When you’re stressed out, your thoughts race at breakneck speed. You feel thrown off balance. And as you imagine extreme negative consequences for every scenario in your mind, you try to come up with quick solutions. As your brain start to get filled up with those negative thoughts, fear sweeps down your belly and chest, your heart starts racing, your breath gets shallower and your muscles tighten. These uncomfortable feelings eventually make you zone out with food, alcohol or mindless screen time. These reactions are all related to your “fight, flight or freeze” stress response; your body’s natural way of protecting you against threats. Over time, these reactions lead to anxiety and other mental and physical health challenges.
In the short term, stress hormones can energize you, motivate you to overcome obstacles and help you focus on the problem. But at the same time, they can you misdirect your emotions by raging at your partner, kids or coworkers.
Whether at home or in the office, emotional resilience refers to your capacity to use thought management to effectively overcome difficult moments.
Being in charge of a team when tight deadlines have to be met or tension is high (for various reasons) are examples of when emotional resilience can be helpful. Resilient leaders can easily move past difficult situations without letting them affect their performance or behavior.
What Characteristic Define Emotional Resilience in Leadership?
1. Positivity
Emotionally resilient leaders shift the label of challenges and issues from negative to positive. Research studies show that resilient people use positive emotions to rebound from and find positive meaning in stressful encounters. Achieving efficient emotion regulation is demonstrated by accelerated cardiovascular recovery as well as finding positive meaning in negative circumstances.
How to Be a More Positive Leader
- Give praise and show appreciation when it’s due
- Don’t criticize. Instead, point to your preference on how things can get done
- Give positive feedback
- Stop overthinking and overanalyzing
- Be an empathetic leader
- Practice positivity in both personal and professional life
2. Confidence
Confidence is positivity in how leaders view themselves. A confident self-image is vital to burnout prevention as it empowers leaders to take risks, preserve through challenges and manage stress effectively. Very few people succeed in business without confidence, but the most important thing is that confidence has a top-down propagation effect. A confident leader translates into a confident team and a more successful organization.
How to Be a More Confident Leader
- Focus on your strengths
- Speak with integrity and say only what you mean
- Pre-Prepare and pre-plan
- View challenges as growth opportunities
- Ask for feedback
3. Humility
Leading with humility breeds a culture of continuous learning where people don’t feel afraid to take responsibility for their actions. A humble leader acknowledges the team’s capabilities and ensures they’re being leveraged effectively. Humility in leaders leads to collective humility
among team members, boosting teams’ performance.
As compared to less humble CEOs, it is argued that humble CEOs are more likely to establish a communal power base by having integrative TMTs (Top Management Teams) – those who aspire to collective values and goals through collaboration and participative decision making.
In short, being humble and authentic about challenges increases resilience at each organizational level and help reduce burnout.
How to Be a Humble Leader
- Treat the team members with respect and integrity
- Be authentic in words and actions
- Ask how you can help employees do their job better
- Be a good listener
- Credit the team members for their contributions
- Explicitly encourage and reward professional conduct
4. Agility
Agility encourages us to recognize our emotions, both positive and negative and allows us to quickly bounce back from setbacks. A research study found that 44% of those with low resilience and low agility were at risk of burnout, compared with only 6% of highly agile and resilient employees.
How to Be an Agile Leader
- Collaborate frequently
- Communicate the goals and expectations regularly
- Get comfortable with the uncomfortable things like mistakes or difficult conversations
- Don’t be afraid to pivot if alternative solutions work better
5. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence (EQ or EI) is the ability to understand, express and regulate your own emotions and the emotions of people around you. Emotional intelligence is a strong shield against burnout.
Individuals with high emotional intelligence are able to identify their own emotions and the emotions of others and express emotions in a socially acceptable way. They understand the causes and consequences of emotions, use them to enhance their thoughts, actions, and social relationships, and regulate them when they are inappropriate for their goals or situational contexts.
A research study of 450 employees across various enterprises concluded that employees’ EI had a positive predictive effect on performance and negative predictive effect on job burnout.
How to Be a Leader with Emotional Intelligence
- Provide tangible and emotional support when it’s needed
- Practice active listening
- Empathize
- Build relationships
- Don’t overreact or take things personally
- Be enthusiastic when presenting information to others
- Put yourself is someone else’s place to understand their point of view
6. Flexibility
A flexible mindset allows for recalibration when faced with setbacks. Emotional flexibility is key to burnout prevention. The more comfortable you are with the emotion that you are feeling, the more able you’ll become to make choices that are value-based. You’ll be more adaptable, less likely to get overwhelmed by emotions and better able to cope with stress and adversity. It is critical not to try to change your emotions but experience them in an accepting and compassionate manner.
How to Be a More Flexible Leader
- Be open to new ideas
- Accept changes
- Create multiple plans and options
- Adapt your leadership style to meet the needs and dynamics of your team
- Encourage your team members to be flexible
- Stay away from micromanaging
7. A Strategic Mindset
Developing a strategic mindset helps leaders leverage their own and the team’s strengths and available resources to navigate stressful situations more effectively. It turns challenges into opportunities, boosts productivity and reduces work burnout.
How to Be a More Strategic Leader
- Don’t compare yourself or your team to others
- Assign team members to tasks and activities that align with their strengths
- Cultivate a culture of continuous learning
- Find common ground with all the stakeholders
- Ask for feedback
Burnout prevention is a top-bottom approach. Executives and leaders must develop the traits of emotional resilience as effective tools to model healthy behaviors and help themselves and employees be better prepared to navigate through stressful work situations without being burnt out.