Book review 3: Rethinking Resilience


Hi Reader!

Resilience is a word I’ve lived: navigating toxic cultures, near-misses with being pushed out, relocating rapidly to another country, living through war. Life has given me plenty of material to work with.

And for a long time, I understood resilience the way most of us do: something you find when things fall apart. You dig deep, you push through, you get back up. The tougher you are, the faster you recover.

What Tissa Richards does in Rethinking Resilience is challenge that framing — and I’m glad she does.

The version of resilience most of us were taught is reactive. It kicks in after the crisis hits. After the layoffs, the funding pullout, the restructure, the thing you didn't see coming. And while that kind of resilience is real and necessary, it's not a strategy. It's survival mode.

What she calls Intentional Resilience is different. You build it before the pressure arrives — through habits, culture, the systems you design, and the decisions you make on ordinary days. So that when the hard moment comes, you're not scrambling to find footing. You already have it.

Resilience isn’t a character trait you either have or don’t. It’s something you train. And that reframe matters enormously for leaders, because it means your team’s resilience is also something you can deliberately build — not just hope for when things get difficult.

Rethinking Resilience is part of a Kindle Flash Sale running April 20–23. Fifty-plus books drop to $0.99, no opt-in needed.

Find the book and browse the full sale here.

See you next week.

Daria


P.S. I share more books on LinkedIn - follow me there and comment which book from this campaign you decided to read first?

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