Resilience is that quality everyone wants to have but nobody wants on earn. Resilience isn’t a default setting—it’s developed through cycles of pressure and relief. In Tempered Resilience, Tod Bolsinger details this process as it applies to leaders, using a blacksmithing metaphor.

The analogy is apt. Leaders become tempered resilient through a process that includes working, heating, holding, hammering, hewing, and tempering. Bolsinger writes:

A tempered leaders is formed in the act of leading, through reflection, relationships, and a rule of life, in a rhythm of leading and not leading (7).

Bolsinger made waves with his 2015 Canoeing in the Mountains where he applied Heifetz’ Adaptive Leadership model to the Christian context. Tempered Resilience is still firmly situated in the Adaptive Leadership stream—a natural fit since adaptive leadership (by its very nature) is uncomfortable and stretching.

Those who have already read Canoeing in the Mountains will find Tempered Resilience familiar without being needlessly repetitive. In a time marked by fragility and burnout, the adaptive lessons shared by Bolsinger are especially needed.

Bolsinger, Tod. Tempered Resilience: How Leaders are Formed in the Crucible of Change. IVP, 2020.