A deeper understanding of what drives individual behaviours and influences group dynamics are the two areas that leadership teams really need to get to grips with. If you really want to build resilience and gravitas into leadership teams, then these are the foundational pieces of learning. Why resilience and gravitas? Well these two areas deliver the greatest benefits and spread across an entire spectrum of leadership qualities. Getting to grips with this type of understanding means that no matter what the situation is, or who the people are in the mix, you should have enough insight into personalities and behaviours in order to determine the optimum approach towards the best possible outcome.

Building ones resilience helps to round off those spiky peeks of intensity and smooths them to a more gentler curve.  Being able to apply good personality and behavioural insights means that:

– People can be set up to succeed

– Personality clashes, even the gentlest of rubbing up the wrong way, can find an effective way of communicating.

– Soul sapping dramas that play out can be headed off at the pass or otherwise channelled towards some more positive/curative steps.

Resilient leaders with a deeper understanding of what their multifaceted people are capable of, in turn build resilience into their teams; pulling them together under one banner and pointing them in the most optimum direction. More importantly, they do so without depleting their own or anyone else’s energy or spirit.

Gravitas is a creature of a different sort. When I coach leaders and leadership teams, I always ask them “do you think that gravitas is an important quality for a leader?” Followed by “what does gravitas look like in a business arena?” I have never had the same answer twice to the second question, but on the first, all to a man agree that it is an important, even vital, quality for a leader to possess. When asked then how much of it they think they personally have, and how it could be measured, they are often lost for words.

The ‘Cambridge Dictionary Online’s’ definition says that Gravitas is ‘Seriousness and importance of manner, causing feelings of respect and trust in others’.   To my ear that sounded a wee bit harsh when I first read it, the definition itself has a sort of gravitas. Take ‘seriousness’ for example, I think we would all agree that the level of seriousness required is situational, and that you need to be able to apply emotional intelligence in order to read a situation and respond appropriately. ‘Importance of manner’ is a bit more tricky though, because it’s not about believing that you are important then acting so, but rather when giving teams direction, the importance of a person’s manner should match the gravity of the situation or should at least reflect their passion and belief in what they are conveying . The last two are a ‘no brainier’, what leader would not like to think that they had the respect and trust of their people?  On that point I think Rabbie Burns said it best:

O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion.

Translated it says; that a good power that the giver of our life could have given us, would be if we could see ourselves as others see us, believing that It would free us from many a blunder and quash our foolish notions.

Being able to help a person see what others might see in them! Actually, that bits easy, not bruising people in the process is the hard bit, ensuring that throughout the process,  people can explore all aspects of themselves and of others remaining psychologically safe while doing so. Because in order to illicit real and tangible change in people and in teams is to be sure that you don’t damage or cause alteration to that which you seek to help them understand. Lasting change comes from that understanding causing a shift that happens quietly and within.