Resilience is More Than Surviving - It's About Thriving Through Challenges

What does it really mean to be resilient as a leader? Too often, resilience is mistaken for simply “toughing it out.” 

In reality, it’s about cultivating the sustained energy and adaptability that allow you not just to survive setbacks, but to emerge stronger from them.

In this episode of Leadership Traits Decoded, Cynthia Kyriazis and Drea Martin unpack the science and practice of resilience. They reveal why resilience isn’t a trait you can master through technical training - it requires a holistic approach that bridges both professional and personal life.

Listeners will discover practical strategies for developing resilience, from building recovery and reflection time into daily routines to reframing failures as learning opportunities and focusing energy on what you can control. 

The hosts also explore how resilience connects directly to organizational culture: trust, communication, and support systems create the conditions for leaders and teams to thrive under pressure.

For those who struggle with self-reflection, Cynthia and Drea highlight valuable tools - from data-driven assessments like The Crucible and Sageforge.ai to leaning on trusted colleagues, family, or coaches for perspective and accountability. T

heir key insight? Resilience isn’t built in isolation. It grows through intentional design, external feedback, and supportive relationships across all areas of life.

You’ll Learn:

•  Why resilience is more than “bouncing back” - it’s about thriving through challenges
•  How reframing failures builds mental endurance
•  Practical ways to design recovery time and preserve energy
•  Why resilience requires both personal habits and cultural trust at work
•  How tools and coaching can support leaders who struggle with self-reflection
•  The importance of leaning on family, friends, and colleagues in resilience-building. 

Whether you’re navigating daily stress or unexpected crises, this episode offers a blueprint for strengthening resilience - in leadership and in life.

Ready to explore your leadership traits? Connect with us on LinkedIn or visit www.plllab.com to see how we transform leadership intelligence into return-driven action.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing Leadership Traits Decoded
• 1:09 Defining Resilience in Leadership
• 3:00 Building Mental Endurance
• 4:52 Resources for Developing Resilience
• 7:54 Trust and Communication
• 8:56 Episode Closing and Takeaways

Transcript

Cynthia Kyriazis: 0:03

Welcome to Leadership Traits Decoded. I'm Cynthia Kyriazis, Chief Experience Officer at the Culture Think Tank.

Drea Martin: 0:10

And I'm Drea Martin, Chief Operating Officer of the Crucible. We are collaborative partners at Performance Leadership Learning Lab, where we transform leadership intelligence into return-driven action.

Cynthia Kyriazis: 0:22

Today, we're unpacking the leadership traits essential for building, investing in and scaling successful companies. Our insights come directly from data-driven metrics within our platform's solution, so let's dive in.

Drea Martin: 0:37

All right, hello. How are you, cynthia?

Cynthia Kyriazis: 0:39

Hello Drea, I'm fine. How are you doing?

Drea Martin: 0:41

Yeah, all good here.

Cynthia Kyriazis: 0:43

How's your doggy?

Drea Martin: 0:45

Oh, great Hanging today. Yes, hopefully you will not hear any barking, so keep us updated. You can send complaints to Cynthia, not to me.

Cynthia Kyriazis: 0:56

Thank you so much for that. Yeah, of course, we had a discussion about discussing a certain trait today, of which I have personal opinions, but not a lot of experience in it from a professional viewpoint. I know you're the queen of this, and the topic today is going to be about resilience. Wonderful, all right. So launch into some of the benefits, drea, and then tell us all about it.

Drea Martin: 1:20

Yeah, so we can start by kind of defining resilience and just a general kind of sustained energy or maybe like bounce back speed of like, when things take you down, the ability to reframe and see them a certain way and jump back from them.

Cynthia Kyriazis: 1:56

That's a great definition. What about those of us who don't bounce back? We can't necessarily get quite to what it was you just described.

Drea Martin: 2:04

That's difficult. Resilience is definitely one of those. I know we talked about empathy recently. It's another one where it's there isn't a lot of tactical training that you can do. It seems to be more one of those where you have to lean on other areas in order to kind of learn and strengthen and train yourself to be able to look at things like that. There's a few different ways someone could get at kind of building more of that mental capacity to handle pressure. And part of that too is looking at other aspects of your life where you can account for and build in more adaptability to be able to bring that to the day-to-day at work.

Drea Martin: 2:39

This is one, I'd say, where it's not just in the workplace that you can kind of improve on it like many things, but there's also things you can do outside of work, like building more recovery into your routine and looking at how you can present yourself in a way to prioritize everything else in your life so that you are showing up at full capacity when it matters most. That's a big one. Another aspect is kind of training that mental endurance most. That's a big one. Another aspect is kind of training that mental endurance. So it's looking at what do you have to reframe in terms of not letting failures feel like huge setbacks, looking at how you can learn from things and, on the other hand, looking at what can you control and controlling the controllables and then letting the rest be lessons and learning and opportunities. How's that sound? Any ideas on your side to have kind of developed resilience?

Cynthia Kyriazis: 3:28

It sounds very complete, drea. What hit me as you were speaking to it was it's much of what they say, or I feel it's much of what they say to people who are really overloaded or stressed. They tell them take a step back, see what you can let go of, focus on what you can do. Maybe that's a part of getting you to resilience is understanding that if we're in a level of what we consider overload or a level that is beyond us, remaining calm and marching on, maybe we need to take a step back and look about what we can peel off, and that doesn't come very easily to especially type A personalities. They want to check it off that list, they want to make sure they're responsible and they meet that timeline, but the truth is it's about self-regulation, isn't it?

Drea Martin: 4:15

It is. That's the thing. So there's so much else going on, because the tough part with resilience is it isn't just do more of this. Instead, it's much more about how can you figure out maybe doing less or doing more of the things that you really need in that time, so that you don't just survive challenges, but rather you're fueled and you get sharper and stronger and learn from what you've been through. And that's resiliency, that fine tuning of you, can't just train this one thing more. Instead, it's how can you look at every other aspect and figure out how do I show up better so that I have the flexibility to be resilient?

Cynthia Kyriazis: 4:52

This sounds great and I know it works, but what happens if you're an individual who does not do well with self-reflection? What do you do if you're not somebody that can really pull yourself out of it or even recognize what to do to pull yourself out of it? What would be the alternative to that?

Drea Martin: 5:09

And I think that's an important.

Drea Martin: 5:11

Not everyone is super self-aware, and sometimes even the tough part is when you're not super self-aware.

Drea Martin: 5:16

It's hard then to catch some of these things or see them for yourself, but that's the benefit of working with other people, right?

Drea Martin: 5:23

So rely on everyone around you and not to like put it on them, but rather pay attention to feedback. Maybe there's patterns that you aren't listening for because they're not things you're keenly aware of or see for yourself, and then use tools like would be remiss if I didn't bring up Crucible but use a tool like that that shows you your traits. Use a tool like SageForge Together if you're looking for something that captures more of the company culture aspect in it too. Use these resources that help you get data behind what's actually going on, and then coaching support of somebody who's trained to help you build that awareness. So I think it's often tough when you look at this and say how do I do this by myself? But it's important to remember this isn't something you have to do alone. In fact, it'll probably be done way better if it's something that you do using resources that are built to help you develop beyond any type of self-awareness that would be required to build and find these resources.

Cynthia Kyriazis: 6:23

Yeah. And there's the resources that will give you the data about it, right Information about it. Then there's the resources you know a really good friend, a mate, a partner, a husband, wife, that you can go to and say, hey, I need to do something around this because they know you well. And then there's the resources of at work to just find out, maybe from others, how do you do this, how do you get past X, y, z and continue to function? It's just looking at and broadening the viewpoint, the view of how can I become more resilient around this type of thing. And it may be, it could be anything, it could be workloads, it could be all kinds of stress at work, all kinds of unexpected. Oh yes, the unexpecteds are always a great test of resilience and we have plenty of those going on.

Drea Martin: 7:09

I'm glad you bring up the at-home part, partners, people around you, their trusted loved ones because that is an important like we talked about, resilience is more than, and what contributes to, your workplace. Resilience is your ability to adjust your home situation. So reach out to people if there's ways that you can get support from others around you. That isn't learning from them, which is what you should be doing at work, and then hopefully, some of your loved ones too, learning from what you can, but also that notion of what can you take off your plate and sometimes, if you can't see it, talk to people around you every day and see what's possible there.

Cynthia Kyriazis: 7:44

Yes, talking to colleagues or even your boss is a great approach. I just want to reiterate that, right after communication as a cultural dimension, the second thing is trust. So, if it is something you are struggling with and it is important enough to you, or there is some kind of pressure around it for you resolving this, just make sure that whoever you choose to speak with you trust that individual, just as you would trust a loved one that you want to go in it, knowing that they are also there for you and to help you build this muscle that you have identified. You don't have or want to improve, so good point. Any takeaways for today?

Drea Martin: 8:22

Oh, good question. I think I like this perspective of like it's a full life thing, it's not just a one environment, that it's more about how all your environments play together to let you show up at your fullest and at your best capacity and potential. So that's probably my takeaway about resilience and how it's developed and all that. What about you?

Cynthia Kyriazis: 8:43

I think that you said it well enough for both of us, Drea. That was a really awesome statement and very in tune statement, so we will leave our listeners with that and if they have any questions, they know how to reach us. Thank you, talk next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of Leadership Traits Decoded. You'll be able to find all our episodes on the Performance Leadership Learning Lab website at wwwplllabcom or you can listen on your favorite streaming platform.

Drea Martin: 9:14

We'll be back soon to explore the next essential trait. Until then, feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn if you have any questions or ideas.