.jpg)
Karen: Thank you, Edith. Resilience, at its core, is the ability to adapt to and recover well from stress, adversity, or trauma — anything that really sets you back. It’s often described as "bouncing back," but that can oversimplify it. True resilience involves absorbing stress and recalibrating how you move forward.
Karen: It’s absolutely both. While resilience has been traditionally viewed as an individual trait, research increasingly shows that one of the most important factors in being resilient is an ability to maintain an internal balance by leaning in to relationships that you value and trust at times of high stress. We draw strength from those around us, who help us make sense of things.
In a world where things feel unstable or unpredictable, you want to turn to places where you know you can find solace that helps you right yourself and keep moving forward. You don't need to go it alone — we're here for each other for a reason.
Derek: Absolutely. The key is not waiting until you need resilience to build your networks and communities.
There's a thought process around resilience being "toughness," but what we have a better opportunity here to do is to realize we don't have to be the lone wolf.
When I think about the strategy for building resilience, it's surrounding yourself with a community of people who can challenge you, support you, and listen.
I often advise my clients to create a "personal board of directors" — a group of people you trust to give perspective and feedback, and who can see you as a full human, not just a leader in an organization. When you have that community, you don’t have to face challenges alone, and you can show up as a more even and composed leader.
Morgan: I do, thank you, Edith. I love what Karen and Derek have said on this.
I have a background mostly in financial services, and many of my clients think of themselves as introverts, so they may shy away from relying on others.
But what I try to help them realize is, for example, in times of volatility in the markets, if they haven't taken the time to connect with people around them who may have different skillsets or experience, then they're not as resilient or able to be even when things get difficult.
Resilience still involves connecting, even if it’s just a few trusted individuals. Sometimes, it’s as simple as someone reminding you to step away, go to the gym, or take a break.
Morgan: I was actually working with a client today on this, Edith. She was really struggling with how to be truly authentic, but also even, like Derek said. One analogy we used is that she was speaking English if she was bringing her most "loud" self, but the rest of the team were French speakers, so they couldn't make sense of it if she was too "big."
You need to think about speaking the language of those around you and coming toward each other to have a meaningful conversation instead of staying in your own perspective.
Derek: I’d add that leaders can openly acknowledge tension and invite the team to discuss it constructively and honestly. Ask, “What needs to be said?” It’s not about riling everyone up or even about needing an agreement, but it's about saying what we need to say to be honest and real with ourselves.
Karen: Building on that, as a leader, you need to make sure you actively listen and observe. You can say "here's what I'm noticing" if you're seeing somebody who appears to be spiraling or struggling. By just sharing that you're noticing that maybe something's going on, you can offer them the opportunity to share where they're at. Modeling this behavior sets a tone of safety that you'd want others in your organization to follow.
Karen: It depends on the context. One of the things we need to accept as leaders is that people are probably going to bring you things that you don't want to hear. And sometimes you just need to allow people to speak, as long as it's not disrespectful. You can say, “I may not have an answer for you, but I feel better that you felt comfortable enough to put this down here. I'm going to sit and think about this and come back to you.”
If it is disrespectful or personal, then you deal with that in the moment. You make those same observations we discussed before: “I notice that you're coming from a place that's really emotional right now, but I need to let you know that I'm not comfortable with you speaking to me in that way. Clearly there's some stress going on here and I'd like to help you unpack it, but we've got to do it from a place of mutual respect. If you can do that, then we can continue to have this conversation.”
Derek: Absolutely. A concept I work with my clients on within the first two or three sessions is the idea that you can either be curious, or you can be right about the situation. And so when you approach it from the standpoint of: "I have two options: curiosity or being right." Being right is always going to put us back into a mindset that the world is against us, versus an opportunity for us to be curious and say, "I wonder what there is to learn." It doesn't mean you need to agree, or to come with the solution, or to solve the problem. But let's be curious.
Morgan: One of the things that I think we all hear from our clients in the group environment is that they're so relieved to hear that there are other people with similar challenges. So to Derek's point about ego — being right or being curious — having the opportunity to see, "oh, I'm not the only one who has challenges," and then the opportunity to be curious and hear what other people are saying and doing is more powerful than I think most people realize.
Derek: Exactly, and one thing that comes up for me when I think about the group scenario is that it's more of a safe environment than other places. We've actually created what I like to call a "playground" for us to share how we feel, and we can disagree with "an adult in the room" to help facilitate and look at different angles of this.
The coaches are there to be able to provide a framework to be able to disagree, to look at things differently, to be in conversations that we normally aren't. It's great for Morgan, Karen, and I to give you all these strategies, but when you're actually in a group and you're "forced" to play about it in a different way, it's pretty magical what can come of it.
Karen: You know, something else that comes up, Derek, is over time in a group, you're able to build the kind of trust and vulnerability that then also allows you all to challenge each other's thinking from a position of mutual respect. We all have habits and patterns that we get into that may not serve us well in particular situations, but it's what we're used to. When you get to know people in a space like a group coaching space — and I have seen this happen so often in my groups — people are able to say, "well, that's a really interesting point of view, but let me push back on that a little bit. If there was another way for you to think of this, would you be willing to try it?"
And when you have that kind of trust, people will say, "yeah" — they lean in, they listen, and they leave the group with another way of thinking that they might not have had when they came into the room.
So being able to challenge is so important, and it needs the time and the space of what a group coaching environment can provide to bring it out.
Morgan: Karen, what you and Derek just mentioned brings to mind Daniel Kahneman's System 1 and System 2 thinking. So when you're in this "playground," thinking about your thinking, you're not feeling like you're unsafe and then you're in your System 1 thinking. So you can allow yourself to be vulnerable, which then allows you to be much more higher-level in your thinking about what's possible. And it's really tremendous what people take from that — that's what we all hear is really magical.
Karen: I think in the spaces that I have been in that have been the most successful at fostering that kind of environment, people were concerned about establishing an atmosphere of psychological safety. So, we understand that everybody has a right to use their voice as long as it is used in a way where we have built an understanding that we will be respectful, and that we have a mutually agreed-upon set of rules for how those conversations occur.
And so doing that allows you in some ways to be more like the way we see scientists, for example. Scientists fail at what they do — that's part of how you get to success. You can't really tell it's real unless you've screwed it up a few times, and you've rebuilt the ship. That has that process built in of going back and forth and saying, "this didn't work right this time. What are we missing?" And knowing that every voice on that team is important, regardless of where you stand in the hierarchy, you have the opportunity to give your input. That's harder to do in a lot of environments than it should be, but the environments I've been in that function the most, I would say, productively are ones where that is consciously addressed. We're not always great at all of it, but we're always trying.
Derek: I think it comes back to the idea that no one has the answer. And resilience is about creating spaces with other individuals where we can foster a sense of figuring it out, of being on the journey together to try things, to be open, to be curious.
And that mentality just creates such an open environment; it's so much more welcoming and inclusive. And so this ability to just be curious and not feel like there's a right answer — it diffuses the tension in the room. To me, resilience is actually like having more air in the room to be able to breathe and be with what's going on.
Morgan: You know, there's a lens that is also coming to mind for me, because a lot of what we talk about is bouncing back when things are difficult. But my friends and clients who are veterans think about resilience as continuing to move forward when things are very difficult.
And so for them, it's important to keep moving forward, to have grit. But they all know they've got somebody at their back — someone who's going to back me up, to make sure that my wing is covered. So this idea of moving forward — maybe there are mistakes, maybe the orders aren't correct — but we're going to try it, we're all going to try to head together in the same direction.
Karen: Something you just said, Morgan — it just brought up a thought for me — is that in thinking of those people who have our back, something that we don't always think about in terms of being resilient is we may need different things from different people at different times. So, yes, put on your own oxygen mask first, and ask yourself what you need.
But sometimes you might need a connection that helps you make sense of what's going on. Another time, you might need somebody who's good at listening when you need to let go of negative feelings about whatever happened. Other times, you need somebody who's going to help you laugh and just release the tension.
We don't get all of those things in one place, but this is why it's important to have a network of people that you trust, because those high-trust relationships you'll leverage for different things when you need different kinds of support.
And so the relational resilience there is so important, because if your network is tiny, you can't always get what you need when you need it.
