Entrepreneurs: How Your Resilience Will Pay Off

Hold on to the resilience you’ve honed since starting your business and keep strengthening it as you grow and achieve new successes in 2023.

Resilience is often cited as one of the most important characteristics of successful entrepreneurs.

“It's that little extra oomph that keeps you moving,” says leadership trainer and speaker Gordon Tredgold, “even when you can't see the finish line.”

“Your resilience is what measures your success. It's what makes a good entrepreneur tick,” adds Tredgold, founder and CEO of Leadership Principles, in his article for Inc.

Learned Skill

According to Nancy Koehn, a professor at the Harvard Business School, resilience is the ability to not only withstand major obstacles but also grow stronger as a result of them.

“Resilience is not an endowed gift,” she says. “It’s not a DNA deposit that was made when we were born,” she explains in a Harvard Business School Online blog.

Consider resilience as a skill that can be developed and bolstered, Koehn continues.

“It’s a learned capability and it’s very much like a muscle in that we make it stronger by using it,” she says in the article by Matt Gavin.

However, business tycoon and Silicon Valley trailblazer Keith Krach points to statistics that suggests resilience may come more naturally to some people than others.

“Research shows that some people have a neurochemical makeup that may naturally help them to withstand pressures and challenges,” writes the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize nominee in a recent Forbes article.

But we can all alter our behaviors and perspectives to become more adaptable.

Strengthening Your Resilience

Adam Uzialko reminds us in a Business News Daily article that resilience has several facets, including ideas, behaviors, actions, abilities, and attitudes.

Understandably, entrepreneurs who want to cultivate resilience and adaptability should check on their emotional intelligence. Learn to understand your feelings and how to harness them, advises the Business News Daily staff editor in the article.

You will then have a better grasp of how your actions affect other people, he continues.

Stay Grounded

Some business leaders espouse the importance of keeping a positive attitude, which can have a good influence on your well-being, staff, and work environment.

However, it’s important to stay realistic, says Krach. Make sure you completely grasp the implications of each situation.

Because being resilient, he says, doesn’t mean becoming “blindly optimistic.”

“Entrepreneurs who allow themselves to ignore problems — or worse, deny they exist — will not make tough choices go away. They will simply postpone the inevitable, often with disastrous results.”

Being grounded and adhering to your own moral compass are other crucial qualities of a resilient entrepreneur.

“By sticking to your own vision and understanding of what is right and just in each situation, you will find a source of wisdom and guidance during times of doubt,” Krach confirms.