Organizational Resilience
Nicole Neubauer on organisational resilience and how a person's resilience can be seen in the results of the Hogan Assessments.
Date: 3. February 2025
Author: Nicole Neubauer
Categories: Personality, Personality Assessments, metaArticle

Resilience refers to a person’s ability to deal with difficult or stressful situations and to stabilize and recover despite setbacks or stress.
It is not just about “enduring” problems, but also about
- actively adapting to challenges and
- learning from crises to emerge stronger
Resilient people remain mentally and emotionally flexible and often find creative ways to deal with change.
The term is not only used in psychology, but also in economics and ecology to describe the resilience of systems or organizations. Here we speak of organizational resilience.
Organizational resilience describes the ability to
- anticipate trends and threats
- effectively manage unexpected events and
- learning from these events
Duchek (2020) distinguishes three phases of organizational resilience:
- Anticipation
- coping and
- Adaptation
While the first phase, anticipation, takes place before the actual crisis occurs and primarily involves a company’s ability to scan its environment, identify critical developments and prepare for potential crises, the second phase, coping, concerns the actual crisis. This phase is about accepting the crisis (not every crisis can be prevented) as well as developing solutions to specific problems and implementing these solutions in good time. The final phase, adaptation, refers to the time after the crisis. Here it is important that the organization reflects on the crisis, learns from it and implements these findings in appropriate changes in order to be better prepared for future crises.
Agile leadership behaviors for organizational resilience
With our ‘Agile Leadership’ model developed in 2017 together with the IMD Business School, we have tried to provide answers as to how managers can respond flexibly to change: in particular the ‘behavior’ of hyperawareness – i.e. the ability to recognize new trends and also to evaluate them objectively by means of analyses (‘informed decision-making’).
Here’s a concise summary of the resilience analysis based on the Hogan Assessment Systems:
The assessment identifies three key resilience competencies:
- Stress Tolerance:
- Prudent individuals manage stress by adhering to structure and maintaining stable processes.
- They are less reactive to stress and unexpected events due to their calm nature and lower emotional intensity.
- A positive outlook on others helps them see social support rather than threats, mitigating stress.
- Tolerance for Ambiguity:
- Well-adjusted people handle ambiguity without emotional reactions.
- Their ambition allows them to take advantage of unclear situations, maintaining focus.
- Open communication and adaptability prevent ambiguity from leading to blame-shifting.
- Endurance:
- Highly ambitious individuals remain motivated even in difficult situations by focusing on their goals.
- Their structured approach and persistence keep them moving forward.
- A trusting attitude toward others fosters collaboration in achieving goals.
Overall, the analysis highlights that structured thinking, adaptability, and goal-oriented behavior contribute to resilience by enabling individuals to manage stress, handle ambiguity, and persist in challenging circumstances.
References
Burnout guide, metaBeratung – an exclusive download for metaBeratung customers via Customer Portal Download-Center metaBeratung: Hogan Information
Organisationaler Resilienz: Austrian Management Review: Volume 11 / 2021 – Google Books