Introduction This is a book about resilience – the ability to bounce back from tough times, or even to triumph in the face of adversity; to display tenacity, but not at the expense of reason. From our earliest history, and across all cultures, the quality of resilience has been admired, even romanticized. While the heroes of fairy tale and literature have tended to be tall, dark and handsome, brave and true, they have also tended to be resilient, appearing at their best when most severely challenged. We are taught the story of the beleaguered Robert the Bruce, inspired by the efforts of a spider spinning its web – if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. But resilience has other resonances. In physics, resilience describes the process by which objects revert to their original shape after being bent or stretched. In medicine, it refers to the ability of individual patients to recover from injury or illness. For patients, this resilience may reflect differences in basic anatomy or physique (some of us, it seems, have ‘good bones’ which make us naturally quick healers), but it also appears to reflect aspects of personality – strength of will, say, or optimism; the ‘miracle recovery’ made by the professional footballer or runner when faced with the prospect of missing a key sporting event, to take one well-known example.

With over 30 years’ experience working with individuals and organizations in a variety of difficult situations, we have our own understanding and appreciation of resilience. Over time, we have come to recognize that some people are simply less fazed by setbacks than others, clearly showing more resilience, whatever life throws at them, than others. Such people are able to recast their objectives, even reinvent themselves, according to the demands of the environment. In our experience, such people also tend to: Be open to new ideas (they are good listeners, keen learners and are prepared to try different approaches) Assume the best rather than the worst of other people Find opportunity and risk equally fascinating (recognizing that the link between the two is crucial to success) Embrace positive change See what needs to be done and be happy to lead the charge Prefer dealing in transparency and honesty rather than obscurity and deceit We have also noticed that people who display these character istics usually have two other things in common – they are en ergized rather than overrun by crisis, and other people actively choose to collaborate with them. As soon as we started to think seriously about the concept of resilience, we realized that it might be a defining characteristic of many of the individuals whose approach to people and problems we most admire. We were keen to find out more, and to pass on what we learnt to others. We intend to do this not by providing exhaustive academic analysis but by drawing on the experiences of real-life people in a variety of situations, people we have accessed either through our work or a wider network of contacts. In so doing, we hope to find answers to four key questions: What is resilience? Where does resilience come from? What is it that very resilient people do which distinguishes them from those less resilient? What can we do to make ourselves more resilient?.