How To Become More Resilient as an Underrepresented Leader

Episode 448 | Host: Emilie Aries | Guest: Jacqueline Twillie

Resilience gives underrepresented leaders the ability to thrive while they strive.

Resiliency is an important trait for any leader, but the systemic barriers erected around underrepresented professionals, on top of persisting gender and racial gaps in pay and leadership, make this skill even more vital. These are the voices we need to see in power if these disparities are going to improve. 

Jacqueline Twillie quite literally wrote the book on resilience for leaders in these demographics. Dear Resilient Leader: A Guide for Underrepresented Leaders draws on her experience working to reduce workplace inequity. She focuses on how to equip women from underrepresented backgrounds with the tools and strategies to gain clarity and navigate potential pitfalls on their rise to leadership. In this episode, we discuss her book and approach to strategic sustainability for leaders facing these challenging dynamics.

Risk, Resilience, Rest, and Reward

In Dear Resilient Leader, Jacqueline presents what she calls the R4 Framework, which digs deep into how to use Risk, Resilience, Rest, and Reward to build a sustainable and strategic leadership trajectory.

Jacqueline explains that success isn’t linear; it’s a combination of so many factors working together cyclically to keep us rising to meet our goals. In her book and her Resilient Leaders Program, she walks you through the interplay of these four essential ingredients of success. 

As leaders, we need to strategically consider and take the risks that will level up our careers. In order to take those risks and solve those problems, we must tap into our resilience. This well is not bottomless, though, so figuring out which situations are worthy of our resilience and which are not is part of the process. Rest is another non-negotiable—we need it to replenish our resilience so we can continue to take risks and experience the fourth R: the rewards we so deserve to celebrate.

Getting unstuck: a traffic metaphor for risk-taking

Taking career risks can be scary. It can feel overwhelming and hazardous to pursue risky endeavors on behalf of your company or career, especially for underrepresented leaders who are often left to feel as though they alone are responsible for amending the long-held stereotypes of their race or gender. Jacqueline knows that risk-taking requires a certain mindset, and she uses a savvy metaphor to describe it.

Imagine you’re stuck in traffic. When you become fed up with not moving for minutes on end, you start looking for alternative routes. You refer to your GPS and realize that to break out of this traffic rut, you need to think outside the box—you need to take a route you don’t often use or have never previously explored. 

Once you’ve identified the off-ramp you need to reach, you start inching forward. You take slow, strategic steps to move toward this new goal, and as you do, you communicate your plan to those around you with your blinker. 

Navigating this new route either brings you successfully to your destination or leaves you a bit lost. Either way, once that particular journey is done, you think back to what led you to achieve or fall short of your goal and how you might apply what you learned next time you’re stuck in traffic.

Jacqueline’s traffic example is an excellent metaphor for risk. Taking risks calls for a growth mindset (as opposed to a fixed mindset, as Carol Dweck explores in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success) that doesn’t give in to blaming yourself and giving up (ie: sitting in traffic) but instead recognizes the challenge that you haven’t solved yet and sets about figuring it out.

Redefining failure

Resilience isn’t about never making mistakes or never failing. It’s reviewing our successes and so-called failures as they happen and being open to learning what we can from those experiences. Armed with this ever-growing body of practical knowledge, we can achieve the unprecedented level of success that awaits us.

What resonated for you in my conversation with Jacqueline? Join our Courage Community on Facebook or our group on LinkedIn to share your own experience with resilience, failure, and that vital rest component.

Related Links from today’s episode:

Jacqueline’s website

Connect with Jacqueline on LinkedIn

Connect with Jacqueline on Instagram

Connect with Jacqueline on Facebook

The Resilient Leaders Program

Jacqueline’s book, Dear Resilient Leader: A Guide for Underrepresented Leaders  

The Seven Spirtual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra

Mindet by Carol Dwek

Episode 386, How To Boost Your Energy With The Power Of Nutrition

Level Up: a Leadership Accelerator for Women on the Rise

Bossed Up Courage Community

Bossed Up LinkedIn Group

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