Resilience Required: Women in Leadership
Introduction
If you're a woman in a leadership role, or have your sights set on one, you've likely gathered that resilience is necessary. Unfortunately, it may be slightly less clear what that means, how you can engage in such a thing, and what advice is actually deeply unhelpful and best ignored. In this article, I'll use recently published research from scholars who study resilience in organizations. If you'd like to learn more, I encourage you to click on the links found in the Works Cited section below.
What is resilience?
As ever, it's wise to start off with some definitions to get a clearer sense of what resilience is and indeed, what it is not. Like many other concepts, resilience was considered to be another one of those magical traits you were either born with or not. Thankfully, both science and public discourse has moved away from assuming everything is formed in vitro or Manus Dei. (Although, I do feel the resurgence gathering… but that's another article for another day.) Resilience is now considered to be a process that has both psychological and social parts, and crucially something that can be developed (and so, improved). It’s also something that exists as a response to adversity. Incidentally, the frequency and shape of those adversities will also determine how you ought to approach developing your Resilience Response.
Women who work in leadership roles, broadly, need to develop more resilience and to develop it in response to adversity that looks different. In their study on resilience in female leaders, Förster, Scheuch, and Duchek remind us that "female leaders, due to persistent inequalities, prejudices, and stereotypes, especially those related to leadership, rely on their resilience not only in crisis situations but also in everyday leadership," [1].
I've added the bold font to the words 'persistent' and 'everyday' because they are key factors in understanding how women in leadership positions need a type of resilience that recognizes and responds adequately. If your plan for resilience development only deals with crises, it isn't good enough. The adversity faced by women in leadership does not look like the adversity faced by men in leadership.
Choose your metaphor
When you imagine adversity in your work life, what metaphor would best describe it? Are you picturing a linear process with one obstacle? Are you seeing a clear goal ahead while something is holding you back?
About a decade ago, researchers Carli and Eagly published an academic paper entitled Women face a labyrinth: an examination of metaphors for women leaders. One purpose of their paper was to highlight how powerful metaphors can be when illustrating concepts and influencing social judgments. It also concluded that the labyrinth metaphor was a better reflection of "the myriad obstacles that women face throughout their careers", while simultaneously acknowledging the challenges and suggesting "that women can advance to very high levels of leadership," [2].
Whether you feel like you're hitting a glass ceiling, at risk of being pushed off a glass cliff [3], are stuck to a floor, are caught in the crack of a leaky pipeline, or are wandering around a labyrinth with little to guide you, developing a Resilience Response is a requirement. While there are many things organizations can do to support this, and things society can do too - for now we'll stick with the individual level. I offer you the individual level options not because I'm a fan of the Maybe-If-You-Worked-A-Little-Harder stance à la the 'Lean In' adherents - no.
I offer you the individual level options because that is unfortunately what most of us have available insofar as making change happen.
So, let us begin within.
Internal resources
While acknowledging the systemic barriers women face at work - things that include certain stereotypes, expectations of behaviour, being excluded from networks - we can also see these practices and policies demand we make change where possible. After all, the culture, norms, and networks are part of a stable career with potential for advancement [4].
Experts [1] have identified the following six internal resources that key to women developing resilience:
achievement orientation
self-assured attitude
positive and open attitude
reflection and learning skills
analytical skills
social skills
Let's look at two of the six: {achievement orientation} and {reflection + learning skills}.
Achievement orientation
This refers to, unsurprisingly, a person's focus on goals that facilitate the development of a skill/competence. In relation to women in leadership, achievement orientation is important to maintain the ambition and perseverance required in the face of adversity. As I pointed out earlier, the adversity will show up persistently. Having a clear view of your goals and how you're working towards them is one way to help strengthen your Resilience Response.
If you haven't done so already, define your goals by starting with the question, "Do I have the knowledge and skills necessary to perform this task?" If the answer is yes, you will set a performance goal. If the answer is no, you will set a learning goal. The goal must:
be challenging and specific
have feedback on progress related to goal attainment
include ways to maintain goal commitment
have resources provided
have obstacles removed
To understand this in more detail, read (or ask your coach to) Chapter 9 - Motivate Employee Performance through Goal Setting of the very good Handbook of principles of organizational behavior. [5]
Reflection and Learning Skills
Similar to the previous section, this section is less about what and more about how. You are well aware that reflection and learning are powerful tools. The question is, are you engaging with these activities in ways that bear fruit?
With reflection, sometimes the biggest issue is making consistent time to engage with it. It really does need to be a habit in order to work well. If you don't have a current framework for reflective practice, start with a simple yet effective one such as Driscoll's Model of Structured Reflection [6]:
What? A description of the event
So what? An analysis of the event
Now what? Proposed actions following the event
This Model has 'trigger' questions which help flesh out each What. You can easily find the model and the questions online given its popularity. The key here is make time to engage in this regularly, and get into the habit of writing it down. That will help you to better understand how you are changing. And where you are repeating unhelpful patterns.
With learning, we see some similarities again with a lack of time and consistency. There are many types of learning that show up in work spaces - social learning, formal learning, self-directed, lifelong… It's a long list. Broadly speaking, make sure you are always engaged in some form of structured learning (that doesn't mean it has to be formal), and line it up with other outcomes you want to achieve. In this case, you want to develop your Resilience Response as a woman in a leadership position.
If possible, find (or create) group coaching that is focussed on learning [7]. The group would be small with 8 or fewer participants. It would have a coach whose role is to facilitate the learning process. This design means each participant will receive basic coaching instruction while experiencing equal participation, a promotion of individual self-expression, authenticity and the recognition of her inherent value. Engaging in this type of learning ticks many boxes at once:
Creating a network
Engaging in structured learning
Engaging in reflective practice
Exercising a positive and open attitude
Strengthening social skills
Final thoughts
Being a women at work comes with its own challenges. Being a woman in a leadership position compounds those challenges. You will have to face down stereotypes, assumptions, and unhelpful norms in addition to the usual crises and conflicts that come with leadership. One way to navigate this labyrinth is to develop your Resilience Response. That isn’t to suggest it will make everything immediately awesome - after all, you will still be working in a gendered apparatus designed around power relations. However, it will improve the quality of your work life and, with any luck, change the shape for those who follow in your footsteps.
“You become strong by doing the things you need to be strong for. This is the way genuine learning takes place. That's a very difficult way to live, but it also has served me. It's been an asset as well as a liability.” (Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde, 1984, page 83).
Works Cited
[1] Förster, Charlotte; Ianina Scheuch ; Stephanie Duchek, 2025 "Rising against the odds: Key lessons for promoting female leaders’ resilience". In: German Journal of Human Resource Management: Zeitschrift für Personalforschung. - © The Author(s) 2025. https://doi.org/10.1177/23970022251400578; Open Access version here
[2] Carli LL, Eagly AH (2016), "Women face a labyrinth: an examination of metaphors for women leaders". Gender in Management: An International Journal, Vol. 31 No. 8 pp. 514–527, doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/GM-02-2015-0007 (Direct quote from p. 514)
[3] Ryan, M.K. and Haslam, S.A. (2005), The Glass Cliff: Evidence that Women are Over-Represented in Precarious Leadership Positions. British Journal of Management, 16: 81-90. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00433.x
[4] Stephenson, E., Mikolajczak, G., Ryan, M., Fisher, A. N., Hayes, J., Sojo, V., Weaving, M., & Tanjitpiyanond, M. (2024). A framework for evaluating women’s leadership programmes. Evaluation, 31(1), 111-141. https://doi.org/10.1177/13563890241284626 (Original work published 2025)
[5] Locke, E. A. (Ed.). (2009). Handbook of principles of organizational behavior: Indispensable knowledge for evidence-based management. John Wiley & Sons. Free online pdf here.
[6] Driscoll J (1994) Reflective practice for practise – a framework of structured reflection for clinical areas. Senior Nurse 14(1): 47–50.
[7] Filleti, P. and Jones, R. (2025) 'Can Group Coaching Support The Career Advancement Of Women?', International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 23 (1), pp.236-251. DOI: 10.24384/vw8w-cn63 .