Postcards from the Field: The Grit Myth
Postcards from the Field is where I share brief field reports from my work with real leadership teams. Rather than polished case studies, these notes surface the moments that stop me mid-session and point to the everyday habits that shape performance when conditions are uncertain. My aim is to translate what I’m seeing in the field into practical value readers can apply in their own teams.
Last week, I spent an evening with a standing group of HR leaders who convene regularly to develop their skills so they can continue to lead effectively inside their organizations. Each time they gather, they focus on a different leadership challenge, and this time they asked me to explore the science behind scalable resilience.
Early in the session, I put two simple images on the screen. The first showed a familiar pattern. Engagement dips in response to a major change event, then gradually recovers as people regain footing. Heads nodded. The curve reflected how many of us were trained to think about change. Episodic disruption, followed by adaptation. Then I showed the second image. This time, the line did not dip and recover. It oscillated sharply, up and down, again and again, never fully returning to baseline.
I asked the room how many of their organizations had experienced re-organizations, AI-driven shifts, budget cuts, layoffs, or major strategic pivots in the past twelve months. Hands went up. Then more hands. In many cases, several of these disruptions had occurred in sequence, or simultaneously. What became visible in that moment was not a lack of effort or commitment. It was the reality of teams operating inside perpetual change, without meaningful recovery cycles.
This is where the familiar language of grit starts to fail. You cannot simply will your way through a system that continuously signals threat and uncertainty. When disruption becomes constant, nervous systems stay in high alert mode. Over time, this erodes energy, judgment, and learning capacity, even among highly capable people. The problem is not that teams are insufficiently resilient. It is that resilience is being treated as an individual trait, rather than something shaped by the conditions teams work within.
As we shifted toward what is actually usable in this environment, the conversation became more concrete. One place we spent time was on team-level recognition, not as celebration for its own sake, but as a stabilizing force under strain. Many organizations increase the frequency of recognition in response to disengagement, but without clear guard rails, the practice often feels hollow or performative. What makes it work is precision paired with intent: recognizing small wins that show progress, heroic effort during sustained pressure, and generative failures where learning moved the work forward. When recognition is anchored in these contexts, it gives teams credible evidence that their effort matters, even when outcomes are still in flux. Several leaders noted how rarely this distinction is made, despite how much it changes the impact on engagement and morale.
We also talked about psychological safety, and why it often feels out of reach in pressured systems. Rather than treating it as a prerequisite, we explored curiosity as a more accessible starting point. Teaching teams to ask open-ended questions, especially in moments of tension, lowers threat and reopens dialogue. Curiosity does not resolve every issue, but it creates enough space for people to stay engaged rather than retreat into self-protection.
What stayed with me from the evening was how quickly the room shifted once leaders saw their reality reflected back to them. In environments defined by continuous disruption, resilience is not something you demand from people. It is something you design into the way teams recognize effort, make meaning, and relate to one another under pressure. When those conditions are in place, resilience stops being a stretch goal and becomes a renewable resource.
