Women Leaders’ Resilience: How Women Reach and Succeed in Leadership Positions

Although there are preliminary indications that resilience is a key capability for women on their way to leadership, research in this context is extremely rare. In particular, there is a lack of empirical studies on the specific role of resilience in achieving top leadership positions and on the factors that help to develop high levels of resilience. To narrow this research gap, we provide an exploratory interview study. We conducted 52 in-depth, semi- structured interviews with women leaders from upper, middle, and lower leadership positions in different industrial sectors. Based on our qualitative content analysis, we identify women’s main challenges on their way to leadership, resilience factors in three categories (experiential, individual, and contextual factors), and opportunities for promoting resilience. Our study contributes to women leaders and (women) leaders’ resilience research and offers a substantial starting point for future empirical research. Furthermore, it provides insights into the development of women leaders’ resilience in practice.