“How can we get people to be more resilient?”
The question came from a school leader. My first instinct was to think, perhaps we could just be a little kinder?
I thought about the team I was leading, the extraordinary circumstances some of them were managing at home, and how remarkable it was that they still showed up each day. For some, as I’ve experienced myself, work can become a source of hope, motivation, stability, connection, and purpose when other parts of life feel as though they’re tumbling down.
The call to be resilient has become one of the most common refrains in leadership, especially in education, where the pressures on both organisations and individuals are immense.
School leaders often describe the growing complexity and emotional weight of safeguarding referrals and the ongoing support many children need as among the most demanding parts of their work.
So the more I hear the word resilience, the more uncomfortable I become with it. Not because resilience doesn’t matter, but because of what it’s come to represent.
The way we talk about resilience often conceals as much as it reveals. It sounds like empowerment, but in practice it can become a subtle form of blame, shame, and self-criticism.
So why is the notion of resilience, as we usually frame it, so flawed?
1. It individualises what is often systemic
When we tell leaders to “build resilience,” we shift the responsibility for coping entirely onto them. It becomes the leader’s job to bounce back from overload, toxic accountability, or impossible expectations, instead of asking why the system keeps depleting people in the first place.
Resilience, in this sense, can mask structural problems. It keeps the focus on personal endurance rather than collective responsibility.
2. It glorifies endurance over awareness
Resilience is often equated with toughness, the ability to keep going no matter what.
But this interpretation rewards suppression, not reflection. Leaders learn to override signs of fatigue, frustration, or doubt, the very emotions that could offer valuable information and insights about what we need to accept as unchangeable, what’s possible and could change, and what is uncertain that through being curious we can plan for.
Learning doesn’t start with pushing through, it starts with noticing. From recognising what our experience is telling us and responding with curiosity, care, wisdom, and courage.
3. It’s static and performative
Resilience is usually treated as a trait, something we either have or can develop. But this makes it static, even performative. Leaders learn to look resilient, to appear composed, even when they’re depleted.
Ontological coaching invites us into something far more dynamic: second-order learning, the kind that helps us see not just how to manage challenges, but how to shift the very way we observe the world around us, interpret and orientate around challenges.
4. It can be quietly shaming
The mythology of resilience can make leaders who are struggling feel inadequate or weak. It silences vulnerability.
As @Brené Brown reminds us, courage isn’t about staying upright; it’s about learning to rise. It’s about acknowledging the fall, feeling it fully, and using it as a source of learning. That’s where leadership deepens.
5. It misses the point of thriving
As Alan Sieler describes in Ontological Coaching, the real work of leadership is not about withstanding pressure indefinitely, it’s about cultivating resourcefulness.
Resourcefulness is our capacity to live and work well and understanding the roles of our language, emotions, and body. It’s not about meeting other people’s standards of strength, but about finding coherence and wellbeing in our own way of being.
Where resilience looks backward (“how did I recover?”), resourcefulness looks forward (“how do I live and lead well, whatever arises?”).
Towards something more human
Can we let go of the cult of resilience?
We don’t need leaders who can simply bounce back. We need leaders who can pause, reflect, learn, and reconnect, with themselves, their purpose, and each other.
That’s where leadership becomes sustainable.
That’s where growth happens.
That’s being fully human.