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Resilience through Leadership 65

through his strength of character, Shackleton’s leadership demonstrated
and encouraged every essential component of resilience, even when group
resilience itself was at dangerously low ebb. Eventually, Shackleton and his
team were able to navigate several small whaleboats through frigid currents
to reach Elephant Island. Though uninhabited and inhospitable, Elephant

Island provided relative safety from the sea.
Having found a place of temporary safety for his team, Shackleton then
chose five of his most skillful men to chart the way another 800 miles across

the sea to South Georgia Island. Before he departed Elephant Island, Shack-
leton exhorted the rest of his team not to give up and assured the 22 men

left behind that he would bring rescue. After weeks at sea, Shackleton and

his remaining companions finally landed on South Georgia Island. Incred-

ibly, they then made their way over and through the ice-covered passes of a
snow-covered mountain range to the shelter of a permanent whaling station.

There, they organized the rescue of their fellow team members left behind on
Elephant Island. Remarkably, all had survived.
If correct, the notion of a resilience reservoir suggests that eff ective lead-
ership can facilitate and reinforce group resilience and, speculatively, that

an effective leader’s individual resilient character and behavior might even
partially substitute for group resilience. We will revisit this line of reasoning
later in the chapter. First, we will examine resilience within a broader theo-
retical framework, as one component of a complex of variables highlighted
by two models of human stress.

Resilience and Models of Stress

Thus far, we have considered individual and unit resilience within a common-
sense context of adversity and misfortune. In this context, resilience serves

to buffer an individual or group against psychological and physical strains
exerted by hostile environments or threatening circumstances. More

specifically, we might say that resilience serves to moderate or mediate the
relationship between external stressors and internal stress (perceived strain).
For example, resilience might directly moderate psychological or behavioral
components of the stressor–strain relationship. Alternatively, a more resil-
ient individual might experience a lower level of internal stress (perceived
strain) than a less resilient cohort.
Stress researchers have long been interested in variables and processes that
moderate or mediate stressor–strain relationships (e.g., see Barling, Kelloway &
Frone, 2005; Brief, Schuler & Van Sell, 1981; Cooper, Dewe & O’Driscoll,
2001; Ivancevich & Matteson, 1980). Numerous theoretical models have been
put forth to address specific processes and variables involved in biochemical

stress (e.g., Selye, 1956), psychosomatic stress (e.g., Lachman, 1972), adaptation

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