Talk to any leader today and you’ll hear a variation of the same story: they are caught in ‘The Squeeze’. 

Expectations to deliver are higher than ever, resources feel stretched, and the pace of change is relentless. Leaders are being asked to navigate a world that feels increasingly unpredictable, where traditional management playbooks just aren’t enough any longer. 

When everything around you is shifting, the most critical capability a leader needs is a very human skill: resilience. 

Being a resilient leader today isn’t about gritting your teeth and getting through it, enduring high stress for short periods, and then “bouncing back” after a challenging phase. That traditional definition assumes you have the luxury of recovery time to reflect after a setback. 

Resilience today is about operating when recurrent setbacks are the norm, when constant shifts outside your control ask you to pivot and reprioritise what’s inside your control, and when learning and improvements take place in the moment, not at the post-action review meeting.  

Resilience is the foundation for leading through ‘The Squeeze’ and leading effectively when the pressure is on. And we know it’s always on. 

Leaders with high levels of resilience can do three things well: 

Building leadership resilience: an inside-out approach 

So, how do we build leadership resilience? It doesn’t happen through a single workshop or one-time moment. It takes a holistic approach – starting with the individual and expanding out to the environment they work in – and it happens over time.  

At United Minds, we break it into three parts: 

  1. Mindset (how we think) 
    First we have to acknowledge the intense pressures leaders are facing and validate the emotional reactions that leading through change brings. Leadership today is like a balancing act where we are forever walking a tightrope of change and uncertainty:  performing against today’s targets whilst also driving transformation for tomorrow; delivering at speed whilst also bring a team with you; alleviating anxiety, fear and uncertainty whilst also embracing change and agility.  

It means that understanding yourself as a person and who you are as a leader is more important than ever. To build a resilient mindset you must first know your own triggers and what motivates you so that you can adapt and progress quicker.  

It’s about choosing a positive, growth mindset and building the daily, healthy habits that allow you to live up to that attitude and handle whatever comes your way. 

We work with leaders to help them develop self-awareness and shift their mindset so they feel enabled and accountable. 

In our Leadership Shadow work, we spend time with leaders on understanding who we are as people and when we feel our most resilient – when we feel confident, performing and safe. We explore the impact our leadership has on others not just in the big moments, but in the everyday little moments too.  

  1. Capabilities (what we do) 


Next, leaders need practical tools. This means developing self-coaching habits that they can use to guide themselves through difficult moments. It could be using personal resilience assessments and coaching tools as resources that help identify the challenges and coping strategies. Whether it’s deliberately choosing what sticks (Velcro) and what bounces off (Teflon) or prioritising the concerns you can influence and control (Covey’s Spheres), we bring memorable analogies and frameworks that help leaders cope in the moment.  

Just as importantly as the tools themselves, we create safe opportunities to practise and embed these skills in the real world, so they become second nature. Buddy schemes, peer coaching or accountability circles provide ongoing support that allow for practising techniques over time, and continuing to learn and adjust.  

In our work with senior leader Talent Pools, we have developed a suite of tools to help people practise building their capability to manage personal resilience. We find these sessions not only help the leaders in the room, but also provide the toolbox for them to take to their teams and build resilience across the organisation.  

  1. Context (Where we work) 


Finally, the work environment leaders are operating in has to support these behaviours. If an organisation expects leaders to be resilient, the culture has to recognise and reward both resilience, and also a willingness to experiment, to fail and to learn.  

The expectations set by the business, and the behaviours modelled by senior leadership, must actively promote a healthy, resilient workplace, or else the leadership development and individual coaching falls flat.  This means championing a culture of experimentation; rewarding and recognising resilience as well as what people deliver; and creating a workplace where speaking up is safe and leaders lead with empathy. 

We run Convention Busting workshops with leaders and teams where we seek to break existing norms, ways of thinking and behaviours that have become conventional. Providing this space sets a leadership expectation to be taken back to the day-to-day and fuels resilience as part of the culture. 

How United Minds builds resilient leaders 

At United Minds, we help leaders turn resilience from a buzzword into their daily reality. We partner with organisations to build this leadership capability across all three areas: 

We are excited to be offering our ‘Leadership Resilience through the Squeeze’ masterclass series – a programme of development sessions for leaders that cover mindset, capabilities and context, and can be tailored for the needs of your organisation. We cover topics including: 

 
Want to learn more and share ideas about leadership resilience? Get in touch, we love to chat.

A guide for leaders on embracing and encouraging the viral trend

By now you’ll have seen the Quiet Quitting trend, originally starting on TikTok and now firmly in the mainstream media. Whilst it’s been extensively debated (including vast misinterpretation), if we look closer at the real meaning of ‘quiet quitting’– employees setting boundaries and reverting back to their agreed hours – it’s essentially a continuation of a long-standing trend. Pandemic burnout, work-life balance, the Corporate Villain Era – employees want their lives back. And with workers putting in 25% more hours since the pandemic and 49% reporting they’re burnt out, can we blame them?

But with a recession looming, there is a risk that Quiet Quitting will lead to the organisational version of fight or flight. Leaders will either ignore it completely and it’ll organically permeate the culture, or they’ll try and fight it – leading to introductions of harsher productivity measures and/or stricter remote working rules. With numerous reports proving that working harder and longer can have the opposite of its intended effects; we strongly caution these knee-jerk reactions.

Of course, workers who are effectively downing tools need to be re-engaged. But for those that are seeking boundaries, our motto is “If you can’t beat them, join them.” As experts in business psychology, change management and employee engagement, our recommendation for organisations – particularly those with high volumes of Gen Z employees – is to embrace, and even encourage, the trend.

Embracing employees working fewer hours; are you mad?

We hear you; business performance is a top priority, particularly as tougher economic times are upon us. In case you or your leadership team need convincing, here’s a handy list of the benefits of embracing quiet quitting:

I see your point; what can I do about it?

For CEOs, HR, culture and employee engagement leads there are some tangible steps you can take to demonstrate you’re embracing this trend:

  1. Call it out – be bold, address it head on. Run an internal communications campaign showing you’ve acknowledged the trend and hear people. Follow up with open and honest dialogue with employees on their reflections on the trend.
  2. Understand who is who: Through the above, make sure you distinguish those not pulling their weight from those seeking balance and treat them differently. Before going down a path of counting hours, have open conversations and give encouraging feedback, which will prevent a culture of fear emerging.
  3.  Harness purpose – there is a clear link between discretionary effort and purpose, if people are on the fence of quiet quitting, purpose is how to re-engage them. Evidence shows motivation to contribute is driven by purpose and appreciation, at least as much as flexibility and getting a fair deal.
  4.  Revisit your Employee Value Proposition – as well as emphasising purpose, focus on the way the company allows for work-life balance and embraces people having lives outside of work
  5. Trial it – Explore what you can do to tangibly show you’re on board with this trend, even if it is just an experiment or pilot initially e.g. everyone will be locked out of their computers after a certain time, or a policy offering time off for innovation and creativity.
  6. Make a long-term change to your culture – this trend is here to stay and for too long organisations have been putting a band-aid on the issue with tactical initiatives and wellbeing solutions (the 2019 yoga classes eye-rolls are still doing the rounds on LinkedIn – see below). For some organisations it’ll require a holistic culture change and leadership behaviour change from a counting-hours, presenteeism and ‘input mindset’ to an ‘outcomes’ culture.

We hope this has given you pause for thought or a business case for your leaders if you’re concerned about their reactions to the Quiet Quitting trend. If you’d like any more advice, research or practical tips; please contact: [email protected]. 

The case for improving women’s access to C-level positions has never been stronger. Not only does research confirm that companies with more women in senior executive positions report stronger financial performance, but the reputational and brand advantages are also significant. Yet, although seven in 10 global executives of both genders think it’s important that the universe of female CEOs expand, the number remain very small: Just 5% of U.S. FORTUNE 400 and 4% of FTSE companies are run by women. On a global basis, just 9% of CEOs and managing directors are women. At Weber Shandwick, we wanted to know how people who run global companies view this paradox, where they believe impediments lie and how they envision moving forward.

To get some answers, Weber Shandwick and KRC Research sponsored a survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence United (EIU) in the spring of 2015 to produce a comprehensive global study on gender equality at the C-level. We define gender equality in this context as having approximately equal numbers of men and women on a company’s top leadership team. This includes both the chief executive office and executives in management who report directly to the CEO.

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