18th November 2025
At 5.30am, long before most of London wakes, Ruben Tabares is already training. The former Team GB 400m runner turned strength and conditioning coach has spent two decades helping world champions – from David Haye to Dina Asher-Smith – sustain peak performance. But he insists that resilience has little to do with brute force. “Motivation comes and goes, but discipline lasts a lifetime,” he says. “It’s about doing the work every day, even when you don’t want to. That’s what keeps you standing when everything else wobbles. And that’s why discipline is the cornerstone of resilience.”
Building the habits that last
The American Psychological Association defines resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity or significant stress – a skill that anyone can learn through connection, wellness, healthy thinking and meaning. It is, in effect, a muscle built through repetition.
Tabares applies the same logic to his athletes and executive clients alike. He asks them to keep a daily journal recording what went well and what could improve. “If you keep that promise to yourself every day,” he says, “you create momentum. You start to trust your own consistency, and that trust is the foundation of mental strength.”
Science supports his approach. A BBC report identifies a sense of control as one of the strongest predictors of psychological resilience. Those with an internal “locus of control” – a belief that they can influence outcomes – are better at problem-solving and less prone to burnout. Routine, rest and self-reflection act as stabilisers when external conditions become unpredictable.
Lessons from crisis leadership
In business, the same principles apply – but at organisational scale. EY calls resilience “a three-step process that starts with the leader”: first, cultivating self-awareness and purpose; second, encouraging diverse ideas across teams; and third, embedding those values into company culture. As Heidi Grant, EY’s head of learning research, says, uncertainty can cause leaders to lose perspective: “When uncertainty hits, working memory shrinks. Pull back and hone your sense of purpose.”
For Claire Sofield, Managing Director of recruitment firm Four Recruitment, resilience is “a leader’s superpower”. Her outlook was shaped during 2023, a year that brought unexpected challenges as a slowdown in the hiring market tested the resilience of her 16-year-old business. “It was the toughest period of my career,” she says. “Even compared to Covid, it felt harder. Demand fell sharply, salaries rose and we had some people challenges. We had to make a choice and chose to restructure and reset – staying true to who we were but recognising where we made mistakes."
“Resilience isn’t about being bulletproof,” she adds. “It’s about how you respond when things go wrong. You can’t control every shock, but you can control how fast you act and what you learn from it.”
That speed of response proved decisive. Sofield cut non-core spending, rebuilt financial modelling and prioritised open communication with staff and clients. She also invested in personal development – joining peer groups to test ideas and gain perspective. “You realise you’re not the only one under pressure,” she says. “Talking about failure is what helps you recover from it.”
Her experience reflects McKinsey’s findings that the most resilient companies use periods of crisis to reconfigure – reallocating resources quickly, experimenting with new models and building optionality rather than cutting back. By deepening relationships with fewer clients and streamlining operations, she effectively diversified her firm’s risk exposure and created a more flexible base for growth. “We learned that scale isn’t strength,” she says. “Adaptability is.”
Resilience as strategy
As uncertainty becomes the norm, resilience is shifting from wellness topic to boardroom metric. Bain & Company describes it as “one of the most critical strategic differentiators of any company’s success”. Its analysis highlights four imperatives for leaders: strategic foresight, operational adaptability, supply-chain flexibility and environmental sustainability. Traditional crisis management, Bain warns, is too narrow; resilient organisations connect short-term agility to long-term purpose, anticipating “corner scenarios” rather than reacting to them.
For Sofield, that foresight now defines her leadership style. “Make decisions quicker and don’t procrastinate,” she says. “Optimism is vital, but blind optimism can sink you. You need realism and discipline.” Doing the right things consistently is key, she adds.
Tabares frames it more simply. “Resilience isn’t about never falling down,” he says. “It’s about how fast you get back up. When things get tough, you go back to the basics – your sleep, your food, your routine. You rebuild from there.”
Resilience, then, isn’t something people or companies either have or lack. It’s the ability to find a way forward when plans collapse. Those who understand that don’t try to be unbreakable – they learn how to bend and start again.
