Resilience - the key trait for effective leadership with Heidi Dening
Jul 9, 2024
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Heidi Dening, a resilient leadership expert, shares insights on bouncing forward from challenges rather than just bouncing back. She emphasizes the importance of vulnerability, authenticity, and resilience triad for effective leadership in navigating change and uncertainty.
Resilience involves bouncing forward from challenges by extracting insights and preparing for future obstacles.
Leaders should embrace vulnerability, authenticity, and resilience to guide growth and trust-building in crises.
Deep dives
Understanding Resilience as a Capacity Building Effort
Resilience is likened to a bucket filled with strengths and capabilities. In good times, the bucket is strong, reflective of thriving circumstances and supportive colleagues. However, challenges weaken the bucket, forming holes that deplete our capabilities, impacting decision-making and motivation. Maintaining a resilient bucket involves self-awareness to recognize warning signs, finding sustainable habits unique to personal needs, and fostering connections that bring joy and support.
Leading through Adversity and Developing Resilience
Facing adversity, such as a petrol bomb attack during a community project, provides leadership lessons on transparency and trust-building in crises. Reflecting on personal challenges, like overcoming paralysis from a virus at 11, Heidi stresses the significance of mindset and bouncing forward from experiences. Leadership entails vulnerability, authenticity, and resilience, with lessons learned guiding teams and individuals toward growth.
Enhancing Resilience through Individual Practices
Building individual resilience involves embracing stillness, finding scheduled joy weekly, and prioritizing self-care like taking breaks and pursuing personal interests. Lee efforts, such as celebrating micro-wins and connecting deeply with significant aspects of life, contribute to maintaining a strong resilience bucket. Assessing personal resilience levels and seeking professional help when needed are essential steps in improving and sustaining individual resilience.
Navigating the Complexity of Resilience in Leadership
In today's hybrid work environment, assessing team members' resilience presents challenges in detecting warning signs and providing support. Leaders are encouraged to foster genuine connections, celebrate accomplishments, and prioritize mental health check-ins. Initiating conversations on resilience, utilizing employee assistance programs, and promoting self-care practices collectively contribute to a resilient and supportive work culture.
Heidi Dening is no stranger to adversity. From a debilitating illness in her youth to harrowing experiences like a gunpoint kidnapping and narrowly escaping a petrol bomb attack, she has faced challenges that would test the resilience of even the most seasoned leader. Yet, it is these very experiences that have shaped Heidi into the resilient and insightful leadership expert she is today.
Resilience, as Heidi defines it, is not about simply bouncing back, but about the ability to "bounce forward" - to extract valuable insights from challenges and apply them to become better prepared for the next obstacle. This forward-looking mindset is crucial in today's fast-paced, volatile business landscape, where leaders are constantly navigating change, uncertainty, and high-pressure situations.
Leaders are increasingly expected to be vulnerable and authentic, sharing their struggles and emotions openly. Yet, this can sometimes be perceived as a lack of resilience. Heidi's advice is to embrace all three elements of this "resilience triad", she share what these are in this conversation.
This is an episode filled with hard-won wisdom and actionable advice.