Wharton@Work

March 2026 | 

Resilience Is a Skill. Leaders Can Learn It.

Resilience Is a Skill. Leaders Can Learn It

Resilience is often described as something you either have or you don’t. Some people are seen as “naturally resilient,” while others are assumed to struggle when circumstances turn difficult. That belief persists in part because resilience can look effortless from the outside — we see only composure under pressure, rather than the habits, support systems, and learning that make it possible. But that framing misses something essential — and, according to Wharton professor Samir Nurmohamed, it may be holding leaders back.

“In organizations, we’re working to move the conversation from resilience as a personality trait to resilience as a set of skills and capabilities that leaders can develop,” says Nurmohamed, academic director of Wharton Executive Education’s new program, The Resilient Leader. “It’s not hardwired. It’s something that can be shaped, strengthened, and learned.”

That distinction matters. If resilience is fixed, leaders can only hope they already possess it. If it is learnable, they can build it and help their teams do the same.

Resilience is often equated with “bouncing back” after a setback. But Nurmohamed’s research suggests that’s only part of the story. One version of resilience is recovering back to baseline after something difficult happens. But there are also situations where the environment has changed so much that returning to the old baseline isn’t desirable, or even possible. In those cases, resilience is about adapting — figuring out how to operate effectively in a new reality. And occasionally, individuals or organizations emerge stronger than before. Those moments can’t be guaranteed, Nurmohamed says, but they can be studied and learned from.

In organizations, the conversation about resilience often shifts from recovery to a second focus: managing stress and avoiding burnout. Nurmohamed frames the program more broadly. It is not just about coping after something has already gone wrong. It is also about preparation — building the habits, mindsets, and relationships that make it more likely leaders can respond effectively when challenges arise. In other words, resilience is not just recovery. It is adaptability, learning, and growth under pressure.

Why Leaders Need Resilience Now

The timing of the program is no accident. Leaders across industries are navigating a level of uncertainty that feels both intense and unrelenting. “Many of the leaders I talk to can’t even plan out the next quarter with confidence,” Nurmohamed says. “There’s geopolitical instability, economic volatility, rapid technological change. What happens at the macro level quickly trickles down into teams and organizations.”

In this environment, resilience is not just a personal coping mechanism. It is a leadership imperative. “A lot of people think about resilience as something individual — how I deal with stress or adversity,” he says. “That’s part of it. But for leaders, the question is also: How do I help my team stay focused? How do I acknowledge what people are going through without losing sight of our goals? How do I plan contingencies in a world where the future is hard to predict?”

Resilience, in this view, becomes a way of leading through instability: maintaining performance, trust, and direction even when conditions are shifting.

Resilience is sometimes conflated with grit — the perseverance and passion for long-term goals popularized by psychologist Angela Duckworth, who will join the program for a fireside chat. While grit is related, Nurmohamed sees resilience as a broader construct. Grit fits under the resilience umbrella, he explains, but resilience also includes adaptability, perspective, and the ability to draw on others. When people go through adversity, they often feel isolated. Instead of trying to rely on “inner toughness” alone, enlisting support from peers, teams, and networks makes it more likely that they can navigate those challenges effectively.

Building Resilience in Practice

The Resilient Leader program reflects that broader understanding. It begins at the individual level and progressively expands to teams and organizations. Early sessions help participants understand the foundations of resilience as a skill set, including how emotions, beliefs, and thought patterns shape responses to adversity. Participants work through cases and exercises that show how even high-performing professionals can be thrown off course by unexpected setbacks, and how different responses lead to different outcomes.

Other sessions explore how leaders influence resilience in their teams, including how to maintain trust, transparency, and dignity during difficult decisions such as restructuring or downsizing. In one experiential exercise, participants confront the emotional and relational dynamics of making hard calls — and learn how seemingly small actions can shape whether teams fracture or remain cohesive.

The program then expands the scope further. Faculty explore how networks provide critical support in times of adversity, and how storytelling helps leaders and teams make meaning from difficult experiences. An off-site visit with Philadelphia’s Mural Arts program offers a vivid example of how an organization evolved through challenges over decades, illustrating resilience at the organizational level.

Throughout, the emphasis is on practical application. Participants work on a Resilience Action Plan — a structured way to apply what they are learning to a real challenge they are currently facing. “We want people to leave with something concrete,” Nurmohamed says. “Not just ideas, but tools and a plan they can put into practice right away.”

Ultimately, he hopes participants leave with a different understanding of resilience — not as an abstract quality, but as a set of learnable practices. “I want people to walk away thinking, ‘This is a skill set I can continue to develop,’” he says. “Not only for myself, but for the people I lead and the organization I’m part of.”