Student # 1

N R

Resiliency in Leadership

Resilience is something widely discussed in the circles of army leaders and Soldiers. It is one of the driving forces that allows us to win our nations wars and progress forward as an organization. The book, Resilient Leaders does an excellent job deconstructing resilience and dissects it along the lines of other core army concepts that make our organization what it is.

Three Main Concepts

Concept One: Selfless Service is the Foundation of Resiliency

Selfless service is putting the welfare of the Nation, the Army, and your subordinates before yourself. Selfless service builds an inculcated network of resiliency within a leader, because with selfless service, its not about you, or what you have to gain or lose; its about the mission and the Army as a whole. Conducting yourself in a way that exuberates selflessness creates resilience through the strengthened bonds of your subordinates, because they will see in you, a quality worth following. This creates an environment where you are not alone in the challenges you might face as a leader. Being that selfless service is but one of the seven Army Values, it is important to look at the army values holistically, as the are a core aspect of the competency of character. There are also many parallels to the way Jesus led is life that was indicative of selfless service. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that part of the draw to, and followership of Jesus was due strictly to his selfless service (Plessis, 2020). Even before his death he remained resilient. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way (New International Version, 2011, Matthew 26:53-54). Even in Jesus darkest hour, and even when he could have easily escaped the grip of death, he chose selfless service, and in that calling, remained resilient to accomplish his mission, the salvation of mankind.

Concept Two: Character Drives Resiliency

LTC Dees talks a great deal about both character and selfless services but does not break down the aspects that make up character. Army Officers are evaluated on Officer Evaluation Reports (OERs). The very first block of an OER is the competency of character. There are several articles that make up character, one of which being the inculcation of Army Values within the leader. The Army Values break into the following: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. While I won’t go into a diatribe breaking down each of these, I will say that it take all of them to have character. Without loyalty to country and mission and the since of duty to carry out lawful orders, you don’t have character. Without integrity and personal courage to always do the right thing, you don’t have character. If you don’t have character, your resiliency as a leader will fall apart rapidly. This is further examined in recent studies that break down 24 characteristics of character, and demonstrates how these character traits are predictors of resilience overtime (Martínez-Martí, 2017).

Concept Three: Leaders with Authority are Subject to Accountability

The third item that I enjoyed exploring throughout the reading of this text was the idea that leaders with Authority are subject to accountability. There is tremendous pressure on leaders in both military and civilian life to make tremendously heavy choices that will have consequences. Sometimes there is no best decision but only a choice where you have to do the least amount of damage. Leaders are the ones that take accountability for everything that does or does not happen within an organization. I inadvertently found a study that evaluated the leadership styles we had previously studied that found a very significant relationship between transactional leader’s and laissez-faire leaders’ inability to handle stress overtime (Boyer-Davis, 2018). It is clear to see the relationship between resilience, selfless service, and how leadership styles can have a major impact on longevity within an organization.

References

New International Version. (2011). BibleGateway.com. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2026%3A36-56&version=NIV (Links to an external site.)

Plessis, A. L., & Nkambule, C. M. (2020). Servant leadership as part of spiritual formation of theological students in contextualisation of 21st century theological training. Hervormde Teologiese Studies, 76(2), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v76i2.5959 (Links to an external site.)

Martínez-Martí, M. L., & Ruch, W. (2017). Character strengths predict resilience over and above positive affect, self-efficacy, optimism, social support, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 12(2), 110-119. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2016.1163403 (Links to an external site.)

Boyer-Davis, S. (2018). the relationship between technology stress and leadership style: An empirical investigation. Journal of Business and Educational Leadership, 8(1), 48-65.

Dees, R. F., & North, O. L. (2013). Resilient leaders. Creative Team Publishing.

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SM

Resilience in Leadership Management

Throughout all of life’s endeavors, you will be faced with challenges and obstacles. The actions or steps that produce the mechanisms you utilize to overcome and bounce back from these events and situations are known as your resilience. As a leader and manager, you will likely experience adversity. However, as a strong and mature leader and manager, you are able to head off these situations and implement mitigation mechanisms to reduce your liability and ensure your company continues to operate and prosper forward.

Three Concepts

There are many elements that can attribute to the company or employee’s resilience. Three concepts that come to mind, for leadership and management, are understanding the life cycle of a product, project management and employee performance management. Let’s begin with product life cycle. “The product life cycle (PLC) includes four distinct stages that takes a product from introduction, through growth and maturity and then into decline” (Satterlee, 2018). Some products or services have life cycles of decades while others may be a quick burst of six to twelve months. Under either scenario, understanding the lifecycle, or projected lifecycle, will aid in your business decision.

“Product lifecycle models have been developed as tools to add longitudinal control to operational activity as it progresses” (Paton et al., 2019). Moreover, the lifecycle projection and management protect the management from entering a situation which would undermine their resilience or risk tolerance. For instance, if you have product that is expected to have a lifespan of two years and net twenty million dollars, it would not be wise to invest thirty million into a new facility for this product.

The second concept is project management. Project management is, “usually temporary, with a defined beginning and end, and is usually time-constrained, and often constrained by funding or deliverables” (Satterlee, 2018). Without a robust project management process, leaders and managers may put themselves in positions where they are unable to meet deadline or even see a concept from start to finish. “A large number of studies have been undertaken to identify most critical factors that can contribute towards project success. It is well recognized that there are many factors that may affect the project performance and project success. However, due to the resource constraints, it makes sense for project managers to focus on those most critical success factors (CSFs)” (Zuo et al., 2018).

This third concept is employee performance management. This concept can be defined as, “the process of identifying, measuring, and managing employee performance” (Satterlee, 2018). Just as the other two concepts, the resilience of leadership and management, in many cases, have direct correlations to managing employees. Therefore, if you can effectively and efficiently manage your employees, you reduce your liabilities and exposure to certain circumstances that may be harmful to your business, product or brand. “Performance management is broadly defined as a regular process of identifying, measuring and developing performance of the workforce in alignment with strategic objectives” (Menezes et al., 2019). Therefore, resilience comes from implementing safeguards and managing the processes defined for an effective and efficient employee program.

Biblical Integration

Many successful and sought-after leaders and managers have gained a following and created a name for themselves through their actions and resilience. There is a verse in Philippians that I find applicable to this scenario. “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (English Standard Version, 2016, Philippians 2:4). As a good leader and manager, you are not only worried about your image and your perception, but also those of others. Jesus died for our sins; He made the ultimate sacrifice so that we could live. I believe Jesus did just this, and had our interest ahead of His. He is the light, the way and the truth and only through Him will we ever receive true peace, happiness and fulfillment.

References

English Standard Version Bible. 2016. https://www.bible.com/bible/59/php.2.4 (Links to an external site.) (original work published 2001).

Menezes et al. (2019). Managing performance in quality management: A two-level study of employee perceptions and workplace performance. International journal of operations & production management, 1226-1259. DOI: 10.1108/IJOPM-03-2019-0207.

Paton et al. (2019). The role of the Project Management Office (PMO) in product lifecycle management: A case study in the defense industry. International Journal of Production Economics, 43-52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2018.11.002.

Satterlee, A. (2018). Principles of Management and Leadership A Christian Perspective . McGraw-Hill .

Zuo et al. (2018). Soft skills of construction project management professionals and project success factors: A structural equation model. Engineering, construction, and architectural management, 425-442. DOI: 10.1108/ECAM-01-2016-0016.