Keys to Resourcefulness: 4 Skills for Life, Leadership, and Success
What is resourcefulness? How does it fit into leadership skills? And what does it have to do with decision, determination and success?
Of all the life skills, I can honestly say that resourcefulness has served me best. Along with energy management. Mind you, it's my own definition of resourcefulness, one that begins with making a decision and follows with consistent determination, two skills that enable the dictionary definition: "to act effectively and imaginatively, to use information and available resources wisely and efficiently."
I connect resourcefulness with lessons I learned early on in life, when I lost my mother, then my father, and then moved from one home to the next, all before the age of nine. I learned that we all decide how we react to situation, whether we sink or we swim. And by extension, we all decide what we do next. We have a choice. As my favorite practical philosopher Brian Johnson writes, "When we DECIDE, we get clear on what we want. And, we get equally clear on the price we will need to pay to get it. And then we get busy paying it."
I also learned that determination keeps us on course—it's a willingness to focus your energy and show up for however long it takes to make things happen. When we then add our own development—learning from everything including the stumbles—with whatever is available, we can do anything, we can "act effectively and imaginatively to use information and available resources" to do what we set out to do.
“Success is not about your resources. It’s about how resourceful you are with what you have.”
The Resourcefulness Equation
When these three D's of decision, determination, and development got me to France when I was twenty, I learned the French have a wonderful expression: "système D," which comes from the equally delightful word "débrouillardise" that translates as resourcefulness. It refers to the art of getting by with one's ingenuity and logic, but without adequate equipment or special support.
Later on in life, in my mid-forties, when I had a new business in a new city and a new home with a new husband and a young child, my three D's weren't enough anymore. I found myself exhausted, slumped on the floor pulling out my hair, with my daughter calling me a witch. This was not me. What was missing? Energy. Actual physical and mental and emotional energy. An E to add to the D's. At that point, I set out, with a firm decision and consistent determination to develop my energy management skills.
So the equation that enable resourcefulness looks like this:
(3D * E) + a whole lot of tuning everyone and everything else out
That last part is important. It's focus. What Daniel Goleman calls "the hidden driver of success" in his book Focus. He also writes, "Directing attention toward where it needs to go is a primal task of leadership. Talent here lies in the ability to shift attention to the right place at the right time, sensing trends and emerging realities and seizing opportunities."
Definitions of Resourcefulness
Did you know that research links resourcefulness with other key leadership skills, such as sociability, resilience, creativity, and self-awareness? Or that there is something called "learned resourcefulness," which consists of self-monitoring, problem solving, emotional regulation self-control, the use of positive statements, delay of gratification and perceived self-efficacy?
One researcher (M. Rosenbaum, 1993) focuses on the idea of self-control. He says that resourcefulness is the ability to resume normal functioning that has been disrupted, to disrupt the customary way of functioning and adopt a new behavior, and to engage actively in one’s pursuits.
Other researchers add a social dimension, and combine helping oneself with getting help from others.
Resourcefulness and Leadership
An article in Forbes reports that when members of Special Forces teams are asked what one trait they seek in a leader, "their answer isn't superior physical ability, strategic intelligence or command presence. When it comes to the person whose leadership could mean the difference between life and death, they prioritize resourcefulness — the ability to come up with quick, creative ways to solve problems and overcome difficulties."
The link to leadership is clear. Practically speaking, how does resourcefulness express itself in leader?
With the certainty that things can be figured out
With curiosity rather than judgment or wallowing
With a fascination in not knowing
With an open mind about possibilities
And as we said earlier, resourcefulness in and of itself is not enough. It goes hand in hand with determination and perseverance (and energy). As Admiral McRaven wrote in The Hero Code: “Genius without resolve is just another passing person with a bright idea. Athletic prowess without determination is just another talent wasted. The world is filled with men and women who amounted to nothing because they gave up on their dreams: because they didn’t have the guts, the determination, the willpower to keep going—no matter what. But history is equally replete with heroes who fought through the challenges, persevered, and made a difference."
Clearly, there is no single solution, but a rather a collection of them, which we develop continually as we develop ourselves. Step by step. Decision by decision.