Business Resilience

Tia Toomey, the world’s fittest woman, has won the CrossFit Games an incredible six years in a row and is undeniably a true warrior. She has also trained for the Winter Olympics in bobsledding, competed in the Summer Olympics in weightlifting, and was a Commonwealth Games gold medalist. She is, in short, one of the most accomplished and dominant athletes in human history. But for Tia physical fitness is only a small part of overall strength. More important is building mental toughness.

Adversity can often catch you by surprise and leave you struggling with what to do next. What if you could confront any adversity, from the biggest challenges - the loss of your job, divorce, health issues, bankruptcy - to normal daily challenges - a late flight, a disappointing phone call, a missed promotion, a bad day - and not just survive it, but thrive afterwards? Some people move through adversity, and others fall underneath it. Learn how you can be counted among those who will overcome.

It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day demands of your current job and lose sight of the big picture, but with a typical career spanning fifty years or more, you do so at your own peril. It's up to you to chart your own course to professional success. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the 10 most important ones to help you develop yourself, make the right career moves, navigate inevitable detours and disruptions, and turn your professional dreams into reality.

Each one of us is offered opportunities to choose between surviving and thriving, managing risk and enhancing risk, opening and closing, giving and receiving, living a balance between solitude and community. We can choose to enlarge our sense of things when pain and fear make us small. We can choose to delight in the never-ending practice of course-correcting and tuning as we go. Falling Down and Getting Up introduces listeners to their own gifts and wisdom, helping them explore the perennial practices and choice-points we all face in life.

The future of work swept in sooner than expected, accelerated by COVID-19, creating an urgent need for new maps, new mindsets, new strategies - and most importantly, a trusted guide to take us on this journey. That guide is Jeff Schwartz. A founding partner of Deloitte Consulting's Future of Work practice, Schwartz brings clarity, humor, wisdom, and practical advice to the future of work, a topic surrounded by misinformation, fear, and confusion.

Do you want to live an inspired life of sparkling adventure and achieve goals you never thought possible? Get started this morning! Coffee Self-Talk introduces an accessible, powerful routine to pair with your morning coffee so you can start every day with positivity and energy. This easy daily ritual only takes five minutes and starts with positive, uplifting thoughts to reframe the way you talk and think about yourself. By priming your brain for happiness, success, and self-love, Coffee Self-Talk helps you take control of your life.

In 2012, on his third tour of duty in Afghanistan, an improvised explosive device left Dan Crenshaw's right eye destroyed and his left blinded. Only through the careful hand of his surgeons, and what doctors called a miracle, did Crenshaw's left eye recover partial vision. And yet, he persevered, completing two more deployments. Why? There are certain stories we tell ourselves about the hardships we face—we can become paralyzed by adversity or we can adapt and overcome. We can be fragile or we can find our fortitude. Crenshaw delivers a set of lessons to help you do just that.

As a leader, you have work that is complex, full of ups and downs. Your ability to be resilient - to pick yourself up after setbacks and keep on going no matter the challenges - is critical not only to successful leadership but also to fostering teams, generating collaboration, and igniting your organization. In this breakthrough book, veteran consultants Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell show that Appreciative Inquiry can be an invaluable tool to build that resilience.

This is the first comprehensive practical book on developing emotional resilience. Pressure, stress and annoying problems are all part of life, especially at work. By developing your emotional resilience you can be bulletproof, prepare yourself against even the most challenging situations, and focus fully on achieving your goals, getting things done, moving ahead and being the best you can be.

It's official. For the first time, the World Health Organization has classified burnout as a health problem. Renowned motivational speaker Eileen McDargh proposes that to tackle it, we must learn to break out of energy-draining thoughts and behaviors. Resilience, she argues, is strictly a matter of energy management - by better managing your energy, you can both build resiliency and overcome burnout. McDargh guides the listener through the process of identifying energy drains and implementing strategies for handling them, whatever phase of life you are in.

Ed Beltran, the CEO of a powerhouse leadership communication company, believes the antidote to stressed-out workplaces starts with conversation. Beltran has developed a science-based model to reduce stress and help people build what he calls fierce resilience. By leveraging the power of conversations, individuals discover their unique stressors, master skills to neutralize stressors, and build unwavering resilience that elevates their emotional well-being.

What type of leadership is needed in a moment that demands adaptive change? Tod Bolsinger, author of Canoeing the Mountains, is uniquely positioned to explore the qualities of adaptive leadership in contexts ranging from churches to nonprofit organizations. He deftly examines both the external challenges we face and the internal resistance that holds us back. When reflection and relationships are combined into a life of deliberate practice, leaders become both stronger and more flexible.

Katrina. Haiti. BP. Fukushima. The Great Recession. Those are just a few of the catastrophic disruptions the world has endured in recent years. As we try to respond to such crises, key questions arise: What causes one system to break under great stress and another to rebound? How much change can a complex system absorb while still retaining its purpose and function? What characteristics make it adaptive to change? Provocative and eye-opening, Resilience sheds light on the nature of change.

Management teams and boards are facing disruption on all sides, from morphing customer preferences to the COVID pandemic to climate change. At the same time they are floundering in strategy confusion with too many concepts and not enough clarity. In this book, strategy expert and regular Harvard Business Review author Graham Kenny releases managers and directors from their strategy haze. His simple and effective framework allows managers to navigate the current maze of ideas and approaches and maximize their competitive advantage.

Embracing Schizophrenia is the story of Samantha Mercanti’s experience with schizophrenia. The story is light and positive, but at the same time shows the difficulties Samantha experienced, and continues to experience, in her recovery and her life. Embracing Schizophrenia is a story of struggle, strength, resilience, and hope that opens a window onto mental illness and illuminates it, so we can all understand just a little bit better.

Are you spending your energy wisely, or are you teetering on the brink of exhaustion? Whether you're an executive, an entrepreneur, or a community organizer, embodiment can help you find meaningful success in life and leadership. In The Mind-Body Way, wellness and leadership experts Courtney Amo, Dr. Julie Beaulac, and Casey Berglund use their decades of experience to reveal how tapping into the intuitive wisdom of your body makes you a better, happier leader—no matter the unique challenges of your everyday.

In 21 Days to Resilience, Dr. Zelana Montminy gives you a practical, concrete toolkit to develop your capacity to recover quickly. Each day of her powerful program, Dr. Montmimy introduces a key concept necessary to improve resiliency and enhance well-being - such as courage, focus, positivity, self-care, and social support - then provides three quick skills to accomplish. Throughout the book she teaches you lifelong skills you can continue to practice and return to as needed to keep your resiliency muscles strong.

In Choosing to Prosper: Triumphing Over Adversity, Breaking Out of Comfort Zones, Achieving Your Life and Money Dreams, celebrated company founder and finance leader Bola Sokunbi delivers an uplifting and practical message of success and resilience in the face of formidable obstacles. The book challenges listeners to examine their own financial and personal dreams and find the strength and resilience they need to achieve them. The author provides the tools listeners need to build confidence, find their voice, and realize personal growth.

Become tough as nails. Bounce back from hurt. Be Calm. Bend without ever breaking. We all get knocked down, but everyone has the choice to get back up or not. How will your life your life? The art of emotional self-defense. The Science of Emotional Resilience is the rare book that understands where you've been, the obstacles you've overcome, and what you need to make sure you are in full control of your life at all times. This is a stunningly detailed and insightful guide into our emotions, our triggers, and why we act against our own interests so frequently.

With its gripping narrative and relatable takeaways, The Grit Factor is both inspiring and pragmatic, a book that will energize and enlighten current and aspiring leaders everywhere - whether male or female.