Resilience Is the Core Competence for Now and the Time after the Crisis

Resilience is the core competence for the time after the crisis. What we are currently learning is that plans don't work out, predictions don't come true, and priorities change by the hour.

This is not the same insight that those who are on the move with the philosophy of constant change in the matter of change/change have been making known for some years now under the topic of V.U.C.A.. It is a new, fundamental realization, which concerns our life altogether and questions elementarily the forms of living and working together.

Surprising that not everything breaks down, although more than 90 percent of the employees of many companies are working from home. Surprising that many processes work, although the manager does not - as usual - constantly control their implementation. Fascinating that despite the virtuality of their collaboration, social processes nevertheless take place between employees that have nothing to do with the completion of their tasks.

But it's also sad that some managers can't think of anything else to do than exactly what they've always done, only over the phone. Sad that energy is still being put into implementing a business plan that no one really believes in anymore. It's a shame that, despite the enforced new working conditions, there is often no room for the development of creativity and the new.

What is needed today more than ever is resilience in self-leadership and leadership. Sensitive AND resilient. Empathic AND robust. Emotional AND analytical. The days of "one and the other" are finally here. In today's corporate environments, there is no longer room for "either or." Resilience means exactly that: Elasticity in thought and action AND authenticity in behavior and attitudes.

The current crisis will give us all the opportunity to learn from it. Those who fall back into their old patterns will discover relatively quickly that the changed conditions make it impossible to do business in the old sense. Without new patterns of cooperation and the redefinition of mutual interfaces, it will not be possible to maintain a business model.

The crisis has a good side: it teaches us to put the "meaning" of our actions at the center of our actions, including our professional ones. Tasks whose fulfillment does not make sense will be increasingly difficult to communicate in the future. Leadership must now finally install itself as meeting these conditions.

There are obviously teams and executives who are already practicing this very successfully at the moment. These will be the true crisis winners because they will save themselves from going through the valley of tears in which the bitter experience awaits them that processes that continued to operate without meaning, structures that were maintained without proper reasoning, traditions that were ritualized without meaning were nothing more than the failed attempt to face the new reality.

If you now promote the development of resilience for yourself and your team/leadership, it will translate directly into your success.

To do so, you should do the following:

• Accepting the crisis according to its literal sense as a turning point of a development.
• "WE work together to find solutions" is working better than before. Stay with the "WE" even after the crisis and plan appropriate time and space for personal short exchange rounds ("dailies").
• Maintain the creativity that is now being lived through purposeful rituals.
• Continue to sharpen self-awareness and self-reflection. The faster it is possible to initiate the necessary measures in the next crisis.

And avoid the following:

• Return to "Business as Usual" as quickly as possible.
• Do not subordinate the newly gained "trust" to project deadlines and sales targets again.
• Trim all processes and measures for stability. True resilience comes from the interplay of flexibility and stability.

Whether the post-crisis situation is a success or a disaster for you and the employees entrusted to your care depends largely on what you do today.