Resilience Isn’t Endurance. It’s Agency.
Many leaders aren’t struggling because they’re incapable.
They’re struggling because they’re enduring jobs that keep asking for more and giving back less.
The hidden cost is brutal: sleep, diet, exercise, relationships, health, and eventually confidence suffer.
I see this pattern often in my work.
A recent coaching client told me they felt they had no life.
They were in a senior role with a team. They cared deeply about the work and about their people. Yet the workload kept mounting. They were sacrificing everything on the altar of work. They raised the issue with their boss more than once. Their boss listened, but nothing changed.
At that point, endurance can get mislabelled as “resilience”.
As in: “I can take it.” “I just need to push through.”
But endurance is often the thing that keeps good people stuck in conditions that are quietly breaking them.
Over several coaching sessions, we explored how they could reclaim their life without abandoning their standards or their sense of responsibility. We used assessment tools to clarify what genuinely motivated them, where their natural strengths lay, and where some blind spots were quietly making the load heavier.
There were a few “aha” moments that changed the emotional weather. One of the simplest was also the most revealing: they chose not to work across a long weekend. When they came back, they felt noticeably more alive. Not because the situation had improved, but because their nervous system had finally had space to recover.
Over time, a harder realisation emerged.
External factors were not going to change. The organisation would continue to ask for more. Support would continue to be promised and not delivered.
Eventually, they realised something painful but liberating: the system wasn’t going to change fast enough to save them. So the only lever left was agency.
That’s where the conversation shifted. From “How do I keep enduring this?” to “What do I choose next?”
From survival to self-leadership.
In the end, they chose to leave. They are much happier as a result.
Since 2009, I’ve worked with many people who persist too long in unfulfilling roles. When they do make a change, it’s rarely a dramatic leap. It’s usually a sequence of resilient moves: noticing the truth, rebuilding self-awareness, putting boundaries back in place, and making choices that align with what matters most.
Their biggest regret? Not acting sooner!
Here’s the distinction I keep seeing:
- Endurance says: “I can take it."
- Resilience says: “I can recover and adapt.”
- Agency says: “I can choose what happens next.”
Resilience is more than accepting what’s happening to you. It’s also about taking back control of your life, sometimes by making decisions that are uncomfortable in the short term and life-giving in the long term.
That theme comes through powerfully in four conversations on the Leading People podcast (three guests, with Julie Brown returning for a second appearance). I’ll link to each episode below, as usual.
Karen Northshield shows what it looks like to reclaim agency when life dramatically changes the rules. Julie Brown shows how to pivot without losing yourself. Marie-Hélène Pelletier, PhD, MBA shows how to turn resilience into a plan instead of a slogan.
Treat resilience like a strategy, not an intention
Marie-Hélène Pelletier’s framing is practical and refreshing. Many high-performing professionals assume resilience is about “being strong” or “pushing through”. She argues it is far more useful to build a personal strategic resilience plan, the way an organisation would plan a product launch.
Marie-Hélène is the author of The Resilience Plan
A key tool she shares is deceptively simple: a one-page inventory of demand vs supply. Leaders tend to minimise demand and overestimate supply. When you make it explicit, the picture changes.
She also challenges a common trap: the gap between what we say we “should” do to stay well, and what we actually do.
Practical takeaway: Do a quick demand/supply audit and build 2–3 resilience “pillars” that you protect. Keep it manageable so it becomes action, not guilt.
“If all we do is say ‘I should do the things’, we don’t do the things, and it doesn’t work.”
Stop waiting to be rescued, reclaim agency
Karen Northshield’s story is extraordinary – she was badly injured in a terrorist suicide bombing - but her message translates directly into leadership and work.
Karen is the author of Dans le souffle de la bombe/ Weggeblazen door de bom
She describes how easy it is to slip into a state of expectation, waiting for someone else to bring the solution. Then she describes the shift: the moment you decide you have to become the actor and reclaim agency, even if you don't feel ready.
She also frames resilience as meaning-making: not denying what happened but accepting it and choosing what you will do with it, day by day.
Practical takeaway: Ask: “Where am I waiting for something external to change?” Then choose one step you can own this week to take back control.
“At a certain point, you have to be the one to be the actor and decide what is good for you.”
https://leadingpeople.buzzsprout.com/1496338/episodes/8759013-how-to-be-more-resilient
Find your pivot, then rebuild step by step
Julie Brown’s resilience lens is especially relevant for leaders because it connects life disruption to organisational disruption.
Her concept of a pivot is memorable: a pivot has a solid pole. Values and lived experience stay, even when behaviours and direction need to change.
Julie is the author of Discover Your Pivot
Julie has also been a guest on Leading People twice, and it’s been powerful to hear how her thinking has evolved over time, especially following the tragic death in Greenland of her husband, Dixie Dansercoer, a renowned Polar explorer.
She also talks about shrinking the time horizon. After loss, she describes taking life back “into footsteps”, one moment of each day, and temporarily giving up long-term planning.
And she points to something leaders often forget: resilience becomes more sustainable when it is shared. Collaboration matters, especially through hard seasons.
Practical takeaway: When life or work goes sideways, return to your “pole”: your values and identity. Then choose the next step you can stand behind.
“A pivot allows us to make effective change with a solid support behind us.”
A simple workplace definition
Put these three conversations together, and you get a practical definition:
Resilience is the capacity to stay in reality, reclaim agency, and build a workable plan that protects what matters.
Not just endurance. Not just positivity. Not just acceptance.
Agency.
One small experiment for this week
If you feel stretched right now, test out this three-step reset:
- Demand vs supply (10 minutes): list 10 demands on you, then list what actually replenished you in the last two weeks. Be honest.
- Your Pivot Pole: write the three values you refuse to trade away.
- One Act of Agency: choose one boundary, decision or action you will take this week, even if the system stays the same.
Two reflection questions
- Where am I calling endurance “resilience” right now?
- What decision have I been postponing because I’m hoping the context will change first?
Want to explore this further?
If any of this resonates, you may not need more willpower. You may need more clarity.
At Wide Circle, we help leaders and organisations build practical capability in three areas:
- Talent Insights (getting the right people in the right roles)
- Performance Leadership (strengthening leadership habits that drive engagement and results)
- Collaborative Capacity (building trust and conflict-resilient teamwork)
https://www.widecircle.eu/our-services
If it feels like you’re merely enduring right now, coaching can be a fast way to get clarity on what to protect, what to change, and what to stop pretending will fix itself.
Feel free to message me for a short chat.
Let’s start a conversation
What have you seen that genuinely increases resilience at work?
Is it a boundary? A team norm? A leadership behaviour? Or a decision that finally brings reality into the open?
If you’d like, comment here or message me. I read everything, and I enjoy the back-and-forth.
Responses