Written by Lars Friedrich, Leadership Expert
Lars Friedrich, a seasoned expert in personal and professional leadership development, brings a unique 'Touch of Zen' to his approach. This distinctive method, honed over a proven track record of over three decades, sets him apart in the field and piques his curiosity.
Resilience as a skill is depletable. Without persistence as an improvable personality and character trait and the ability to take a course of action, all-built resilience as a skill often leads to nothing.
These statements are particularly factual in fast-moving, high-stakes environments where inconsistent execution can generate catastrophic results.
The over-saturated resilience fallacy
For several reasons, resilience has become a hyped and overused buzzword, especially in professional personal and leadership development settings in today's entrepreneurial and corporate business environments.
The topic of resiliency is frequently and repeatedly publicised as 'Resilient Leadership' or 'Leadership Resilience' by numerous claimed experts in articles, books and podcasts.
Additionally, it is artfully verbalised during interviews, keynotes, and TEDx talks and diversely marketed via coaching, master courses, classes, and programs, leading to an over-saturated discourse.
But.
The frequent use of the term 'resilience' has sadly led to a focus on theoretical approaches rather than practical applications.
When doing so, most of these textbook approaches often confuse and interchange resilience with persistence, paving the way for misunderstanding, and even fallacy.
"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do" – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
This quote expresses one of the most essential truths of leadership, especially for executives, leaders and entrepreneurs in dynamic business environments:
Knowledge doesn't equal character, capacity and ability!
Definitions for clarity
For more clarity and to avoid further confusion and misunderstanding about the meaning and differences between resilience and persistence, their agreed-upon definitions in professional settings are:
Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties and mentally or emotionally cope with a crisis or return to pre-crisis status quickly, commonly known as 'bouncing back.'
It's a skill that involves using mental processes and behaviours to promote personal assets and protect oneself from the potential adverse effects of stressors.
Still, it also depends on the individual's capacity and limitations.
Persistence, on the other hand, is not a skill but a personality and character trait that means continuing an opinion or course of action despite difficulty or opposition.
In addition, persistence refers to the skill of perseverance despite physical, emotional, or mental fatigue or frustration when experiencing setbacks.
The significant difference
While resilience helps people to bounce back when knocked off course, persistence keeps them going when the going gets tough.
They're both crucial aspects of the same drive to move forward and to keep pushing despite the challenges and the often accompanying setbacks!
Persistence is about steadfastly refusing to give up or let go; without it, people won't be able to be persistent.
However, this is a significant factor in achieving results and driving change.
Without persistence as a character trait and the ability to take a course of action, all-built resilience as a depletable skill leads to nothing!
Because persistence fuels resilience, drives people forward, and enables them to achieve their goals!
""For every obstacle, there is a solution. Persistence is the key. The greatest mistake is giving up!" – Dwight David 'Ike' Eisenhower
With active practice and repetition, personal and leadership development can teach skills.
However, it may only transfer to the desired action with specific personality traits, like persistence, to fuel the interest and energy.
Facing a rainstorm
These insights about the importance and necessity of practice for building resilience and, more importantly, improving persistence have been confirmed many times in my personal and professional life during the last:
44 years of self-leadership as an active practitioner of traditional Japanese martial, medical, and spiritual arts.
37 years leading, training, guiding, and motivating others in international military, governmental, corporate, and entrepreneurial business environments.
As a result, the expertise gained and transferred to the personal and leadership development of executives, leaders, and entrepreneurs means:
If they haven't done something in practice, they're less likely to adapt under stress because it hasn't been stress-tested.
Then it's like facing a rainstorm without knowing how to use an umbrella!
How to build persistence
Numerous research studies have shown that people can regulate their personalities to exhibit the desired behaviour, as it is possible to change character traits through persistent intervention.
"Persist and resist." - Epictetus
This change is either driven by being intrinsically motivated to expend and expand the emotional labour or by being significantly triggered by sudden external life events, e.g., disease, surviving accidents, and so forth.
While external life events are obviously beyond personal and leadership development control, improving persistence as a character trait is a manageable individual task.
The secret to this task is an intrinsic motivation for repeated intentional practice with some steps like:
Taking a daily step without fail and excuses, even just a small one.
Setting a reasonable pace for that step so as not to exhaust or burn out.
Being patient and giving things time, particularly in personal and leadership development.
Being self-aware and looking for different approaches and solutions to reach an individual goal
Recalling past experiences of successfully getting things done because of intended and repeated personal actions.
Continuously keep going and failing forward, even if only mentally, regardless of adversity and probable setbacks.
Because improving persistence requires the determination to stick with something until we achieve our desired outcome and resist the temptation to stop when things get complicated and challenging!
Additionally, improving persistence is not about being stubborn or inflexible but having a growth or infinite mindset and believing that we can learn, grow, and improve with intentional effort and repeated practice.
Persistence instead of resilience
Many persistent executives, leaders, and entrepreneurs have found more ways than most to practice these character and personality traits throughout their lives.
Intentionally or not!
But if they only improve their resilience, the demands and challenges of their business environment will suck their physical, emotional, and mental resources dry, often displayed by numerous cases of exhaustion and burnout.
It's like stirring the wheel of their lives with an empty tank!
Which will get them nowhere!
Because it solely focuses on building and improving resilience.
Executives, leaders, and entrepreneurs won't have enough raw materials to build new, more substantial structures as lasting foundations.
Bearing this metaphor of raw materials in mind, it's evident why.
Resilience as a skill is depletable, and without persistence as an improvable personality and character trait and the ability to take a course of action, all-built resilience as a skill often leads to nothing.
That’s the reason why most resilient-based mindsets are, in fact, fixed mindsets!
Excellence and persistence
For personal and leadership development, persistence plays a vital role!
"Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time." - Marabel Morgan
And in this context, it's important to note that excellence is not perfection!
Because, unlike perfection, excellence is not an exception but a prevailing attitude, and pursuing excellence is not a one-time achievement but a constant process of organic improvement only limited by an individual's capacity and ability.
This insight brings us back to the persistence of executives, leaders, and entrepreneurs full circle.
Where all improvements in character and personality depend on intrinsic motivation fuelled by a growth or infinite mindset.
Lars Friedrich, Leadership Expert
Lars Friedrich, a seasoned expert in personal and professional leadership development, brings a unique 'Touch of Zen' to his approach. This distinctive method, honed over a proven track record of over three decades, sets him apart in the field and piques his curiosity.
With a career that has spanned from being a former Officer and Special Forces Operator to a COO in international and intercultural corporate business operations and development positions, and now as the founder of his boutique business, Lars has accumulated a wealth of practical leadership, resilience, discipline, motivation, endurance, commitment, persistence, and dedication.
