LOUISE GILBERT
Founder & Director
What My Toughest Year Taught Me About Leadership Resilience
When I wrote about resilience and adaptive capacity in my book Make Work Work For You, I had no idea how deeply I would be tested on these concepts in my personal life. As many of you may have seen in my recent feature in CEO World Magazine, the past year brought unprecedented challenges that transformed my understanding of what true resilience looks like.
Leadership Under Pressure
In my CEO Briefing article, I shared how I responded when my husband was attacked and suffered a knife wound:
“I found him on the ground, bleeding from a knife wound. In that moment, I wasn’t panicked. I was focused. I reassured him, looked around for something to stop the bleeding, and, finding nothing else, whipped off my top to apply pressure to the wound.”
What I’ve come to understand through this experience is that our capacity to lead effectively in moments of crisis isn’t just about technical skills, it’s about our ability to manage our internal state while externally projecting calm.
This is what I call “Mindset X” in my book, the adaptive capacity that allows us to navigate complexity with clarity.
The Gilbert Model: The Three Pedals of Excellence, in Action
Throughout my book, I discuss the “Three Pedals of Excellence” – Performance, Growth, and Wellbeing. These three elements aren’t opposing forces that need to be balanced through compromise; rather, they reinforce each other in creating sustainable excellence.
My personal experiences this past year perfectly illustrated this principle. When parenting my daughter, who has a complex nervous system disability called PDA (a profile of autism), I’ve had to completely rethink conventional approaches:
“Wearing the school dress caused her physical pain – sensory discomfort so intense it was unbearable. Together, we found a solution: she wore pyjamas under her uniform. That protective barrier allowed her to put on the green dress and look like she belonged, even if she didn’t feel like it.”
This solution emerged from what I describe in my book as the “my view + your view = bigger view + something new” formula. By integrating both our perspectives, we created a workable solution that neither of us could have developed alone.
Honouring Needs, Not Norms
One of the core practices I outline in Make Work Work For You is “Honour needs, not norms.” This concept became vividly real as I navigated my daughter’s challenges with school:
“On her sixth birthday, after being out of school for months, she wanted to return for just one day to share doughnuts with her class. We planned everything carefully. I cleared my schedule, declined an invitation to keynote a big conference and she was excited. But when the time came, she asked for 30 more minutes. That turned into three hours of tears as her body wouldn’t let her do what she so desperately wanted.”
This experience reinforced what I teach leaders: capacity fluctuates, and growth isn’t linear. When we create environments that honour individual needs rather than rigid norms, we enable people to bring their best selves forward.
Applying Crisis Lessons to Organisational Leadership
The leadership lessons from these personal challenges directly translate to organisational settings:
- 1. Control Is an Illusion
As I mention in my CEO Briefing article, “Trying to control people or outcomes limits creativity and exacerbates stress.” Instead, effective leaders create environments where people feel safe, supported, and empowered.
- 2. Co-Regulation Creates Safety
Leaders must become grounding forces within their organisations. Your ability to maintain your state – what I call “Manage your state” in my book—directly impacts how your team responds to challenges.
- 3. Integrating Diverse Perspectives Leads to Innovation
The solutions I found with my daughter came from combining our perspectives. Similarly, organisations that integrate diverse viewpoints consistently outperform those that don’t.
- 4. Progress Happens in Small Steps
One of the most powerful moments I shared in the CEO Briefing was about my 40th birthday:
“My family went to the beach together. We ate ice cream, climbed the rocks and kicked the sand. It was a small moment, but it was everything.”
These small wins matter tremendously. In organisational change, too, leaders don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Small, intentional experiments can create immediate impact while building momentum for larger shifts.
Building Organisational Resilience
The resilience I’ve had to develop personally mirrors what organisations need in today’s complex environment. In Make Work Work For You, I outline practices like “Human-centric change” and “Take off and transform” that help organisations develop this adaptive capacity.
When facing challenges, whether personal or organisational, the key is to press the right pedal at the right time – sometimes focusing on performance, sometimes on growth, and sometimes on wellbeing. Excellence emerges when all three work in harmony.
As I concluded in my feature:
“2024 taught me that leadership is about more than skills or control – it’s about presence, adaptability, and growth. Whether responding to a crisis, parenting a neurodivergent child, or leading a team, the principles are the same: go with needs, not norms. Embrace complexity. Celebrate the small wins. And commit to creating environments for everyone to be their best.”
If you’d like to explore more about building resilience in leadership and creating environments where everyone can thrive, download a free chapter of “Make Work Work For You” here.
