Rethinking Resilience: Fueling Your Competitive Advantage

by Tissa Richards

What if everything you’ve been told about resilience was wrong?

Is resilience about bouncing back after disruption or loss? Is it a character trait fixed in stone, revealed only after hardship? That old, reactive definition doesn’t get you far in today’s uncertain world.

What if resilience is something you can learn, train, and design into your leadership and your life? It’s time to embrace a new way of thinking about resilience.

Intentional resilience may be your most important strategic advantage.

In Rethinking Resilience, award-winning author Tissa Richards redefines resilience not as a reactive tool or a feel-good buzzword, but as a powerful, tactical, repeatable skill set that powers performance, especially in moments of complexity, uncertainty, or leadership scrutiny.

Drawing on decades of experience as a repeat founder, CEO, and coach to C-suite and board-level leaders, Richards introduces a new way to think about not as something you summon in a crisis, but something you call on daily and intentionally.

Built on real-world stories and hard-won insights, this book introduces the Intentional Resilience Flywheel, showing leaders how to hard-wire clarity, confidence, and decision-making into how they operate, so they stop reacting and start leading. It offers actionable tools, language, and habits to help you stop reacting and start leading without compromise.

This is leadership at its most grounded, strategic, and human.

Read this book to learn how

Lead high-stakes decisions with clarity, anchored values, and tactical confidenceBuild teams that pivot, adapt, and innovate in real time, with intentional resilienceCreate lasting influence and impact while remaining grounded during uncertain times.
Whether you’re navigating complexity, scaling teams, or facing constant visibility and scrutiny, this book gives you a toolkit to lead clearly, credibly, and resiliently—without losing yourself in the process.

182 pages, Paperback

Published October 11, 2025

Reviews

[Cecilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Fresh Take on Resilience that Every AI-Age Leader Needs

In Rethinking Resilience, Tissa Richards flips resilience from a reactive survival tactic into a proactive, strategic edge. Her concept of Intentional Resilience—anchored in conviction, curiosity, clarity, and community—resonates deeply with what I see in organizations navigating AI transformation.

Too many leaders approach AI reactively, chasing competitors or scrambling after disruption. The leaders who will truly win in the AI era are those who, like Richards’ framework suggests, embed resilience into their culture by design. Conviction helps them invest beyond hype. Curiosity ensures they ask better questions about value and ethics. Clarity enables them to filter the noise of endless AI use cases. And cadence keeps experimentation sustainable, not exhausting.

What I appreciated most is that this book doesn’t treat resilience as a soft skill—it positions it as the hard edge of competitive advantage. That’s exactly how AI leadership must be practiced: with resilience that anticipates, adapts, and continuously strengthens.

Whether you’re leading through AI disruption or any other transformation, Richards offers a practical, inspiring playbook. I’ll be recommending this one widely.

[Kate Henderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Listened to the audiobook

This book was OK - but I did find myself drifting off and not being fully engaged throughout. I'm unsure whether this was down to the monotone narrator, or the content being a bit meh.

There were some interesting points here, but there was also a lot of common sense points that made me switch off.
Just Ok.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

5/10

The messaging and execution of this book are strong, relatable, and well-developed. While this title primarily targets those in business and leadership roles, there are everyday lessons throughout.

Richards expands on the concept of resilience, challenging the traditional view that it's a fixed trait, something you either have or don't. Instead, he emphasizes that resilience is a skill that can be developed and cultivated over time, whether for individual growth or within a team setting. No matter the life path someone chooses, there will be inevitable moments that test their resilience. When actively nurtured, resilience becomes a consistent part of daily life, allowing individuals to better manage challenges. Cultivating resilience involves managing time effectively, utilizing resources wisely, practicing self-care regularly, and prioritizing activities and relationships that recharge and inspire you. This proactive approach enables you to consistently show up as your best self, regardless of life's ups and downs.

Masking and forcing different versions of yourself will eventually lead to burnout in your professional and personal life. Being authentic is essential to cultivating resilience. The goals, values, and priorities of an individual or organization receive the highest quality contributions when each piece comes from genuine passion. This is further built when you surround yourself with those who support you and add to your resources, rather than taking your limited daily resources.

The author narrates the audiobook with ease and passion. A major issue I encountered was frequent silent gaps, glitches, and skips throughout the file, sometimes more than once within the same chapter. There were moments where I am sure some content was lost. It was jarring and made it difficult to stay engaged with the story. This made the title nearly impossible to listen to. I hope this gets fixed for others. It significantly reduced the quality of the title for me.

Note: Thank you to NetGalley for an audio ARC of this title.

[Robbie Samuels · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Rethinking Resilience” by Tissa Richards is one of those rare leadership books that immediately earns a permanent spot on your desk. Tissa reframes resilience from something reactive—bouncing back—to something intentional and proactive: leading with clarity, conviction, and alignment before the pressure hits.

What sets this book apart is its practicality. Each chapter delivers a clear framework you can immediately apply to your leadership, communication, and decision-making. Her “Intentional Resilience Flywheel” is a standout—simple to grasp yet deeply transformative in how it helps you build confidence and stay centered when the stakes are high.

Tissa’s writing is crisp and relatable, with examples that feel authentic rather than abstract. She doesn’t sugarcoat the realities of burnout or the emotional weight of leadership, yet she offers tools that make navigating those moments possible with greater ease and integrity.

If you’ve ever felt stretched thin by competing demands or uncertain about how to sustain your performance without sacrificing your well-being, this book delivers exactly the mindset and methods you need. It’s clear, grounded, and genuinely useful—a playbook for thriving, not just surviving, in leadership.

[Lauren C · Rating 5 out of 5]

In today’s world, volatility and uncertainty feel like constants—whether in politics, business, the economy, or even our personal safety in the face of rising political violence. Against this backdrop, Rethinking Resilience: Refueling Your Competitive Advantage is a tour de force. Built around Tissa Richards’ central theme of Intentional Resilience, Richards challenges us to actively own our growth—“growth happening through me, not as an event happening to me.” The book offers insights that are not only timely but profoundly applicable across every facet of life: personal, professional, and how we engage in our communities. Her powerful reminder that “the moments that test us the most don’t happen in boardrooms. They happen in the real world” underscores the importance of leading with authenticity and strength every day. This book delivers practical, inspiring strategies to build real resilience and a competitive edge in unpredictable times.
This is a book I will return to often, and I highly recommend it to anyone navigating complexity and change—essentially, all of us.
— Lauren C. Anderson, Board Director and Advisor, Former FBI Executive, Crisis and Risk Management Expert

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tissa Richards challenges the reactive "bounce back" thinking that treats resilience as a scramble to recover after things go wrong. Instead, she makes a compelling case for building adaptive muscle before a crisis hits, offering a practical action plan to create the Intentional Resilience flywheel. Her seven-component framework draws from extensive coaching experience and is brought to life with real stories from leaders who embody intentional resilience. Resilience directly affects decision speed, risk appetite, team retention, innovation, and strategic focus. In today’s world where AI keeps upending the business norms and throws new business challenges, leaders get a toolbox for keeping teams steady, focused, and ready to come out stronger on the other side.

[Dennis Sheppard]

As a former U.S. Army Civilian Manager in the Public Works arena, I was forced to be resilient when constantly challenged with fiscal and manpower cuts and restraints. We used traditional crisis management methods to handle almost every situation. The use of "intentional resilience" would have changed the game, though, and allowed us to completely revamp our approach to these challenges. No matter what point you are in life, these principles are valuable and will re-shape the way you handle everything. I am excited to apply so many of Tissa Richards' ideas to my work with charitable organizations and even to my personal relationships. Everyone, at every stage in life, needs to read this book!

Karen Sheppard

[Meg Munchoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rethinking Resilience by Tissa Richards is one of those books that stays with you long after you put it down. What I loved most was her notion that Intentional Resilience isn’t just an individual trait, but a shared practice. She highlights how teams can find power and peace through each other, and how we actually ‘regulate one another, even in silence’.

This book is a refreshing and human take on what it means to lead and support others, especially in times of uncertainty and change, and is a perspective that I will carry forward as a leader of a team. If you’re thinking about how to build stronger, more connected teams (and showing up more intentionally yourself), this book is a must!

[Lalit Panda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Resilience is a required characteristic for any corporate leader in the VUCA world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Here is a book written in her inimitable easy to read style, where Tissa Richards, adds a framework to build intentionality into building the muscle for this skill. It is a must read for anyone who wants to be well prepared for the certain challenges one will face in any profession, but more particularly suited for the complexity in business enterprises, as Tissa outlines with her personal example.

[Katherine Hayward Pérez · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found that Rethinking Resilience: Fuelling Your Competitive Advantage was mostly tailored to people in companies. The main message is that resilience isn’t just something you have or don’t. I have multiple physical disabilities and visual impairments. I’ve been told I’m resilient.

I found the introduction repetitive, and I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about the book. I enjoyed the reference to resilience in biology and brain chemicals. I liked the parallel between this and resilient people. I identified with the fact that friends turned into strangers. I liked the description of reactive resilience in life. It made me realize that that’s what I’ve seen in some people. The concept of a resilient culture was interesting.

Intentional resilience is about not just enduring things, it’s when you are better prepared before crises and is more about moving forward rather than just bouncing back.

I know I’m already resilient. I didn’t learn very many things from this book.

I learned from this book and liked the interview and life snippets, but it was repetitive in terms of ideas like resilience not just being a soft skill. Staying calm instead of being reactive. The words “pivot, “playbook” and “flywheel” are widely overused and get quickly irritating. More varied word choice would really help.

Some suggestions just felt like common sense. It wasn’t gripping and relatable enough for me. I found it hard to stay interested.

I did find some parts of the file were skipped. This was distracting.

2 stars

Thanks to Tissa Richards and Audible Audio for my audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

[Anita Busquets · Rating 5 out of 5]

I quote a passage from Tissa's book, " Curiosity keeps you from defaulting to old playbooks" This is key to resilience. Under pressure or in chaos, we want to control and fill in the blanks, but when we do, we lose the opportunity to ask questions, to truly clarify and understand the situation. When we are clear, solutions come more easily and we can be more resilient in our response. Thank you Tissa for this lesson and so many more in your new book.

[Vinod Sood · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Rethinking Resilience" is all about how as leaders we not just react to a crisis or face challenges but how we move forward, grow and continue evolving in this VUCA/BANI world. The book provides a powerful framework and a comprehensive tool-kit which every leader should have in their arsenal. An essential read for all CXOs and all those aspiring for leadership positions.

[S R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow was a great read! The book reframes resilience - - isn’t about bouncing back. It’s about moving forward with intention. And those skills can be built and this book shows how. Inspiring and practical for work and personal life.

[Athena Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to this book as an audiobook.

Very realistic take with little stories about people and how they reacted to hardships during periods of change. Given from lots of different perspectives. Felt like a different type of resilience book that was much more practical