Resilient Leadership in the Face of Change

Last week, I facilitated a workshop at the Social Innovation Summit titled "Leading Your Team Through Disruption with Confidence." There was an overwhelming response from attendees, who seemed desperate to connect with their peers and get any help with how to move forward given the current political and economic climate.

People are hungry for real tools to navigate the uncertainty leaders are living through right now. And I’m always happy when 18 Coffees help, even in a small way.

Reframing Resilient Leadership

I structured the workshop around three core ideas, starting with what I think is one of the most misunderstood concepts: resilience.

Resilience has become a leadership buzzword in 2025, but too often it gets confused with grit, the idea that we have to “grin and bear it,” stick-to-it-iveness, or any number of hustle culture ideas that tell us that grinding it out equals success. We talk about resilience as if it means pushing through, being stubborn in the face of adversity. But that's not real resilience.

Actual resilience comes from accepting the world as it actually is, not as we wish it would be. When you can stop resisting what's in front of you, and instead evaluate you and your team’s circumstances clearly, that's when you can actually navigate them effectively. Resilience isn't about being unmovable; it’s about accepting reality as it is. That’s what allows you to be adaptive to your circumstances.

So I started the workshop by asking everyone a hard question: What are you and your teams resisting right now?

The conversations that emerged were honest and revealing. The room buzzed with recognition; the shared exhale that comes when you realize you're not alone in your struggles. Looking at reality clearly in that way seemed to bring people a sense of relief, even if the circumstances are hard.

For the second part of the workshop, I had participants take those areas of resistance and flip the lens, with the help of their peers. Instead of seeing what they faced as obstacles, what if they were new doorways? I paired people up with others from different organizations in the room, and asked them to get perspective from fresh eyes about where opportunity might be hiding in their challenges. The 18 Coffees perspective is that there's always opportunity in disruption—but only if you're willing to look for it.

The final piece involved using empathy map worksheets to think through what the participants teams are actually seeing, thinking, feeling, and hearing right now in this environment. This exercise was revelatory for many participants. Leaders who had been focused on dealing with the current moment started to realize they hadn't fully considered the emotional reality their teams were navigating.

Periodically stepping back to get into your team's mindset isn't just good leadership—it's essential for building and maintaining the kind of trust that makes adaptive change possible.

What’s Next for Social Innovation

What struck me most at the Social Innovation Summit was the sense of community among people who are often working in isolation within their organizations. These are the leaders trying to make business more ethical, more inclusive, more sustainable—often without a lot of institutional support or clear roadmaps. The challenges these leaders are facing require collaboration, shared learning, and the kind of vulnerability that only comes when you're working on problems together.

As I've written before, I believe all leadership is now change leadership. The leaders who will thrive are the ones who can help their teams metabolize disruption rather than just survive it. Most importantly, they're the ones who understand that resilience isn't about being invulnerable—it's about being adaptive to reality. We especially need smart people in social impact fields capable of that kind of leadership.

The question isn't whether more disruption will happen this year. The question is whether we'll resist it or learn to find opportunity within it. From where I sit, working with leaders who are choosing the latter every day, I remain optimistic about what's possible when we stop pushing against reality and start working with it.

Want to explore resilient leadership capability with your own team? 18 Coffees helps organizations turn disruption into opportunity. Let's work together.