Resilient Leadership: Propel Toward Recovery

Resilient leaders shift mindsets, navigate uncertainties, and invest in building trust to develop a recovery playbook that serves as a solid foundation for the post-COVID future.

Whereas organisations used to describe agile change as “fixing the plane while it flies,” the COVID-19 pandemic has rewritten the rules of upheaval in modern times. Those of us leading any organisation – from corporations to institutions to our own families – are not fixing the plane in midair, we’re building it. Times like these need leaders who are resilient in the face of such dramatic uncertainties.

The first article in this series describes the essential foundations leaders need to effectively navigate through this crisis. Resilient leaders are defined first by who they are in embodying five essential qualities and then by what they do across three critical time frames: Respond, Recover, and Thrive.

As we progress through the Recover phase of the crisis, resilient leaders recognise and reinforce critical shifts from a “today” to a “tomorrow” mindset for their teams. They perceive how major COVID-19-related market and societal shifts have caused substantial uncertainties that need to be navigated – and may be seized as an opportunity to grow and change.

Amid these uncertainties, resilient leadership requires even greater followership, which must be nurtured and catalysed by building greater trust. And resilient leaders start by anticipating what success looks like at the end of recovery – how their business will thrive in the long term – and then guide their teams to develop an outcomes-based set of agile sprints to get there.

Resilience is not a destination; it is a way of being. A “resilient organisation” is not one that is simply able to return to where it left off before the crisis. Rather, the truly resilient organisation is one that has transformed, having built the attitudes, beliefs, agility, and structures into its DNA that enable it to not just recover to where it was, but catapult forward – quickly.

The Mindset Shift

As resilient leaders seek to shift the mindset of their teams from “today” to “tomorrow,” the process involves several changes that have important implications for the path to recovery.

The situation shifts from the unpredictability and frenetic activity of the early Respond period to a more settled, though still uncomfortable, sense of uncertainty – an “interim” normal. The implication: The situation invites leaders to envision the destination at the end of Recover.

The focus of leadership expands from a very inward, and entirely appropriate, focus on employee safety and operational continuity to include embracing a return to a market-facing posture. The implication: Leaders should envision the destination in terms of desired stakeholder outcomes, not internal processes.

Management goals shift from managing the crisis – keeping the organisation functioning – to managing the transition back to a restored future. The implication: The Recover project management office may need a different skill set than the Respond project management office.

Planning shifts from shortterm contingency planning to mid- and long-term economic and scenario planning to understand the related impacts on operations, employees, financing, and so forth. The implication: It is critical to model the alignment of financial resources to the cash required to ramp-up operations.

Leadership attitude shifts from a primarily reactive mode to anticipating how to reinvent the organisation. The implication: Leaders should seize the opportunity to energise their teams by imagining a successful future and embracing trust as the catalyst to get there.

Editor’s note: This excerpt is taken from the Deloitte Insights article, “The essence of resilient leadership: Business recovery from COVID-19.”

A “resilient organisation” is not one that is simply able to return to where it left off before the crisis. Rather, the truly resilient organisation is one that has transformed