Tissa Richards has a problem with the word resilience, specifically, the part where you're supposed to bounce back. In this episode, the TEDx and keynote speaker, CEO, and author of Rethinking Resilience makes a compelling case that the bounce-back model was borrowed from material science, designed for rubber balls and metal springs, not human beings navigating real organizational pressure. It puts leaders in a perpetual reactive crouch, strips them of agency, and quietly installs a victim mentality disguised as toughness. Her alternative, Intentional Resilience, reframes the whole equation: resilience as a trainable muscle, built deliberately, that converts pressure into clear decisions and measurable outcomes rather than just survival.

The conversation gets sharper from there. Tissa and John dig into narrative ownership and why most leaders have buried their own story under operational noise. They tackle burnout as an organizational diagnosis, not a personal failing, and ask the harder question: when we train individuals to absorb dysfunction, are we simply giving broken systems permission to stay that way? Big ideas, zero fluff.

0:00 — Welcome and Introduction to Tissa Richards

1:58 — Growing Up in Canada and the Roots of a "Why Not?" Mindset

2:57 — Why the Bounce-Back Model of Resilience Is Broken

3:46 — Where the Definition Actually Came From — Material Science

4:10 — Intentional Resilience: Building the Muscle Deliberately

6:05 — Agency vs. Victim Mentality — Owning What Happens Through You

12:46 — Grit Isn't Enough Without Accountability

15:10 — Narrative Ownership: Losing Your Story in the Operational Grind

16:49 — The "So What" Framework — Stop the Information Dump

19:47 — Are We Training Leaders to Absorb a Broken System?

23:12 — Burnout: Don't Take Things Off the Plate, Change the Plate

32:36 — More Books, Bigger Stages, and a Strict No-A--hole Policy

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