Management and leadership are two complementary concepts that focus on different aspects of guiding and managing employees and teams. Both have an impact on the resilience of managers and employees. If concepts that promote resilience are practised in a company's management and leadership culture, this has a long-term effect on the company's performance and success.

Conversely, studies of successful companies show that the top managers of these companies apply key principles of resilient leadership and align their leadership with conflicting polarities. Top managers of successful companies also show clear aspects of pronounced resilience at an individual level. Leadership that promotes resilience should therefore not be confused with philanthropy or exaggerated humanism, but clearly serves to increase the sustainable competitiveness of a company.

How "good" managers work

Experts agree that leadership that promotes resilience aims to create neurobiological well-being in employees and to reduce and, in the best case, even avoid the development of perceived stress in the brain.
"Good" managers take care of their employees and do not permanently give them more work than they can potentially handle. They also ensure that employees have the skills and resources to cope with their tasks. They know how to channel their negative emotions and create a constructive working atmosphere to ensure the quality of work and thus maintain the resilience of employees. In this way, they give meaning to collective action and stir up positive emotions, which in turn have a positive effect on resilience.

The resilience of managers and their employees is decisively influenced by the resilience field of a department or company. This in turn has a significant impact on the performance of an organization and on corporate development as a whole. The resilience field is the result of the interaction of various internal and external factors. Social, economic and technological factors have an external impact, while aspects of corporate culture and leadership in particular shape the resilience field from within the organization. Both types of influences can either burden a company or be beneficial to its development. If you want to sustainably improve the resilience field of a team or department, it is crucial to work on different levels.

Resilience-oriented management therefore means finding a balance between positive relationships, understanding care and support on the one hand and demanding leadership with challenging goals, open communication and clear rules and expectations on the other. So if you manage to keep yourself and the people around you mentally agile, emotionally resilient and physically healthy in times of uncertainty and change, you are acting in an economically smart and prudent manner and increasing your chances of success.

The author Karsten Drath is a coach and Managing Partner at Leadership Choice. His work focuses on leadership and organizational development at top management level.