NEVER GIVE UP – why resilience is your personal superpower.

never give up

Anyone who has run a start-up or new venture or is rapidly growing a business will be familiar with this. It equally occurs in many private lives or during our careers. The issue at hand is the seemingly immovable object; an issue that appears insurmountable that blocks your progress towards your goals or threatens your well being. It might be an individual with power, an organisational decision, a market position of a competitor, a downright difficult customer or simply a process or regulatory demand that is unfulfillable. Whatever…. It's a hurdle that presents as unscalable and unavoidable adversity.

People are often wired to be excitable and optimistic – some however, see every situation in terms of its negatives. It’s normal, we have all met and worked with both types; and in this context, diversity is important. Unbridled creative optimism is often best blended with some caution to survive. Nonetheless, we are all equally susceptible to that feeling of deflation and defeat when presented with an immovable object that blocks the path to our goal. On one level resilience is the ability to bounce back / recover from adversity. This is a core underpinning of mental health. But it's more than that – it also the ability to find ways to overcome adversity.

Business resilience is a multi-faceted subject in its own right that we won't cover here. However, businesses need resilience in their DNA, their people  - this often comes from the leaders within. It’s a state of mind; it’s an attitude; it’s a problem-solving, mentally strong, defeat-denying superpower. And I look for this when recruiting leaders – because they set the attitude for an organisation. It’s a mental strength that is equally required in people’s daily lives where we can all encounter setbacks.

Of course, there’s another close relation of resilience, which is important and that’s drive (the ability to keep pushing forward towards your goals). Drive alone means that you will keep banging your head against the brick wall of adversity. Resilience means that you will keep looking for ways around that same brick wall. Both are vital in leaders and individuals.

So why do I want to talk about it?

We all remember the severe restrictions around the pandemic. How would we have imagined that society and businesses could cope with work-places closed, mobility limited, physical contact and travel banned. We now have the time to debate, quite rightly, if, in hindsight, those restrictions were the most appropriate answer. Nonetheless, we all mostly survived these limitations by deploying huge drive and resilience to find new ways of working. My own business was a critical part of the food supply chain and accepting defeat was just not an option. The same applied to many across society. This was, in part, about organisational resilience, but more importantly about immense personal resilience from all involved in continuing to “get stuff done” whatever the barriers. We all found a way.

I encountered a seemingly immovable barrier where the very existence of the business was threatened by the organisational intransigence of very powerful third-party who held the keys to unlocking free access to the market. We did not accept the status quo. We could not.  We set about building an irresistible pressure from multiple angles that eventually overcame the adversity through the sheer cumulative effect of our concerted efforts. It was not easy; it was not without pain on our part; it was not without risk. We believed that it was possible. All encapsulated under a simple phrase writ large for a long time on the white-board in my office…. for all to see….. #NoSurrender. It became our motto. A powerful part of our DNA.

So, resilience – an ability to bounce back and unwavering strength and will to find ways to overcome adversity is a superpower. I believe that it's something that all great leaders - at whatever level - should have in their personal and professional locker.

Editors note: The term "No Surrender" is used in other contexts and may be construed to have other meanings and affiliations. No offence is intended by its use in this context.