Introduction — Why resilience must be understood as capacity
Paul Polman’s statement in this article takes on its full meaning: resilience is no longer personal. It is leadership infrastructure.
In many organisations, resilience is still framed as a personal attribute: the ability of individuals to cope with stress, recover from setbacks, and continue operating under pressure. While this framing may have been sufficient in a world of episodic crises, it no longer matches the reality leaders face today.
We are no longer navigating isolated disruptions. Climate instability, geopolitical tensions, technological acceleration, economic volatility, social fragmentation, and information overload now form a continuous pressure environment. In such conditions, the central question is no longer whether leaders are motivated or well-intentioned, but whether they still have the capacity to decide well, to remain coherent, and to hold their trajectory over time.
This is precisely the lens of the Capacity Score. Rather than evaluating performance, compliance, or stated commitments, a capacity-based approach asks whether leadership systems are strengthening or eroding the human, organisational, and relational capacities required to continue under stress. From this perspective, resilience is not a soft skill or a wellness topic. It is a foundational component of leadership capacity.
From bouncing back to holding steady
For decades, resilience was understood as recovery after disruption. The implicit assumption was that crises were temporary and separable from normal operations. Once the shock had passed, leaders could return to business as usual.
That assumption no longer holds. Climate instability, geopolitical tensions, technological acceleration, social fragmentation, and economic volatility now overlap and persist. Pressure is no longer episodic; it is structural. In such conditions, resilience cannot mean “recovering later.” It must mean remaining grounded and functional while the pressure continues.
Polman reframes resilience accordingly: not as the ability to rebound after stress, but as the ability to stay attentive, anchored, and morally coherent within ongoing stress. This shift is subtle but decisive. It moves resilience from a reactive posture to a continuous condition of leadership.
Resilience as leadership infrastructure
Once resilience is no longer episodic, it can no longer be private. Polman’s central claim is that resilience must be understood as infrastructure: something that supports judgment, integrity, and decision-making over time.
When resilience is treated as an individual matter, it is often reduced to personal habits—exercise, meditation, time off. These practices can be valuable, but they are insufficient on their own. Infrastructure implies something more deliberate and systemic: conditions that must be actively built, protected, and maintained because without them, leadership degrades.
Seen this way, resilience becomes a prerequisite for leadership rather than a by-product of it. Without resilience infrastructure, leaders under pressure default to short-termism, defensive choices, and ethical erosion—not because they lack values, but because their capacity to hold those values collapses under strain.
Governing attention in an age of overload
One of the first pillars of this infrastructure is attention. Polman identifies information overload as a silent but powerful threat to leadership quality. Endless notifications, fragmented media consumption, and constant urgency undermine the capacity for deep thinking.
More information does not produce better judgment. In fact, it often does the opposite. When attention is constantly fragmented, leaders lose the ability to see patterns, question assumptions, and distinguish signal from noise. Decisions become reactive rather than reflective.
Disciplining attention—deciding what not to read, what not to respond to, and when to disconnect—is therefore not a matter of personal preference. It is a leadership responsibility. Attention is a finite resource, and without protecting it, resilience cannot be sustained.
Creating distance, not just rest
Polman draws an important distinction between rest and distance. Short breaks scattered through overloaded schedules may reduce fatigue, but they rarely restore clarity. What leaders increasingly need is cognitive distance: time and space sufficient to step back from operational urgency and re-examine underlying assumptions.
This distance allows leaders to see systemic patterns, reassess priorities, and reconnect with long-term intent. It is what makes strategic thinking possible in complex environments. Without it, leaders remain trapped in immediacy, responding to symptoms rather than addressing causes.
Distance, in this sense, is not withdrawal. It is a necessary condition for responsible engagement.
Health as a leadership condition, not a personal luxury
Another key dimension of resilience infrastructure is health. Polman challenges the widespread normalisation of exhaustion, sleep deprivation, and chronic stress as markers of commitment.
Leadership under continuous pressure requires physical and mental integrity. Without it, judgment deteriorates, emotional reactivity increases, and ethical consistency weakens. Health is therefore not a private concern; it is a condition of leadership capacity.
From a capacity perspective, this point is critical. An organisation cannot claim to be resilient if it systematically exhausts the people responsible for its decisions. Human capacity is not an infinite resource, and treating it as such undermines long-term viability.
Escaping echo chambers and restoring collective intelligence
Resilience also depends on the quality of a leader’s relational environment. Polman warns against the dangers of intellectual isolation and echo chambers. Surrounding oneself only with confirming voices reduces adaptive capacity and increases systemic blind spots.
Exposure to diverse perspectives, disagreement, and constructive tension strengthens decision quality. It allows leaders to test assumptions, correct trajectories, and integrate signals they would otherwise miss. This is not about indecision or relativism, but about collective intelligence under complexity.
From a leadership infrastructure standpoint, diversity of thought is not optional. It is a resilience asset.
Resilience as moral capacity
At its deepest level, Polman’s argument is ethical. Resilience is what allows leaders to continue choosing deliberately when pressure pushes toward expediency. When resilience erodes, leaders do not necessarily abandon their values; they simply lose the capacity to enact them.
Resilience, then, is what keeps integrity operational. It enables leaders to remain honest about what is changing without compromising what must not change. In this sense, resilience is inseparable from responsibility—not only to oneself, but to teams, organisations, and the wider systems affected by leadership decisions.
Linking resilience to capacity
This is where the connection to capacity-based approaches becomes explicit. Resilience is not an abstract virtue; it is a measurable condition of leadership capacity. The Capacity Score does not ask whether leaders intend to do the right thing, but whether they still have the human, organisational, and relational capacity to do so over time.
Seen through this lens, resilience is neither a soft skill nor a wellness topic. It is a structural condition for continuity, discernment, and contribution in a world of permanent instability.
Conclusion — Holding the line in a world of pressure
Resilience is no longer about bouncing back. It is about holding steady. In a world where pressure is continuous and uncertainty structural, leadership depends less on speed and more on attention, health, distance, and integrity.
By reframing resilience as infrastructure, Paul Polman invites leaders to move beyond coping and toward capacity. Not the capacity to endure endlessly, but the capacity to remain lucid, relational, and responsible—long enough to shape trajectories that truly matter.
NOUS SOMMES VIVANTS, LE COLLECTIF DE LA TRANSITION ÉCOLOGIQUE 
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