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Title: Resilience and Grit among Managers and Leaders

     Resilience (sometimes related to hardiness and grit) is something that we often talk about when referring to managers and leaders that have successfully dealt with conflict and crisis in their organizations. But questions still surround the concepts. Is it a trait? Can it be learned? Does it really affect decision making and managing people?

     Bonanno (2004) defined resilience as "… the ability of adults in otherwise normal circumstances who are exposed to an isolated and potentially highly disruptive event such as the death of a close relation or a violent or life-threatening situation to maintain relatively stable, health levels of psychological and physical functioning .. as well as the capacity for generative experiences and positive emotions" (p. 20-21). In 2005, he stated that resilience is poorly understood. Funk and Houston (1987, p. 572) defined a hardy individual to have three characteristics: (1) "commitment – a general sense of purpose or meaning;" (2) "challenge – see change not as a burden but as a normal aspect of life;" and (3) "control – feel that they can influence life events." In other words, those who are hardy have less illness because they control the way that they think about stressful situations. This opinion is supported by Crum, Salovey, and Achor (2013) who called it a stress mindset, stating that the "… stress mindset can be conceptualized as the extent wo which one holds the believe that stress has enhancing properties (stress-is-enhancing mindset) as opposed to stress-is-debilitating mindset" (p. 716).