Be careful you don’t have too much resilience.
I see constant updates about resilience—great advice, amazing tips, questions about how to build it. But be careful. Too much resilience can be a dangerous thing. Let me explain.
I started my career as an actor. I wasn’t out of work often, but the rejections were brutal. Open, unfiltered, sometimes ridiculous. “You’re too small.” “Not the right look.” “Too handsome for this part” (believe it or not). Years of constant judgment and rejection built an iron resilience in me—without it, I would have sunk into depression. That same resilience carried me through a later career working with disengaged youth, those in conflict with the law, and within secure care and prisons. It served me well when faced with outbursts of trauma and anger from those I was supporting. Water off a duck’s back. I’d had worse.
But here’s the problem—too much resilience left me wide open to something just as damaging: compassion fatigue. It meant I tolerated far more than I should have. I became desensitised, laughing off daily criticism, even outright unprofessionalism, from those in power. One so-called leader in a previous role embodied this problem. She overreacted at the slightest thing, then spiralled into childlike remorse—but instead of apologising for her outbursts, she’d double down, deflect, and lash out. “You’ve embarrassed me,” she’d say. “I now have to apologise to our partners because of you.” It was never about my actions but her complete lack of control and emotional intelligence.
She was incapable of communicating in a way that made sense. So much so that I literally had to create an AI bot just to decipher what she was trying to say—a morale-boosting joke within the team who were equally baffled. But instead of recognising her failures, she projected them onto me, claiming I wasn’t as “smart” as her. Instead of leading, she offloaded accountability onto anyone who would take it, as if responsibility was her kryptonite. And my resilience? It meant I laughed it off and moved on. Dusted myself down and carried on.
This same leader demanded detailed reports on projects, team dynamics, challenges, and successes—documents that required deep thought and careful articulation. But because these reports exceeded her five-line comprehension limit, her response was never constructive. “I’m not reading that,” she’d snap. “One page or it gets deleted.” No gratitude. No effort to provide a format or guidance. Just belittling and minimising effort. A competent leader would have given direction. She chose insults instead. When I gently pushed back, explaining that in the absence of guidance, I had used successful formats from major organisations I had worked for previously, she doubled down.
She prided herself on having “higher standards than anyone else” but had no evidence to back it up. Her expertise was self-proclaimed, her leadership a trail of destruction. She imposed herself on every major task—tasks the team could have completed faster and more effectively—straining relationships and damaging morale in the process.
And still, my resilience absorbed it. Until it didn’t.
I had to take time out of my own work to research and prove that my ideas—ones she dismissed so readily—were in fact 100% correct. Still, I dusted myself down. This was a leader who sent emails at ridiculous hours, and if you responded, she’d sneer, “Happy to see you working while ill.” A leader who, even when I was grieving, couldn’t rein in her toxic behaviour, instead praising me for “staying on hand” during loss. Her reality was the only one that mattered. The rest of us were just forced to live in it.
She took my ability to bounce back as permission to keep lashing out. My resilience wasn’t a shield—it was an invitation for further abuse. And because I tolerated it, she escalated. It wasn’t until I saw the damage she was inflicting on the wider team that I finally said: Enough.
Instead of self-reflecting, she painted me as the problem. I was now the enemy for calling her out, for stating the obvious: that she was a disaster, that her behaviour was damaging the organisation and the team. But people like this don’t change. They deflect. They project. They pass accountability onto anyone but themselves.
So I did the only thing left to do—I quit. I recharged. I rebuilt.
Resilience is important. But unchecked, it prevents you from stepping up and saying, Enough of this bullshit. It allows you to tolerate what should never be tolerated. Be careful seeking resilience—because too much of it will keep you standing in the fire long after you should have walked away.
The Importance of Balance in Leadership
Good leaders create environments where resilience isn’t a survival mechanism but a tool for growth. They foster open communication, provide clear expectations, and lift their teams rather than breaking them down. My experience reinforced this truth: great leadership isn’t about control or dominance—it’s about trust, respect, and the ability to empower others.
If nothing else, this experience taught me to recognise the difference. And now, I advocate for healthy, productive workplaces where resilience isn’t exploited, but nurtured in a way that benefits both individuals and the organisation as a whole.
