You can’t package resilience into a PowerPoint

Resilience is today among the most frequently used words in the field of leadership. Yet it is often treated in an overly simplified way. It gets reduced to endurance, the ability to “grit your teeth”, or somehow withstand pressure. But real leadership is not about survival. It is about the ability to act, decide, and take responsibility at a moment when you have no guarantee things will turn out well.

That is exactly why, in the Business Leadership programme, we have chosen an approach that deliberately steps away from the safety of classrooms, presentations, and pre-prepared scenarios. One of the key components of the managerial training works with an unknown environment, uncertain conditions, and minimal instructions. Participants find themselves in situations where they cannot rely on a manual, structure, or authority. They must orient themselves, secure basic safety and functionality, and start making decisions in an environment that provides insufficient information.

This is not a game or a team-building attraction. It is a highly accurate simulation of reality, the same reality leaders face in their organisations every single day. The only difference is that here they have the space to pause and notice what is actually happening to them in such situations.

One of the most powerful and at the same time provocative moments of the training is the work with a concept we call useful radical selfishness. At first glance it may seem controversial, yet in truth it strikes at the core of leadership. It teaches participants that the ability to lead others does not emerge from pressure, duty, or the desire to be a “good leader”. It emerges from the ability to stabilise oneself first, take care of one’s physical and mental safety, and create internal capacity for decision-making.

Only from this state does authentic motivation to help others arise. Not as a reactive response to chaos, but as a natural consequence of inner calm and confidence. A leader who is fighting for their own survival can never create a safe environment for their team.

The programme also includes dynamic, high-adrenaline situations, intentionally speeding up the pace and bypassing learned rationalisations. In these moments, there is no room to “appear” as a leader. Roles, masks, and rehearsed strategies fall away. What remains is your real behaviour under pressure. This is where it becomes clear who can take responsibility without certainty of competence, who can step into a running process, and who is ready to take ownership of a situation that surpasses their time and experience.

A very important part of this experience is the work with collaboration and synergy. Participants gradually discover that individual performance or personal heroism do not lead to results. Situations are designed so that no one has the full picture and each person carries only part of the responsibility. Real progress happens at the moment when the team aligns, connects roles, and creates an outcome no individual could achieve alone.

What gives the entire training depth and long-term impact is extensive reflective work. Every situation is analysed with an emphasis on what was happening on the level of thinking, emotions, and behaviour. Participants learn to name their reactions, distinguish between what they think, what they feel, and how they act, and transfer these insights into their daily managerial practice. This is the moment where experience becomes real learning.

From the outside, the training may look modest. Time in nature, movement, shared experience. But internally, something far more substantial is unfolding. It is a deliberately created incubator for the maturation of a leader’s personality.

In our approach, resilience is not about enduring more. It is about the ability to think clearly in uncertainty, take responsibility without the comfort of certainty, and be a source of stability for others, without falling apart yourself. And this is exactly what we prepare leaders for in the Business Leadership programme.