The Resilient Leader: Leverage Adversity to Advance your Team

Bestselling business and leadership author John Maxwell shows how the key distinction between high achievers and ordinary individuals lies in their mindset toward adversity—and their ability to respond with resilience. Leaders are drowning in problems instead of developing problem solvers. When the ground keeps shifting under your feet, you don’t need another “hustle harder” manual—you need a map and a lantern. Maxwell’s The Resilient Leader is both.

The Resilient Leader reframes adversity as a teacher, not a threat. It equips leaders to:

• Maximize positive benefits from negative experiences. • Move past old reactionary habits that fail to exploit adversity. • Overcome fear and to champion the necessary changes for success. • Reframe and view setbacks as temporary and solvable. • Empower teams to become problem solvers and to welcome risk. • Lead change by modeling courage, transparency, and conviction, so that others follow.

This highly readable and motivational book is quickly thought-provoking. It’s filled with practical strategies as well as inspiring stories curated and blended from Maxwell’s bestselling books Failing Forward and The Difference Maker to create a powerful and memorable message. Leaders will gain confidence to act amid ambiguity. To move from fear to forward motion, chaos to clarity, and from setbacks to momentum.

Key Takeaways and Why They Matter

• Adversity is unavoidable; this book prepares leaders to respond, not react. • Failure is a process, not an event; this book reduces fear and increases intelligent risk-taking. • Change starts inside; culture transformation precedes performance gains. • Problems are temporary and solvable; this book builds agency and momentum. • It’s never too late to change; this book expands on who can lead and when.

Successful people embrace challenges as opportunities for growth, while average individuals often falter under pressure. Maxwell explains how this powerful difference in perception and action drives exceptional results.

© 2026 HarperCollins Leadership (Audiobook): 9781400351084

Release date

Audiobook: 21 July 2026