Nimble Resilience

PERSPECTIVE

If patience is a virtue, then resilience must be one, too. This quality enables us to survive and even grow stronger from inevitable stress and adversity. However, today’s dynamic work environments present so much challenge for organisations that true, lasting resilience now requires more than just endurance. It takes a healthy dose of adaptability and proactivity. In a single word, resilience must also be nimble. Whether the goal is to improve the employee experience or increase innovation, leaders who model and cultivate values like transparency, collaboration, and flexibility can directly influence employees’ fortitude and, ultimately, help the organisation rise to whatever tests the future brings.

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INTRODUCTION

In the ever-evolving workplace, organisations are addressing huge changes in their industries, marketplaces, technologies, and customer demands. And to succeed, many are depending on greater resilience from their employees. In fact, The Conference Board reports one of the top priorities for CEOs is to “build a resilient workforce to prepare for future challenges.”¹

Resilience is traditionally defined as the ability to withstand challenges or recover from hardships. But this definition doesn’t work in today’s inherently dynamic workplace because it relies too heavily on the capacity of individuals and too little on the culture of organisations. Simply demanding that employees endure travails ignores the issues behind changing roles, practices, and job requirements. Consequently, resilience becomes whatever the employee can bear rather than proactive organisational preparation for change. Traditional resilience also has its limits. Our research finds over half (53%) of employees say they’re expected to just push through challenges without complaint, which leads to a 125% higher likelihood of burnout.

Moreover, traditional approaches to resilience are reactionary to outside forces. They focus on outlasting the challenge or change instead of addressing its origin and providing resources to adapt. According to our data, 64% of employees say their organisation embraces change, but more than half say it reacts to change rather than getting ahead of it to meet the upcoming demands of their industry.

Nimble resilience requires a shift in mindset—from seeing change and challenges as setbacks or crises to overcome to viewing them as opportunities to innovate, evolve, and improve. More than ever, success requires organisations to have a framework in place with policies and programs that encourage employees to embrace change, collaborate, and practice cross-disciplinary thinking.

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“The way we look at resilience has changed. We used to think it was grit, being strong, getting through it. Now it has shifted to more self-awareness and responsiveness to the people around you.”
—Steven Stein, Founder, Multi-Health Systems

The Three Key Ingredients of Nimble Resilience

Our research finds that nimbly resilient employees, leaders, and organisations are guided by three powerful principles: adaptability, proactivity, and perseverance. All are crucial to thrive in a dynamic work environment.

Adaptability. Anticipating changes or challenges and adjusting or innovating to meet them.

Proactivity. Continually evolving by seeking new ways of doing things instead of only reacting.

Perseverance. Seeing setbacks as opportunities to learn and grow rather than as crises.

Looking deeper, we can identify the attitudes and behaviours that reflect the application of these principles at the individual, leader, and organisational levels:

Nimbly resilient organisations are better positioned to adapt and innovate through changes and challenges than reactive organisations that double down on old practices and encourage employees to simply push through.

Transformation happens when an organisation adopts the principles of nimble resilience and uses them to shape policies, programs, and workplace culture in ways that encourage employees to build relationships, find new solutions to challenges, work collaboratively across disciplines, and adopt a forward-thinking perspective that embraces change. As a result, trust in leaders and team members increases, as do connections to the organisation and its purpose. According to our findings, when employees perceive their organisation as nimbly resilient:

• Odds of above-average engagement increase 699%
• Odds of feeling a strong connection to the organisation increase 568%
• Odds of being a Promoter increase 460%
  

In addition, positive business and cultural outcomes are dramatically higher at nimbly resilient organisations:

• Odds of greater revenue increase 158%
• Odds of innovation in the face of obstacles increase 737%
• Odds employees have a strong desire to stay with the organisation for at least one year increase 634%
• Odds of having a thriving workplace culture increase 914%

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“If you’re proactive, you focus on preparing. If you’re reactive, you end up focusing on repairing.”
—John C. Maxwell, Author, Speaker, and Founder, Maxwell Leadership

Nimbly Resilient Leaders Transform Employees

When leaders are nimbly resilient, their teams are more likely to be also. Nimbly resilient leaders think and work across disciplines, embrace change, and encourage pivoting perspectives when faced with new challenges, which, in turn, helps employees do the same.

Modern leaders (those who mentor, inspire, and connect employees rather than control and gatekeep) categorically practice several behaviours that promote nimble resilience. These include communicating transparently, building relationships between employees, fostering an environment of psychological safety,² and prioritizing employee wellbeing, flexibility, and autonomy, all of which help employees build nimble resilience.³

As seen in our previous chapter about change, modern leaders are also more likely to have nimbly resilient teams who view change as positive because they inform and solicit feedback from employees.

Furthermore, employees who believe their leaders are nimbly resilient are 9x more likely to think they are also nimbly resilient, which leads to higher likelihoods of engagement (+582%), feeling a strong sense of fulfillment in their work (+233%), and experiencing less burnout (–79%).

Nimbly resilient organisations have leaders, and in turn teams, who are adaptable, proactive, and perseverant. This combination enables them to be more agile and create sustainable growth, no matter what changes or challenges they face.

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“The best leaders don't know just one style of leadership—they're skilled at several and have the flexibility to switch between styles as the circumstance dictates.”
—Daniel Goleman, Author and New York Times Reporter

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Recommendations

To build a culture of nimble resilience, organisations must be adaptable, proactive, and perseverant; champion leader resilience; and reward resilient behaviours.

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1. Develop the qualities of nimble resilience and the practices to support it

Transparent communication, collaboration, flexibility, and autonomy all help promote nimble resilience in leaders and employees.

Employees can be more adaptable and proactive when they know what challenges the organisation is facing. They can embrace new perspectives when they collaborate with other teams and pivot when they feel comfortable adapting to change. (See the chapter, Embracing Change.) As the following table details, these types of practices improve the odds that employees will see themselves as nimbly resilient.

Likewise, by regularly sharing information about changes and challenges, giving employees autonomy, and encouraging collaboration, organisations can affect how employees perceive them, as shown in the next table.

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2. Champion nimbly resilient leadership

Organisations should train leaders to practice skills that build nimble resilience. They should also hold them accountable for modeling behaviours like communicating openly, collaborating with others, embracing new perspectives at work, tackling challenges proactively, and creating an environment of psychological safety,⁶ listening,⁷ and understanding.

When employees perceive their leaders are nimbly resilient, the odds they will see their organisation as such increase 1,460%.

Nimbly resilient leaders plan ahead and pivot when challenges come their way. They give employees flexibility, solicit feedback, and provide a voice in change. With autonomy, resources, and support, they and their teams can innovate and overcome setbacks.

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3. Recognise and reward

After communicating and modeling the attributes of nimble resilience, be sure to recognise the employees who practice them. Give frequent, meaningful recognition to those who collaborate, adopt new thinking, persevere through change, or find a new way of doing something.

Also, share the recognition and stories companywide so other employees can learn what it means to be nimbly resilient themselves. Organisations that recognise employees for important core behaviours often see these practices quickly become an integral part of the workplace culture. Note the impact of regular recognition on the increased probability of several outcomes when employees see themselves or leaders as nimbly resilient:

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Nimble Resilience—Key Takeaways

Traditional approaches to resilience centre on endurance, making them reactionary and unsustainable.

Nimble resilience is based on adaptability, proactivity, and perseverance, which reframe change as an opportunity to innovate and grow rather than a challenge to overcome.

Organisations must champion nimbly resilient leaders and practices like open communication, collaboration, flexibility, and autonomy.

Recognising and rewarding employees who demonstrate nimble resilience improves cultural and business outcomes.