I built resilience the hard way. You don’t have to.

How the Resilient Leaders Elements could have changed my first 100 days — and what that means for yours.

In my first 100 days at an energy company, a senior colleague looked across the management team table and asked me directly: do you have a problem with our commercial model? A pause that felt like forever. “Yes,” I replied. “But I appreciate it’s paying my wages today, so I need to accept it whilst striving to find a better solution”. It was a moment when my gut overruled my head.

The Chancellor’s austerity squeeze, soaring energy prices, and a biting winter.  Shopkeepers, hairdressers, cafes and pubs all felt the pinch. I could hear it in our customer calls each day. I’d been hired to raise customer-centricity. The assumption was through better campaigns and communications. The deeper issue turned out to be a loss of trust in contract renewals.

 

Same confidence. Different terrain.

 

For the past twelve years I’d worked in mobile telecoms. Every day had felt pioneering. Colleagues were hired to challenge and disrupt and were welcomed for it. Being new and different was an asset. At the energy company, tenure was the currency – comradeship founded in the trenches of privatisation back in 1986, curiously the same year mobile telecoms was born. What I didn’t know on day one was just how different the rules would be.

 

Finding a better lens.  Less doing, more being.

 

Michael Watkins, The First 90 Days, told me what to do.  It has less to say on who to be. I’d committed myself to his framework but as a version of myself shaped by twelve years in telecoms. Impatient for change in a culture that spoke about the past. I needed a better lens — on myself, and on the context I was operating in.

It would take seven more years – and eventually a pandemic – before I found the language for what had been missing. The learning came from multiple directions and brought me eventually to the Resilient Leaders Elements^TM.

With hindsight I ask myself, “what more impact could I have had, and how much sooner, if the RLE wasn’t a destination but a catalyst?”

 

Three moments I wish I’d navigated differently

Right instinct.  Wrong read.

Over fifteen years on, I still recall how I felt in that management team meeting. Time stood still. Colour faded. Silence reigned. It felt personal, yet pivotal. A sense of speaking truth to power – not because I’d planned to, but because the question landed before my filter caught it. I could have hedged it. I didn’t.

Hindsight and a higher altitude are perceptive allies. I should have offered an observation not a provocation.  Observation invites curiosity. Provocation triggered defensiveness.   No wonder it went quiet. I had the right instinct and the wrong read of the room.

Action followed.  But I’d created resistance I then had to spend months working around.

RLE Behaviours that would have helped:

• I make the most of systems, processes and culture around me to get things done.
• I collaborate with others who have different perspectives in order to create new options.
• I involve others in defining the overall goal and identifying how we will achieve it.

Two numbers.  One truth.

Customer NPS sat at c90% and was applauded as evidence of great service. Brand NPS at c20%, behind competitors, was dismissed as flaky.

Customers rang to complain about their billing. A friendly agent fixed their problem immediately – high score. Asked later about the overall service, they remembered how many times they’d had to call. Low score. Same customer. Opposite experience. We were measuring resolution, not relationship.

Most colleagues came from consultancy and finance backgrounds — sharp, analytical, evidence-driven. They weren’t wrong to trust the numbers. They just weren’t looking at the right ones. I could have kept pushing against the grain. Instead, I chose to work with it. Presenting the data in a management consultancy style hit the mark. One conversation. Total alignment, and a path towards a £30m investment in billing.

RLE Behaviours that would have helped:

• I collaborate with others who have different perspectives in order to create new options.
• My actions create and maintain momentum for myself and others.

Endurance isn’t resilience.

I joined the company full of optimism for the difference I could make. Then reality arrived — quietly, and from multiple directions.

The brief was change. The culture was compliance. Somewhere between those two things I was expected to find a path.

A long commute. Two nights a week in a hotel. The sense of being watched for failure rather than supported to succeed. Alone, each one manageable. Together, they eroded something.

Being one of the few female commercial leaders felt like a responsibility beyond my own ambition — prove it’s possible, not just for you, but for others watching. That weight is invisible on the organisational chart and very real in the body.

The work and small successes kept me going. So did my team and a handful of friendly faces. But deep down I felt isolated. My Army training had taught me to stay focused on the mission and keep moving. For many years that had been a strength. Here it became a blind spot. I didn’t notice the cost until it had accumulated – in my energy, my mood, and quietly in those around me.

That’s not resilience. That’s endurance. The difference matters.

Looking back, I could have chosen differently. Asked for help sooner. Named what was happening.

RLE Behaviours that would have helped:

• I notice when I go from pressure to stress.
• I look after myself. I rest, reenergise and renew.
• I ask for and accept support from others.

 

Using RLE as a catalyst, not a destination.

 

What I know now is that the first 100 days are rarely about competence. They’re about context. Who you are in this specific terrain, with these specific people, under these specific pressures.

The ecosystem is learning about you at exactly the moment you’re learning about it. Your manager, your team, your peers — all forming a first impression while you’re still learning the landscape.

Resilient leadership behaviours accelerate that mutual learning. But behaviours that got you here might not get you there. Context changes everything. The same person who thrives in one environment might be surviving in another. I know. I’ve been both.

Retaking the RLE in your new context – within the first ten days – is one of the most valuable investments you can make. Your new profile becomes a reflection tool, pointing towards the leader you need and want to be in this specific terrain. Not a residence. A reference. From where you can anticipate and adapt.

I became resilient because of those experiences. The question is whether you need to learn it that way. The RLE suggests you don’t.

I’ve compiled twelve questions — one from each RLE facet — in the appendix below. If you’re working with a leader in their first 100 days, consider them your starting point.

 

Foresight, not just hindsight.

 

That moment in the management team meeting never left me. The pause. The yes. The gut overruling the head.

For years I framed it as a mistake. Too direct. Wrong read of the room. And in one sense it was. But from a higher altitude, and with the RLE as a lens, I now see it differently. It was authentic. It was the right instinct. What was missing wasn’t courage — it was context. The self-awareness to understand the terrain I’d walked into and the tools to navigate it with more skill.

I became more resilient because of this role. The hard way, and not without cost – to my energy, and at times to my confidence. But I came through it. And I learned things I couldn’t have learned any other way.

What I know now is that resilience built through adversity is real but expensive. For yourself and for those around you. The RLE offers something different — not a shortcut, but a compass. A way to navigate new terrain with greater self-awareness, clearer direction, and stronger relationships from the start.

Your first 100 days don’t have to be survival. They can be the foundation. That’s the conversation I wish I’d had at the start. It’s the one I now have with others.

RLE QUESTIONS

 

Here are twelve questions – one from each RLE facet – that I wish someone had asked me in my first 100 days. If you’re working with a leader in transition, consider these your starting point.

Who I am

The foundation is self-awareness and leadership presence — knowing how you show up, what drives you, and where your edges are. In a new context those edges shift.

Self-Awareness

• I look after myself. I rest, reenergise and renew.
• I know the strengths and motivations of others and contribute in a range of situations.
• I make the most of the systems, processes and culture around me to get things done.

Leadership Presence

• I encourage others to both support and challenge me.
• I invite others to step forward, give their views and take opportunities for their success.
• I have the courage to change my approach in order to achieve the goals.

What I do

Clarity of direction and resilient decision-making matter from day one — not as a plan imposed, but as a purpose shared.

Clarity of Direction

• I involve others in defining the overall goal and identifying how we will achieve it.
• My vision and strategies serve the overall goal of my organisation.
• I seek advice and learn from others in order to constructively deal with obstacles, objections, negativity or rejection.

Resilient Decision-Making

• I keep my thinking fresh, innovative and open to possibility.
• I evaluate my decisions in order to learn from what happened.
• My decisions create options and flexibility so that I am prepared for changing and uncertain situations.