Resilience Is Not A Birthright
Getty - Resilience
I don't know about you, but I tend to believe that the term "resilience" has become misplaced.
It's tossed around as though it's an innate trait, something leaders are either born with or somehow earn through adversity. But author Mandy Gill disagrees.
In her new book, Reset with Resilience: A Guide to Greatness When Your Goals Go Sideways, she makes it plain: resilience is not a birthright. It is learned, and for most people—especially in the modern workplace—it has gone untrained for too long.
Gill isn't theorizing from the sidelines. She's built her credibility the hard way: as a broadcaster, wellness tech entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and ultra-endurance athlete. Over the last three years alone, she has run over 6,000 miles and climbed nearly one million feet of elevation.
But it's not her stamina that matters. For Gill, it's her strategic honesty about what derails progress, both personally and professionally.
In most workplaces, goals are sacrosanct. There are annual performance objectives, quarterly KPIs, and stretch targets, and a good portion of the time, they are all dressed up as inspiration. But the hidden truth is that almost no one is trained to navigate what happens when things fall apart. Gill deliberately avoided writing a book that celebrates goal setting.
Instead, she wrote a book about what happens when goals go sideways.
'When things start to go sideways, we don't talk about it,' Gill told me. 'If I had quit everything that went off track in my life, I wouldn't be here today. But there are ways to get back on course, and sometimes, it's not the original course, but it's somewhere close, or even better.'
That pragmatism is what defines her framework. The book unfolds in three parts:
It's refreshingly devoid of cliché. There are no hollow calls to bounce back. Instead, there is an insistence on planning, structure, and situational awareness.
She frames this as 'resistance,' which is the moment you feel something is off but plow ahead anyway. For Gill, resilience begins when you acknowledge that resistance instead of muscling through it.
Gill's thinking on resilience is rooted in practice. Her company's wellness app, Hooked on Healthy Habits, gave her access to one of the largest private data sets on human behavioral triggers. Among the most important findings was the role of distraction in sabotaging progress. She distilled her coaching into a deceptively simple model: Catch it. Check it. Change it.
'It sounds basic,' she admitted, 'but that three-step idea changed more lives than I ever expected. Because people could actually do it. They caught themselves in the act of veering off track. And they learned to check the pattern and then make a conscious choice.'
In her survey of over 1,000 users, 74% admitted that at least one distraction derailed their progress daily for a month. That aligns with BetterUp's findings: employees with higher resilience are 31% more productive and experience far lower burnout compared to less resilient counterparts.
Gill's point isn't just about noise, it's about agency. Resilience does not require superhuman focus. It doesn't mean you have to walk through fire. It requires self-awareness, a structured plan, and the discipline to follow through when motivation evaporates.
'Proper planning beats poor performance,' she said, invoking the mantra she uses with teams. Her ultramarathon training follows the same principle. 'There is no winging it. You break it down, reverse-engineer it, and hold yourself accountable.'
Gill described a unique moment in both our lives in 2022, when, as emcee, she welcomed me to a keynote stage just hours after completing a 62-mile race with over 20,000 feet of vertical gain. The point wasn't the race. It was the preparation. She had mapped out every detail of the week—nutrition, recovery, schedule—so she could deliver on stage, as a host and moderator, the next morning.
It wasn't motivational. It was operational. Again, catch it, check it, change it.
Mandy Gill
One of the most critical points Gill raises is that resilience isn't purely individual.
Without structural support—mentorship, culture, clarity—even the most disciplined employees will falter. Research from the Resilience Institute finds that structured resilience programs deliver an average 4:1 return on investment. For every $1 spent, organizations recoup $4 in improved productivity, reduced turnover, and lower burnout.
Gill brought up a story about a construction firm in Toronto where 30-year veterans were retiring en masse, with no mentorship protocols in place.
'If that wisdom doesn't get passed down,' she said, 'the whole culture goes with them.'
Gill advocates for strategic mentorship not merely as a side benefit but as a safeguard for resilience. When institutional memory fades without proper transfer, the outcome is entropy. Young professionals are left to reconstruct knowledge that could have been preserved if only someone had the time or courage to speak up and share it.
'If you can't get a mentor, research them,' she added. 'Go deep. Friday night, spend the time and look them up. Learn from them even if they're not available to you in person.'
The risk of losing wisdom—especially in an age where knowledge work is increasingly fragmented—is a direct hit to team resilience. We are not designed to operate in silos, nor should we expect people to develop resilience in isolation.
Resilience does not have to be an overcomplicated act of leadership. Nor should you assume it to be an overblown ideology for the weak.
It is, as Gill points out, a learned skill that just might be a hidden superpower. \
Watch the full interview with Mandy Gill and Dan Pontefract on the Leadership NOW program below, or listen to it on your favorite podcast.
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