Resilience Essay

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A REVIEW OF RESILIENT LEADERSHIP

INTRODUCTION
What is resilience? Many believed resilience is merely the ability to recover, to bounce back, and to cope with a problem when it has happened. However, there is actually more. There are lots of definitions and models for resilience, in which a remarkable one is defined as “the ability to turn challenges into opportunities, to bounce back from the edge of catastrophe, and to move forward with even greater vigor and success than before” (Lengnick-Hall, Beck, & Lengnick-Hall, 2011). This extends the implication of resilience to a capability to prevent predictable risks and adapt to unpredictable changes.

ORIGIN AND COMPONENTS OF RESILIENCE
Resilience is a notion that has received much attention since its foundation more than 40 years ago (Luthar, 2006). According to Hunter and Warren (2013), resilience has been viewed as a collection of traits or characteristics, such as optimism, self-efficacy and hardiness, which assist an individual to adapt to adversity. Nonetheless, it is now widely accepted that resilience originates from a combination of internal and external factors and can be seen as a dynamic process which is developed over time (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004; Ungar, 2012). It has been contended that resilience is a learned process that uses adaptable cognitive, behavioral and emotional responses to adversities and therefore, as a learned process, resilience is a resource that is available to all (Neenan, 2009).
Resilience is believed to be a multi-dimensional construct, rather than a uni-dimensional one (Luthar, Doernberger, & Zigler, 1993). While Davey (2003) and Riolli (2002) states the five personal factors of resilience are emotional stability, extraversion, agreeableness,...

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...e is to build individual capacity in personal features, evaluation, interaction, and taking action. His approach to strengthen resilience adopts a 7 element model which includes: vision, self-determination, interaction, relationships, problem solving, organization and self-confidence. Some ways suggested are being optimistic while facing difficulties, maintaining good relationships with family and friends and enhancing self-confidence.
In addition, Conner’s (1993) five basic characteristics of a resilient person also sheds light on how to develop a more resilient character. It articulates that people can view life as opportunity to keep one being positive, possess a clear vision of what they want to achieve to remain focused, be flexible when responding to uncertainty, use structured approaches to ambiguity and be proactive with change rather than acting against it.

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