Career Resilience

It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day demands of your current job and lose sight of the big picture, but with a typical career spanning fifty years or more, you do so at your own peril. It's up to you to chart your own course to professional success. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the 10 most important ones to help you develop yourself, make the right career moves, navigate inevitable detours and disruptions, and turn your professional dreams into reality.

When the world is upside down and the future uncertain, is it possible to find happiness? Happiness expert Tal Ben-Shahar unequivocally says yes! In Happier, No Matter What, he gives listeners a toolbox for finding hope and purpose - the SPIRE method.

From best-selling author and mental toughness expert Jason Selk comes a mind-training regimen for reframing every problem into an opportunity for productive action. The one characteristic all phenomenally successful people share is mental toughness. Mentally tough people are better at making decisions more quickly and with better results. They possess the uncanny ability to control what goes on between their ears.

Burnout has become one of the most talked-about workplace topics, and its impact is far-reaching. The 24-7 pace of work, constant demands, and scant resources can easily put busy professionals on a path to burnout, a cycle that has only accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet most attempts to help focus on quick-fix strategies aimed at individuals. Something is missing. In Beating Burnout at Work, Paula Davis, founder of the Stress & Resilience Institute, provides a new framework to help organizations prevent employee burnout.

From beloved performance expert, executive coach, and coauthor of Peak Performance Steve Magness comes a radical rethinking of how we perceive toughness and what it means to achieve our high ambitions in the face of hard things.

Based on author Scott Glassman's A Happier You® wellness program, this uplifting guide offers seven skills in seven weeks to supercharge your positivity and short-circuit the cycle of negative thinking.

In Change Proof, business and personal development expert Adam Markel shows how you can move beyond managing change to actively embracing it—and actually using times of uncertainty, crisis, and chaos to create opportunities and stimulate positive growth. You'll learn how to choose change before it chooses you, what it takes (and what it means) to become truly change proof, and how to leverage your relationship to change. This book will help you take the art and science of resilience to the next level—and look forward to future and all the changes it will bring.

Katrina. Haiti. BP. Fukushima. The Great Recession. Those are just a few of the catastrophic disruptions the world has endured in recent years. As we try to respond to such crises, key questions arise: What causes one system to break under great stress and another to rebound? How much change can a complex system absorb while still retaining its purpose and function? What characteristics make it adaptive to change? Provocative and eye-opening, Resilience sheds light on the nature of change.

In these tough times, there are few people who are completely happy with the current conditions. From business executives to the everyday Joe or Jane, everyone seems to be going through a rough economic and personal crunch. But Srikumar Rao, a former business school professor and the head of The Rao Institute, says that we can learn to create joy no matter what else may be going on around us.

Resilient leaders rise: Empower yourself and your team to conquer every challenge. Have you ever experienced a moment when the pace of the world seemed to surpass your ability to keep up? As a leader, the demands of navigating through challenging times can feel utterly overwhelming. The business landscape is evolving at an unprecedented rate, presenting new challenges and uncertainties every day.

Resilient delivers an invaluable collection of private journal entries mapping out a path from bootstrapping a multimillion-dollar business to raising millions in Series A funding for another. Entrepreneur and Resilia CEO Sevetri Wilson describes her journey from self-funding to venture capital success. Written for ambitious and aspiring entrepreneurs like herself, Wilson covers a wide variety of topics about the entrepreneurial journey.

How do some people bounce back with vigor from daily setbacks, professional crises, or even intense personal trauma? This collection of articles from HBR includes "How Resilience Works", by Diane Coutu; "Resilience for the Rest of Us", by Daniel Goleman; "How to Evaluate, Manage, and Strengthen Your Resilience", by David Kopans; "Find the Coaching in Criticism", by Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone; and much more.

Two former Harvard faculty—one an internationally-recognized negotiator and conflict management expert from Harvard Law, the other a leading behavioral neurologist and cutting-edge scientist from Harvard Med—join forces to introduce conflict resilience: the radical act of sitting in and growing from conflict to break the bad habits that sabotage our politics, workplaces, and most important relationships.

Resilience by Design: How to Survive and Thrive in a Complex and Turbulent World delivers the world's most detailed and research-backed how-to manual to integrate advances from neuroscience and complexity theory with real world expertise, providing practical techniques that you'll want to use every day.

What type of leadership is needed in a moment that demands adaptive change? Tod Bolsinger, author of Canoeing the Mountains, is uniquely positioned to explore the qualities of adaptive leadership in contexts ranging from churches to nonprofit organizations. He deftly examines both the external challenges we face and the internal resistance that holds us back. When reflection and relationships are combined into a life of deliberate practice, leaders become both stronger and more flexible.

Dr. Taryn Marie Stejskal began working with brain injury patients and found that most popular beliefs about human resilience are incorrect. Since then, for the last 20 years, she has conducted qualitative research on the power of resilience, studying the science behind why some people succeed while others fail. Here, Dr. Taryn Marie outlines the five critical behaviors that define successful resilience: Vulnerability, Productive Perseverance, Connection, Gratiosity (Gratitude and Generosity), and Possibility.

Hugh van Cuylenburg was a primary school teacher volunteering in northern India when he had a life-changing realisation: despite the underprivileged community the children were from, they were remarkably positive. By contrast, back in Australia Hugh knew that all too many children struggled with depression, social anxieties and mental illness. His own little sister had been ravaged by anorexia nervosa. How was it that young people he knew at home, who had food, shelter, friends and a loving family, struggled with their mental health, while these kids seemed so contented and resilient?

In "Breaking Barriers in Corporate America: Winning in a White Man’s World," Catrese Kilgore takes readers on a remarkable journey through her life, sharing a gripping story of determination, resilience, and unshakable ambition. From a challenging childhood to becoming a top-ranking professional in the corporate world, Kilgore's narrative is an inspirational testament to the indomitable spirit of a Black woman determined to thrive in an environment dominated by stereotypes and systemic biases. This book offers a captivating look at Kilgore's life, marked by early setbacks and obstacles ...

An innovative guide to living gamefully, based on the program that has already helped nearly half a million people achieve remarkable personal growth. In 2009, internationally renowned game designer Jane McGonigal suffered a severe concussion. Unable to think clearly or work or even get out of bed, she became anxious and depressed, even suicidal. But rather than let herself sink further, she decided to get better by doing what she does best: She turned her recovery process into a resilience-building game.

Adversity can often catch you by surprise and leave you struggling with what to do next. What if you could confront any adversity, from the biggest challenges - the loss of your job, divorce, health issues, bankruptcy - to normal daily challenges - a late flight, a disappointing phone call, a missed promotion, a bad day - and not just survive it, but thrive afterwards? Some people move through adversity, and others fall underneath it. Learn how you can be counted among those who will overcome.