Bidiversity

By Christina Ioannidis, Founder of bidiversity and CEO of Aquitude.

According to a new study by Accenture, resilience – or the ability to overcome challenges and turn them into opportunities – has been deemed as critical in the business world. Readers of my blog will be aware of my personal story, one tarnished with double redundancy and a business loss, and how I am a passionate believer of building resilience and recovering from failure to propel executives to excellence.

Accenture’s global research study entitled Women Leaders and Resilience: Perspectives from the C-Suite marks the company’s sixth consecutive celebration of the International Women’s Day global celebrations.

Accenture surveyed over 500 senior executives – including CEO’s, COO’s, CFO’s, and CHRO’s – of mid- to large-size companies in 20 countries across Europe, Asia, North America, and Latin America.

Study shows women are more resilient than men

The research highlighted that the execs surveyed believe that women are “slightly more” resilient than men. The results showed that a large variety of companies are claiming they are providing female professionals with a variety of programs aimed at developing resilience.

In fact, forty-eight percent of all respondents identified no changes in the past year to leadership programs for women. Only three percent of executives surveyed reported discontinuing leadership programs or mentoring activities. According to the research, 18 percent of organisations reported making e enhancements to leadership programs and 22 percent said they had improved and expanded their mentoring programs.

Adaptability and Flexibility are key to success

According to the diversity-focused glasshammer.com, Adrian Lajtha, Chief Leadership Officer at Accenture, states:

“Resilience – the combination of adaptability, flexibility and strength of purpose – may be the new criterion for professional advancement. In the current world of economic uncertainty and intense competitiveness, organizations that instill resilience in their up-and-coming leadership will have a clear advantage.”

Of the  leaders surveyed, 71 percent cited resilience as “very to extremely important” during succession planning and determining who to advance. Interestingly, although the study participants were almost evenly divided on the topic of who is most resilient, with only slightly more respondents indicating women were so, 60 percent revealed that their companies are providing women with career enhancing assignments and 40 percent state preparing women for senior management roles.

Teaching resilience – a possibility?

There is one key question to this research: can resilience be learnt? According to the research those surveyed believe that it can be.

“Women have to begin looking at all of these challenges they face and start turning them into opportunities. Not only does it showcase their ability to get through difficult times, but it will also prove to be key in helping younger women identify the critical behavior that is resilience,” Borrero said to the glasshammer.com. “If you feel insecure and are lacking self-confidence, identify mentors that can help because young women are looking up to you and it’s important to teach them how to be resilient; set the example.”

I would argue that traditional training programmes do not teach resilience. Traditional training and leadership development programmes provide a single or a maximum of 7-day programmes covering risk-taking, creativity and other skills-based interventions. However, anyone who has been through redundancy or a business loss will tell you you cannot just teach resilience, and boucing back, on a single training.

I believe in contextualized learning – learning on the go, really getting under the skin of what it means to have a personal, vested interest in an activity and your own personal survival strategies if it failsl but more on how to do this on my next blog.