The Power of Bouncing Back: Helping School Leaders Build Resilience 

As a school leader, your team looks to you not only for guidance through challenges but also as a model for how to manage setbacks. They pay attention to not just the speed of your recovery but also how you handle yourself during the process. In the ever-changing world of education, being resilient means quickly recovering, learning and adapting in a way that demonstrates confidence and calm to those around you.  

Why Resilience matters 

Resilience ensures that when challenges arise, you respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively. It allows you to maintain focus on the bigger picture and keep your school moving forward, while at the same time setting the tone for your team. When you model calm, quick recovery from setbacks, it encourages others to do the same. 

Here are a few practical ways to build resilience in your leadership team 

Start with Self-Awareness 

Resilience begins with understanding how you respond to stress and setbacks. Developing your own self-awareness and encouraging it in your team can be a powerful first step. Why not try this activity on your own or during your next leadership meeting: 

Activity 1: Stress Response Reflection 

– Reflect on a recent setback e.g. a missed target or a challenging meeting. 

– Consider or write down how you felt and responded in the moment. 

– Reflect on these yourself or discuss them as a team, identifying patterns in how you typically respond to stress. 

This exercise will help you gain clarity on your natural reactions, which is the first step towards choosing more resilient responses in the future. 

Create a culture of ‘What Went Right’  

When setbacks happen, our brains tend to focus on what went wrong, after all it’s what has kept us humans alive so long! But, shifting that focus to what went right can significantly speed up recovery. 

 Activity 2: After-Action Positives 

– After any challenging event or project, have a quick debrief on your own or with your team. 

– Reflect on or invite people to share one thing that went well, no matter how small. 

– Then, explore what can be learned from those positives and how they can be replicated in the future. 

This activity helps to foster an optimistic mindset, making it easier to see challenges as positive opportunities for growth rather than unpleasant, insurmountable obstacles. 

Embrace the power of perspective 

When setbacks occur, it’s easy to get bogged down in the here and now of how you’re feeling. Taking a step back, or helping your team to do the same and look at the bigger picture can restore calm and focus. 

Activity 3: The 5-Year Lens 

– When facing a setback, ask yourself or your team, “Will this matter in 5 years?” 

– Reflect or encourage discussion about long-term goals and how this particular challenge might actually contribute to achieving them. 

You can, of course, change the timescale to best suit you or your team, but whatever length of time you choose, this strategy is excellent for helping to gain perspective, reducing the emotional weight of setbacks and allowing for quicker recovery. 

Building Resilience as a Team 

Setbacks will always be part of the leadership journey, but how you respond to them makes all the difference. By incorporating activities that promote self-awareness, positivity and help to uncover fresh perspectives, you can create a leadership culture that bounces back quickly and keeps moving forward. With these tools, not only will you become a more resilient leader, but you’ll inspire your team to do the same.

Resilience, like any skill, gets stronger the more you practise it and as author Stephen R. Covey said…

“Setbacks are inevitable; misery is a choice”