Checklist for Building Resilience

Failures and crises are an inevitable part of a manager’s professional life. They can be devastating, life-changing, and transformative. They can make or break a career, ruin working relationships and working cultures, and potentially break a business, with detrimental effects for all concerned. Several high-profile cases have shown how catastrophic failures have seemingly done irreparable damage to personal and organisational reputations.Although mistakes and crises are acknowledged as part of a manager’s working life, they are too often ignored or, worse still, frowned upon. Whether the nature of the crisis is personal or related to business challenges, whether the causes were external economic factors or internal matters, crises can deeply affect those involved and their performance in the workplace. The scale and impact of mistakes come in all shapes and sizes, from project failure and workplace conflicts, to complete business failure and bankruptcy. Managers are encouraged to take risks but when those risks don’t pay off, a failure of one kind or another is the evitable consequence.