The Fascination with Resilience – My Personal Journey
- Jul 2, 2025
- 6 min read
Stephen Vaughan is a leadership development expert with over 20 years of experience. He specialises in designing & delivering bespoke programmes & coaching sessions & is due to complete his PhD, Resilience in Leaders, in 2025.
Have you ever wondered what separates those who conquer challenges from those who crumble under pressure? This isn't just a theoretical question for me; it's a lifelong fascination that's shaped my career and now drives my doctoral research. From the thrill of elite sports to the complexities of global leadership development, my journey has been a deep dive into the power of resilience. This article charts that journey, revealing not only my personal connection to this vital human trait but also the surprising gaps in our understanding of resilience, especially in leaders, and how my research aims to bridge them. Prepare to explore the science and the story behind what makes some individuals and teams truly unstoppable.
What I’m interested in
I’ve always been fascinated by performance, what drives people to excel, to grow, and to continually deliver exceptional results. I believe there are few limits to what individuals can achieve in their own domains when the right factors align.
From a young age, I was a student of performance, though I didn’t fully recognise it until later in life when my career choices began to reflect this underlying passion. Even now, I question whether my interest shaped my career or if my career simply provided opportunities to explore that interest further.
My initial exposure to performance came through sports, watching individuals strive for victory and teams aim for perfect synergy. This interest has stayed with me throughout my professional life, deepening into an exploration of both personal performance and team dynamics.
Over time, my focus has shifted toward the subtler factors that enable people to persist in the face of adversity. What most intrigues me today is how individuals and teams continue to perform and often excel despite significant challenges. At first, I attributed this capacity to “mental toughness.” Now, I see it more accurately as resilience.
Why I’m interested in it
It’s people’s resilience that fascinates me most. This curiosity has only grown as I’ve learned how frequently we encounter stress and trauma in our lives, often daily, and almost certainly through at least one major event (Mancini & Bonanno, 2006). Resilience, in this context, becomes not just important, but essential (Hoggard, 2009).
I’ve long wondered why some people are able to carry on continuing to function and even thrive through personal and professional upheaval, while others with similar capabilities falter. Why do some rise stronger after failure, while others are stopped in their tracks?
Nietzsche’s famous quote, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” comes to mind. What enables athletes to succeed where others, equally talented, do not? Why do certain professionals, from CEOs to front-line workers, flourish despite obstacles, while others with similar qualifications struggle?
But defining resilience, let alone understanding how it works or how it might be taught or replicated, is no easy task. The academic literature offers no single consensus, instead presenting a web of conflicting definitions and frameworks (Bonanno, 2004; Southwick et al., 2014; Ward et al., 2020).
Even the field’s foremost thinkers offer different perspectives, with some adjusting their definitions over time (Masten, 1990, 2001, 2014) and others questioning whether a unified definition is even possible (Southwick et al., 2014). This variation extends to how resilience is thought to operate, what conditions support it, and what outcomes it leads to, all of which make resilience a deeply complex and context-dependent construct.
Despite this, I’m driven to bring clarity to the field. My specific interest lies in the resilience of leaders: how it operates, whether it can be intellectually understood, and crucially, how it might be applied to improve both individual performance and long-term leadership success.
Why I’m personally drawn to this
After leaving school, I pursued my childhood dream of becoming a professional footballer. At 16, I joined a Youth Training Scheme (YTS), a formal step toward a pro career.
My love of football began at six, when I was picked to play for the Cub Scouts in a local tournament. My position as a goalkeeper wasn’t assigned based on skill, but on height. Still, it proved to be a pivotal choice.
A decade later, I’d played for various teams at regional, national, and international levels. I reached the elite world of professional football, only to have my dream cut short two years later when I was released. This was my first real brush with resilience, though I didn’t recognise it as such at the time.
I turned to a former PE teacher, a role model who encouraged me to go to university and follow my interests. Inspired by my love of the outdoors, I studied Physical Geography and completed my first coaching qualification. This marked a turning point: I discovered I was perhaps better suited to coaching than playing.
During a gap year, I worked as a research assistant at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, where I developed a lasting passion for research. This period reshaped my career trajectory, launching me into coaching and ultimately leading to a broader journey in human development.
After university, I considered academia, earning a PGCE, but chose to return to football as an academy coach. I worked with young players worldwide, gradually specializing in older age groups. I found immense satisfaction in helping them succeed, especially as a way of offering them the guidance I wished I’d had myself.
Later, a friend invited me to join his growing consultancy. I was intrigued and took the leap. What followed was a 21-year career in global learning and development. Initially a consultant, I later co-founded a 12-person international firm. But success brought distance from people, from purpose, and I missed working directly with individuals.
Eventually, I sold my shares and started a solo consultancy. For over a decade now, I’ve worked with clients across industries and cultures, specializing in leadership development. My focus has been on helping leaders grow, teams excel, and individuals discover their potential.
What motivates me most is witnessing growth. I’m passionate about helping people become the best version of themselves. This belief, paired with an empathic and practical mindset, enables me to tailor development to the unique strengths and aspirations of each person I work with.
I also believe in the power of choice. As Viktor Frankl observed, “to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Everyone has potential, but real development begins when a person chooses to grow. And in making that choice, they inevitably face adversity.
It’s this realization that led me to study resilience in leaders.
Why the professional doctorate?
Having benefited from the guidance of remarkable mentors, I believe it’s important to be that person for others. My work is focused on helping people reach their full potential, both personally and professionally. That requires a deep, evolving understanding of human behavior.
My pursuit of a professional doctorate at the University of Central Lancashire was born from this commitment to deepen my expertise, challenge myself, and offer more meaningful support to those I work with.
As I explored possible research topics, I realized that leaders’ resilience was surprisingly under-researched. While leaders are often participants in resilience studies and leadership is examined as a factor influencing others’ resilience, their own resilience is rarely explored in depth.
A review of the literature revealed that, although interest in this area is growing, no consensus yet exists on how to define or explain resilience in leaders. My study aims to fill this gap.
Using a longitudinal, qualitative design, I set out to examine how leaders understand and express resilience.
I purposively sampled participants across gender, background, and sector.
Through semi-structured interviews and interpretative phenomenological analysis, which delves into the subjective meanings individuals attach to specific events or situations, aiming to explore the “how” and “why” behind their interpretations, I sought to answer three key questions:
Can we define resilience in leaders in a coherent and context-specific way?
How does resilience influence leaders’ performance?
Can the mechanisms leaders use be understood and adopted by others to build their own resilience?
At this very moment, I am completing my thesis and will be submitting it for approval in September 2025. From that point, I will be able to share with the world’s leadership community the results and exactly how to achieve them.
Read more from Stephen Vaughan
Stephen Vaughan, Leadership Development Expert
Stephen Vaughan is a world-class facilitator, executive coach, and MD of Fabric Learning. With a background in Professional Sports & Academics with now over 20 years of experience in Learning & Development, he specialises in designing & delivering bespoke development programmes for organisations ranging from small not-for-profits to large multi-national organisations all over the world. The majority of his work centres around Leadership, whether that be Executive Boards, High Potentials, or First Time Leaders, empowering individuals to achieve increased performances & results, deliberately encouraging a sense of fun, which makes effective learning a far more enjoyable experience. He describes himself as a Pracademic.
