Is resilience a skill, or just what we call surviving?

My third solo skydive nearly killed me.

Thirteen and a half thousand feet. I pull, and instead of a canopy I get a horseshoe malfunction: the parachute wrapped around me instead of above me. I had about thirty-five seconds.

Here's what I remember. Not fear, exactly. A very clear voice that said: you have to let go of this to fix it.

So I did. I untangled it in time. And I went back up the same day.

People hear that story and say, "That's resilience. You held on." No. I let go. Holding on is the thing that would have killed me.

That's the whole misunderstanding about resilience, in one jump.

What's the pattern?

We teach it as endurance. Grit. Bounce back. Push through. Every corporate resilience program I've seen is really an endurance program with a nicer name.

But endurance is holding on. Resilience is knowing what to put down.

Here's the paradox I talk about on stage. I call it "hold on loosely." With any new thing, a technology, a strategy, a role: you die without it. And you die holding it too tight. The skill isn't the grip. It's the release.

Look at the people who came through the last three years well. Not the ones who worked hardest to keep everything the same. The ones who could say, this part of my job is gone, and I'm still here.

People defend the current expression of their value instead of the value itself. Free yourself from the role, not from your worth.

The job is not the goal.

What should leaders do now?

So if you want a more resilient team, stop training them to endure. Train them to release.

Practice putting things down before you have to. A process. A title. A way of working that made you feel safe in 2019.

Name what you're holding too tight. Out loud, in the room. It's usually the thing everyone already knows.

And take it off regularly. Presence isn't a wellness perk. It's the navigation system. You can't see what to let go of at 120 miles an hour with your eyes shut.

You have more capacity for change than you think. You won't find it by adding transformation on top. You'll find it by putting something down.

What are you holding on to that's holding you?

Related: How do you lead through uncertainty without pretending to be certain?

Sam Rad, The Change Futurist. Keynote speaker on change, transformation, resilience, and AI adoption. Author of Radical Next. Book a keynote