging situation, they learn new behaviors and skills, thereby strengthening their adaptive capacity. They emerge stronger from the challenge because they have learned new behaviors. In fact, research shows that employee resilience is positively related to performance outcomes, such as work engagement, organizational commitment, or job performance.
Behaviors, as a matter of fact, can be learned and developed, e.g., by leaders. When it comes to resilience of employees, three behaviors are key:
· Emotional coping, which involves successfully managing one’s own emotional reactions (e.g., anger, agitation) to problems encountered at work.
· Positive reinterpretation, which means that employees understand problems occurring at work as an opportunity to contribute and develop their own abilities.
· Focused implementation, which refers to consistently pursuing a solution to a problem without allowing oneself to be distracted.
In my study, I found that leaders can reinforce those three behaviors, if they lead by the following four principles:
· Personal relationships: The leader dedicates part of their time to building personal relationships at eye level, i.e., creating human connection.
· Empowerment: The leader actively supports employees in their personal and professional development, encouraging them to use their strengths and enabling them to act independently in the pursuit of organizational goals.
· Standing Back: The leader regularly acknowledges employees for their achievements, while keeping themselves in the background.
· Humility: The leader has a growth mindset, meaning they listen to the opinions of others, and are able to take criticism and learn from feedback.
Consequently, leaders must take on the role of an enabler, creating space for employees to develop their potential. The principles above show that this space is not only created through a trusting and empowering relationship one-on-one, but it also manifests through building a (team) culture of learning, appreciation and trust.
The specific skills that leaders should develop to practice the four principles outlined above was also part of my study. Feel free to reach out to me in case you are curious :-).
Credits to the researchers of the core models my study was based on:
