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For the Modern C.E.O., It’s All About Being ‘Resilient’

Chief executives are using it to describe how they are handling crisis after crisis. Corporate... “Their training and their mind-set is so much more resilient than it would have been at the end...

NYTIMES 입력 2026.04.27 18:04 0

For the Modern C.E.O., It’s All About Being ‘Resilient’

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For the Modern C.E.O., It’s All About Being ‘Resilient’

The ability to stay calm and lead through any kind of shock is the new normal for corporate executives.

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Chief executives like John Santora of WeWork and Thasunda Brown Duckett of the investment firm T.I.A.A. are among those turning to a well-worn word to describe what’s needed at this moment: resilience.

Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Semafor World Economy

Jordyn Holman

and

Kim Bhasin

Reporting from Washington

April 27, 2026,

5:02 a.m. ET

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One word keeps cropping up in boardrooms and on earnings calls: resilience. Chief executives are using it to describe how they are handling crisis after crisis.

Corporate leaders have dealt with myriad challenges over the past six years. Covid shutdowns and port strikes upended supply chains and wars in Ukraine and Iran pushed up energy prices. Ever-shifting tariff policies added costs, and the explosion in artificial intelligence is quickly transforming business.

These major changes are no longer just temporary — they are part of everyday life now. Investors and board directors, usually focused on short-term performance and growth, have also come to value the leadership skills needed to flex and adapt in a chaotic geopolitical environment.

Leaders must have the wherewithal to anticipate and absorb shocks to their businesses and adjust quickly.

“They don’t realize how much more they’ve grown up in a world that values resilience,” Rich Lesser, global chair of the Boston Consulting Group, a professional services firm, said. “Their training and their mind-set is so much more resilient than it would have been at the end of the last decade.”

Since January 2020, variations of the word “resilience” (think: “resilient” and “resiliency”) rose 162 percent on the earnings calls of U.S. public companies with a market cap of at least $1 billion, according to the A.I. research firm AlphaSense. The use of the term was beginning to wane in 2023 and 2024. But it spiked again after President Trump announced sweeping tariffs last April. It has been ticking up for the past couple of quarters.

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