Many challenges, simple framework.
Do you know that your ability to lead through challenging times is what makes you desirable as a leader?
Anyone can lead through the rosy times — well, most anyone. But what about when the deck is stacked against you? When competitors are nipping at your heels? When a senior leader undermines or attempts to sabotage you? When your team gets discouraged and starts making excuses for poor performance? When you inherit a role with dark clouds already on the horizon?
Step up, my friend! This is what it’s all about. I’ll tell you this: you need to become joyful in the struggle, because that is where great leaders shine. And if you are a new leader, know this — this is where great leaders are forged.
“The best leaders build resilience not in crisis, but in preparation for it.” — James Clear
The Storm
Michael was thrilled to be promoted to CEO of a real estate company. It was a dream job — one he had prepared for throughout most of his career. He had burned the candle at both ends, studied hard, worked hard, overcome fears, practiced discipline, and invested his own money in additional training and coaching.
He began assuming leadership responsibilities before he ever had the title.
Cracks in the wall had already begun to surface before he stepped into the role. Elevated from within the company, Michael was already aware of — and actively involved in navigating — a turbulent season when his promotion came:
- The COVID pandemic was still rampant
- New competitors were entering the market and successfully recruiting agents
- Legacy systems and processes were frustrating agents and staff alike
- Lawsuits were mounting with national implications
- A key senior leader was causing substantial disruption during the leadership transition
Now, this sounds like a dire situation — and it was. But there were also some remarkable things at work:
- The people were talented and genuinely good at what they did
- The company carried a strong reputation and a long track record
- The culture was solid
- They knew how to have fun
It was a great place to work, and Michael knew it. He also knew he needed to roll up his sleeves and meet the challenges head-on. The good news? He had led through adversity before.
Let’s be clear — this is Michael’s story. It is not meant to cast shade on anyone, nor to assign blame for the hard times. Its purpose is to illustrate a framework that can be applied to nearly any business situation that demands resilience. Which, frankly, is most of them.
One consistent truth in leadership is that people can have vastly different accounts of the very same event. Have you ever overheard two people describing what really happened in a car crash? I have — recently, as a passenger in one. You would have thought the two drivers were recounting two entirely different wrecks.
It is human nature to frame stories in ways that best support our own narrative. That doesn’t make it right — and it’s a habit worth fighting if we genuinely want to grow.
The Research
Michael’s situation — multiple pressures converging before he even held the title — is not an outlier. It is closer to how resilient leaders are actually made. Clinical psychologist Meg Jay has pointed to a study of 400 high-performing leaders in which roughly three out of four had endured serious hardship long before reaching the top, suggesting that hard seasons are not simply survivable — they are often the training ground. Researchers Southwick and Charney, who have studied resilience extensively, describe it as less about innate toughness and more about how someone reframes a setback, who they lean on when things get difficult, and the deliberate next step they choose to take. That aligns precisely with what made Michael’s situation workable: a strong culture, a capable team, and his own willingness to act rather than wait out the storm.
That same body of research explains why the James Clear quote holds true. Recent work on leader resilience suggests that the leaders who navigate adversity best are not those who develop coping skills in the middle of a crisis — they are the ones who had already built the habit of identifying trouble early and working through it before the pressure peaked. That is exactly what Michael had been doing for years through coaching, additional training, and stepping into responsibility ahead of his title. The car crash story reinforces this as well. Research on leadership communication during disruption indicates that how a leader frames and tells the story of a difficult season — rather than allowing competing versions to take hold unchecked — directly affects whether a team trusts the path forward and remains cohesive. The spin people put on hard moments is not simply a personality quirk to work around. It is part of the resilience equation that every leader must actively manage.
Sources: Meg Jay, The Wall Street Journal / Supernormal (2017) · Southwick & Charney, Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges (2018) · Frontiers in Psychology, Leader Resilience in Extreme Times (2025)
The Solution
Here is the resilience framework I have developed through years of coaching clients like Michael, combined with my own personal executive experience:
1. Success begins with preparation before the chaos arrives.
Hard work and determination may seem like outdated concepts to some — I stand by both and will continue to coach accordingly. Leadership skills are better developed when you invest the time to prepare. This step deserves some attention, because it is half the battle:
- Discover and begin to communicate your Mission, Vision, and Principles. This is foundational work, and it is a significant challenge for many leaders because it requires slowing down to think and reflect. What is your purpose in this season of leadership? Where are you and your organization headed? What principles are non-negotiable? How does your faith factor in? Are you living what you say you believe — and are you modeling the actions and mindset you want your team to adopt?
- Seek a mentor or coach who leads the way you want to lead. I was fortunate to have a few, but none more influential than my first non-family mentor, David McWilliams. He prioritized God, family, country, and company — in that order. The most important things went on his calendar first, in every area of life. He was loved by many, mentored hundreds, and influenced thousands. He lived generously and did right by people, even while navigating serious personal challenges of his own. I wish I could convince everyone to seek mentorship. A client of mine resisted getting a mentor for years. She was talented, driven, and convinced she could figure it out alone. It was not until she hit a wall when the market shifted that she finally said yes to coaching. Within six months, she called it the single best professional decision she had ever made. Do not wait for the wall. And it doesn’t even necessarily need to be paid coaching – just find someone with deep domain experience in what you want to do.
- Find resources that will sharpen your thinking during downtime. What are you reading? What are you listening to? For me, it gradually became less music and far less national news — and more leadership podcasts and audiobooks from credible, proven sources. There is a great deal of noise out there, along with plenty of shortcuts that promise easy answers. I have watched many people attempt to shortcut the leadership journey and crash as a result. Do the work. Go deep.
2. Begin leveling up your leadership responsibilities now.
If you want to accelerate your development as a leader, here is the one real shortcut — if you would even call it that. Start taking on leadership tasks at a level above your current role before the promotion arrives. When I was in sales, I offered to lead team meetings whenever my broker/owner or sales manager was unavailable. When I became a sales manager, I looked for tasks my leader preferred not to handle. As a VP, I stepped into a key leadership role when most of the executive team was out of town and COVID shifted overnight from a concern to “everyone go home.” Opportunity is rarely announced. You have to claim it.
3. Scan the horizon for both opportunities and threats.
As a leader, managing from fear is a trap — and an easy one to fall into when you are constantly focused on avoiding risk. I would argue for the opposite approach: test early and test often. Move quickly toward solutions for problems you see forming on the horizon, without disrupting the business, and get as close to the front line as possible when validating your assumptions.
I coach a team leader who runs a real estate team in South Florida. He now makes it a habit to get in the pool with his team and conducts more open houses than anyone else. He is also a lifelong learner dedicated to improving his skills and models this with his team each day. He takes components of our framework and tests continually in his market to see what is more likely to secure business. He walks the walk and brings the intelligence back to his team so they could benefit from collective wisdom and improve more rapidly.
4. Build relationships intentionally and authentically — both inside and outside the organization.
If you are building relationships simply to get what you want, you are missing the point entirely. If you are building them to genuinely connect with others and help them get what they want, you are doing it right. And as my pastor often says, the fake version of you is already doing just fine — be real. You also need relationships beyond your immediate organization. Sometimes the wisdom and perspective you need most cannot be found inside your office, your warehouse, or your field. The people you can rely on outside the organization often have an outsized impact on your results.
5. Listen to understand, then communicate your understanding, then decide — and always communicate the why behind the decision.
You will not achieve consensus on every decision you make, and that is acceptable. I faced difficult calls around legacy systems and policies that were driving attrition in a company I led. Some felt the decisions were too aggressive; others felt they did not go far enough. What I know is this: we resolved the attrition issue without sacrificing return on net revenue. Big credit to my CFO at the time for the sensitivity analysis and assistance in evaluating options.
One of my coaching clients, a sales leader in northeast Florida, faced a divided team following a significant policy update. Half the team viewed it as the right move. The other half felt it was unfair. This leader did not simply announce the decision and move on. She held individual conversations with each person, reflected back what she heard, explained her reasoning clearly, and followed up two weeks later to check in. The team did not unanimously embrace the decision — but they respected how it was handled. That distinction matters far more than most leaders realize.
6. Be the CALM in the storm when emotions run hot.
This is an ongoing test of a leader’s emotional intelligence. It is not about being a robot devoid of feeling — it is about keeping your composure, gathering complete information before you respond, and refusing to escalate a tense situation.
C — Collect information
A — Assess what you know
L — Lay out a plan
M — Move forward
Here is a brief example. I coached an agent through a volatile negotiation on a luxury sale. One afternoon, it came to a head on a phone call – raised voices, insults, zero progress. It stalled out and I had some time with the agent prior to the next discussion. My advice was simple. The next meeting needed to be face to face, and she needed to run through the CALM process beforehand. And instead of lay out a plan, it was lay out options. When the group reconvened, she asked the other agent where he thought things went sideways. This satisfied ego and brought down defenses. It turned out all wanted the same outcome — they simply disagreed on the path to get there. That is CALM in action.
7. Evaluate the actions and the results.
What went well? What would you do differently? Do not skip this step — it is where the real growth happens. This might also be the key step in resilience. Once you write down what you would do differently, accept it as the lesson and move on and quit beating yourself up over it.
8. Understand that mistakes and adversity do not define you — you grow through them.
You will be better prepared to lead and serve others because of what you faced, not in spite of it. Here is another key: celebrate wins together and authentically, and bring that same authenticity to evaluating the misses. Leaders are often told to take full responsibility for the losses and defer all credit for the wins to the team. I understand the intent, and I operated that way for years. The problem is that it was not entirely authentic. On the misses, the buck absolutely stops with you — that does not change. But your team consists of capable, experienced professionals. It is simply the reality of business that not everything comes up aces. Honor your team by trusting them to carry a share of both.
The Point
Here is the bottom line: resilience is not a personality trait you either have or you do not. It is a skill set you build, a mindset you cultivate, and a decision you make before the storm ever arrives. Michael did not walk into that CEO role on luck — he walked in prepared. “Reluctantly coached” did not turn the corner because things got easier — she turned it because she finally said yes to gaining outside perspective. South Florida leader did not outmaneuver his competitor by being smarter — he did it by staying close to the people doing the work. And luxury agent did not defuse that room because she was naturally calm — she did it because she had a strategy. Every one of those outcomes reflects a learnable behavior. That is the entire point of this framework. You do not need perfect conditions to become a great leader — you need sound preparation, the right mindset, and the willingness to step up when it counts. The storm is coming for all of us. The only question is whether you will be ready when it does.
Further Reading
If this framework resonates with you, these two books belong on your leadership shelf:
Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn by John C. Maxwell
Maxwell reframes failure as one of the most powerful teachers available to a leader. If you have ever struggled to find resilience in a loss or a setback, this book gives you both the language and the lens to turn it into fuel. It pairs directly with Steps 7 and 8 of this framework and is one I recommend to nearly every client I work with.
The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday
Drawing on Stoic philosophy and modern examples from athletes, military leaders, and executives, Holiday argues that the very obstacle blocking your path is often the path itself. It is a concise read with lasting impact, and it maps directly to the mindset behind scanning the horizon and building resilience before you need it.