Pssst… Want to know what your most resilient people have discovered that everyone else is missing?

They’ve stopped worrying about engagement scores. While everyone else obsesses over “how satisfied people feel about their jobs,” your top performers have discovered resilient people secrets that are quietly building something entirely different in their teams.

Here’s their secret: engagement tells you how people feel right now, but your best leaders are preparing their teams to stay engaged when everything feels like it’s falling apart. 

 

What Q12 Predicts Well	What Happens During Disruption	PsyCap + Trust Advantages
23%  increase in profitability	67%  of organizations struggle to adapt quickly	3x  faster adaptation to change
18%  higher productivity	40%  drop in decision speed under uncertainty	31%  higher performance under stress
12%  better customer metrics	58%  of high-engagement teams freeze during crisis	60%  increase in information sharing
When conditions are stable	The engagement gap revealed	Building resilience capacity
Organizations with High Engagement + High PsyCap + High Trust
2.3x  more likely to maintain performance during disruption	85%  faster recovery from setbacks	47%  better at identifying new opportunities in crisis

 

What Your Best Leaders Already Know 

Your most effective leaders cracked a code that most miss. These resilient people’s secrets become the foundation for everything that follows. They understand that when crisis hits, when supply chains break, when key people leave, when the best laid plans fail, it’s not engagement that saves you. 

It’s whether people still believe things can work out (hope). Whether they believe they can handle what’s coming (confidence). Whether they can bounce back from failure (resilience), and whether they think the effort will be worth it (optimism). 

Your star performers have learned to notice and cultivate these things in people. They check in on them. They deliberately build them. And it makes all the difference. 

They Invest in Psychological Capital and Trust 

Your best leaders mastered something most leaders miss: they’ve learned the resilient people secrets behind building what researchers call “psychological capital” in every conversation. 

They don’t call it that, of course. They just know that when disruption hits, people need four things to stay engaged: they need both the motivation to pursue goals and the ability to find multiple pathways to reach them (hope), that they can develop the skills to handle new challenges (confidence), that setbacks are temporary and learnable (resilience), and that the struggle will be worth it (optimism). 

But here’s what makes this more powerful: they’ve also figured out that psychological capital is a force multiplier when people trust each other. 

When it comes to trust, your best leaders focus on trustworthiness. It’s what people can control: their credibility (I can), their reliability (I will), and I care – I’ve got your back, I’m looking out for you.   

Psychological Capital and Trust are not separate systems; they’re interdependent conditions that high-performing leaders cultivate through conversations at the speed of business. They give people 100% of their attention for the least amount of time possible. People don’t necessarily need more time; they need more focused attention. 

They use everyday situations as teaching moments. When a project goes smoothly, they ask, ‘What made this work?’ When there’s a minor hiccup, they explore ‘What would we do if this were bigger?’ They’re building decision-making muscle memory for situations that haven’t happened yet. 

They’re also what researchers call “connectors.” They build capacity by deepening networks and relationships between people on their teams. They find opportunities to let experts be experts and connect people, creating webs of mutual trust and shared confidence. 

Most importantly, they practice what we might call “compassionate accountability.” They hold themselves and others accountable for the most important things; not everything, but the things that truly matter, while modeling that accountability is an expression of care. How we learn together. How we repair relationships when we fall short. They understand that high standards and high support aren’t opposites; they’re what enable people to risk being vulnerable enough to grow. 

The Pattern Shows Up Everywhere 

Microsoft during remote work transition: When 166,000 employees had to work from home with 48 hours’ notice, Microsoft’s leaders focused less on technology fixes and more on psychological foundation. Like other calm crisis leaders, they intuitively understood what people needed most. They didn’t know they were building “hope” in the technical sense; they just intuitively knew people needed both the willpower to keep pursuing effective collaboration and the waypower to find multiple routes when their usual approaches failed. When initial video calls were chaotic, leaders helped teams maintain energy for the goal (willpower) while simultaneously brainstorming alternative meeting formats, communication tools, and check-in schedules (waypower). They built confidence by rapidly deploying targeted training programs, normalized learning from mistakes in this new environment (resilience), and connected daily struggles to serving customers better (optimism). 

Taiwan Semiconductor during the chip shortage (2021-2023): While competitors struggled with supply chain disruptions, TSMC maintained production by keeping its teams focused on what they could control. Their floor supervisors became masters at maintaining hope (“we’ve solved problems before”), building confidence (“let’s try this approach”), encouraging resilience (“that didn’t work, what did we learn?”), and sustaining optimism (“our customers are counting on us”). 

Domino’s Pizza during early COVID: Yes, pizza chains had a tailwind; most restaurants saw sales plummet 69% while delivery soared. But here’s what’s remarkable: while other delivery-focused chains struggled with overwhelmed staff and service breakdowns, Domino’s maintained quality and actually grew share. Store managers didn’t just manage the surge; they helped their teams believe they could master new safety protocols (confidence), handle unprecedented volume without breaking (hope), bounce back quickly from inevitable mistakes (resilience), and serve their communities in a fundamentally new way (optimism). 

The pattern is clear: organizations that held it together didn’t have better plans. They had people who maintained psychological strength under pressure. 

Building on What Gallup Got Right 

Don’t get me wrong, the research behind engagement surveys like Gallup’s Q12 is phenomenal. Those questions capture something fundamental about human motivation at work. “Someone at work encourages my development” isn’t just feel-good fluff; it predicts performance because it measures care, connection, and growth. 

When Gallup developed the Q12, they identified something important: when people feel cared for by their manager and organization, they care more deeply about their work. That caring shows up as discretionary effort, innovation, and loyalty when conditions are stable. 

Those beautiful Q12 questions measure care perfectly: 

• “My supervisor or someone at work seems to care about me as a person.” 

• “Someone at work encourages my development.” 

• “My opinions seem to count at work.” 

• “The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.” 

But caring can change during disruption. The same people who felt deeply connected to their work and manager might feel completely lost when that work becomes unrecognizable overnight. 

Engagement tells you about care under normal conditions. But psychological strength tells you about capacity under impossible circumstances. 

That’s the missing piece, and it’s why your star performers focus on different questions: 

• “When plans change, do you trust we can figure out how to pivot?” (Hope) 

• “When confronted with problems you’ve never seen before, how safe do you feel when asking for help?” (Psychological safety + confidence) 

• “When projects fail, how quickly can you bounce back and try something different?” (Resilience) 

• “Even when things get really difficult, do you believe the work we’re doing still matters?” (Optimism) 

The Wells Fargo Lesson: When Engagement Isn’t Enough 

This is exactly what happened at Wells Fargo. Employee engagement surveys showed people were satisfied. The bank even reported that “community bank employee engagement and customer satisfaction surveys looked fine.” People were working hard, showing up, hitting targets, caring deeply about their performance. 

But underneath that engagement, people didn’t feel psychologically safe. As one former employee told NPR: “That’s the whole foundation of Wells Fargo is cross-sell, cross-sell, cross-sell,” describing a “toxic high-pressure sales culture” where workers were afraid to speak up about impossible goals. 

Even years later, surveys show that “52% of survey respondents expressed concerns about reporting potential regulatory violations to the Ethics Line, Wells Fargo’s internal hotline.” They cared about their work (engagement was high), but they didn’t trust they could safely raise concerns (psychological safety was nonexistent). 

The result? Over 1.5 million fraudulent bank accounts and 565,000 unauthorized credit cards were created by people who were highly engaged with their work, but who had no resilience infrastructure to help them navigate impossible expectations. 

People cared. They just didn’t feel safe to care about the right things. 

The Three Things Your Best People Do Differently 

1. They Notice Early Your most resilient leaders have developed a sixth sense for spotting when people’s psychological capital is running low. They notice when someone who usually suggests solutions starts only highlighting problems. When a naturally optimistic person starts using “can’t” language. When a typically confident person starts avoiding new challenges.

They don’t wait for performance reviews or formal surveys. They notice in real time. 

2. They Check In Strategically
   Instead of generic “How are you doing?” check-ins, they ask targeted questions:

• “What part of this challenge feels most solvable right now?” (Building hope) 

• “What skills are you developing through this difficulty?” (Building confidence) 

• “What’s one thing you learned from that setback?” (Building resilience) 

• “How does this connect to something you care about?” (Building optimism) 

These aren’t therapy sessions. They’re strategic conversations that build psychological strength. 

3. They Make a Difference Through Small Actions Your best leaders understand that psychological capital isn’t built through grand gestures—it’s built through consistent small actions:

• When someone faces a setback, they help them find one specific thing that’s working (hope) 

• When someone feels overwhelmed, they break down exactly which skills they already have and which they can develop (confidence) 

• When plans fail, they immediately shift to “what can we learn?” instead of “who’s responsible?” (resilience) 

• When work feels pointless, they connect daily tasks to a larger purpose (optimism) 

Your Move 

Look around your organization. Who are the people others turn to when things get difficult? When nobody knows what to do next? When plans fall apart, but work still needs to happen? 

Those people aren’t just naturally resilient. They’re psychological capital builders. And the teams they lead don’t just engage with their work; they believe they can handle whatever comes next. 

They’ve discovered that in a world of constant change, the question isn’t whether people like their jobs. The question is whether they believe they can figure out new ones. 

What would change if you started building psychological strength instead of just measuring current satisfaction? 

When your next challenge hits, and it will, will your people have the hope, confidence, resilience, and optimism to rise to meet it? 

Your star performers already know the answer. The question is whether you’re ready to build what they’ve been building all along. 

Which of your team members shows the strongest psychological capital? What do you notice about how they respond to uncertainty and setbacks?