Notes on Resilience

Hosted by Manya Chylinski

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Episodes

188

Latest episode

Aug 2026

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EN-US

About the show

Notes on Resilience explores how human experience, including adversity, shapes leadership, innovation, and culture. Host Manya Chylinski talks with people whose work, research, or lived experience reveal how we adapt, care, and create after challenge—what these stories show about the systems we build, and what must evolve. These conversations are rooted in a simple idea: the goal isn’t resilience for its own sake, the goal is well-being. Resilience is what makes recovery and growth possible. The show serves as field research on how people and systems recover, rebuild, and move forward.

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August 12, 2026Episode 3228 min

189: The EQ Advantage, with Rich Hua

Send us Fan MailIf you’ve ever watched a brilliant, high-IQ leader stall out, you’ve seen the real bottleneck: the way they relate to people. I sit down with Rich Hua, founder of the Epic Leadership Group and former chief EQ evangelist at Amazon, to talk about emotional intelligence as a practical leadership skill that improves trust, influence, resilience, and business results. Rich shares his own journey from socially awkward, achievement-driven nerd to someone who had to learn empathy, vulnerability, and connection the hard way through marriage, parenting, and leading large teams. We dig into what EQ actually is, why so many corporate cultures over-index on IQ, and how that becomes a ceiling at senior levels. Rich also breaks down how he made EQ feel relevant inside a highly data-driven environment, including the moment an internal talk unexpectedly sparked massive demand and helped grow an EQ community across Amazon. The takeaway is clear: emotional intelligence is not a personality trait you either have or don’t have. It’s a learnable set of skills, and believing otherwise is one of the most costly limiting beliefs in leadership. Then we connect EQ to one of the biggest workplace pressures right now: AI transformation. Rich explains why most AI initiatives fail for human reasons like fear, mistrust, and weak communication, and why executives often misread how employees actually feel. We also talk about stress and decision-making, including how unmanaged pressure can shrink clear thinking, and what EPIQ leadership looks like when EQ and IQ work together. If you want to lead change, keep your people engaged, and make smarter calls under pressure, this conversation will give you language, tools, and a path forward.Rich Hua is a keynote speaker and the founder of the EPIQ Leadership Group, which helps executives and organizations build adaptable, resilient, and innovative cultures that are both high-performing and highly human. Website: https://www.richardhua.co/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richhua/Email: richhua@gmail.com Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity. Learn more: www.manyachylinski.com/servicesSubscribe to the newsletter: manyachylinski.com/notesPlease subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

August 5, 2026Episode 3115 min

188: Name It To Heal It

Send us Fan Mail“I’m fine” might be the most dangerous sentence in a workplace after a crisis. When teams experience a traumatic event, leaders can do everything the checklist recommends and still miss what matters most: whether people feel safe enough to tell the truth about how they’re doing. We sit with that uncomfortable gap between business continuity plans and the lived human reality of fear, grief, and exhaustion, and we explain why ignoring it can undermine recovery.I share what I’m learning from conversations with organizational resilience and crisis management professionals, including senior practitioners, and why the same pattern keeps showing up across industries. The operational side is often strong. The human side is where leaders freeze, default to silence, or accept “fine” as a real status update. We unpack how culture and psychological safety shape everything that happens next, from trust and performance to retention, presenteeism, and absenteeism. Most importantly, we return to a principle that sounds simple but is hard in practice: you can’t address something you haven’t named, and you can’t support people through something you’re pretending isn’t happening.We also preview a new long-form scripted audio series that goes beyond the usual format, following people who survived something catastrophic and built something meaningful from it. Does survivorship create knowledge that our institutions need, and do we even know how to ask for it? If you want practical, trauma-informed leadership insights and a more honest way to think about resilience at work, subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity. Learn more: www.manyachylinski.com/servicesSubscribe to the newsletter: manyachylinski.com/notesPlease subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

July 29, 2026Episode 3031 min

187: You Can Lose Your Old Life And Still Be Alive

Send us Fan MailA bomb goes off, you make it home without a scratch, and everyone assumes you’re fine. In this episode swap, Manya is a guest on Grieve Then Achieve with host Kate Nudds. They talk about the invisible aftermath of surviving the Boston Marathon bombing: PTSD symptoms that hijack sleep and focus, the raw-nerve feeling of living in fight-or-flight, and the isolation that can follow when the world only recognizes physical injuries. Manya shares the frightening, disorienting thoughts that showed up early, and why taking them seriously was part of staying safe and getting support.We also dig into the grief that can live inside trauma--grief for the life you had before, the innocence of believing “this doesn’t happen to people like me,” and the future that suddenly feels uncertain. We talk stigma, why self-reported mental health wounds are often doubted, and how that doubt shapes recovery for disaster survivors who don’t look injured.Then we get practical about resilience and trauma recovery: therapy and trauma-specific counseling, mindfulness and meditation to calm the nervous system, movement through yoga and walking, and the surprising power of channeling anger into advocacy and meaningful action. If you’ve ever felt dismissed because your pain didn’t show up on the outside, you’ll hear language for what’s happening and options for what to do next. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review with the biggest takeaway you’re bringing into your own healing. Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity. Learn more: www.manyachylinski.com/servicesSubscribe to the newsletter: manyachylinski.com/notesPlease subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

July 22, 2026Episode 2929 min

186: The Best Training Has No Measurable ROI, with Carré Le Page

Send us Fan MailWork doesn’t slow down just because we’re overwhelmed. Expectations climb, messages hit us from every direction, and the do-more-with-less mindset turns into burnout, stress, and that form of exhaustion where people show up but aren’t really there. We sit down with resilience expert and Resilient Minds founder Carré Le Page to get practical about what resilience actually is and how to build it without turning it into another performance demand.We start with a simple definition that changes everything: resilience means keep moving forward. Carré explains why the water metaphor works so well for modern life and modern leadership. Water doesn’t only push through; it adapts. Sometimes it pivots, slows down, or pauses, but it still finds a way. From there, we get into workplace resilience, why leaders can’t shrug and say "it’s just busy,” and how boundaries and clear conversations help people focus on what they can control.We also talk real-world change management, from COVID-era uncertainty to the moment ChatGPT made half a team excited and the other half genuinely scared. Carré shares why “clear is kind” is a resilience tool, how a reverse brief can save hours of rework, and why asking should we? matters as much as can we? If you’ve ever wondered how to measure the ROI of resilience training, he offers a metaphor you won’t forget.Carré Le Page is a speaker, coach, resilience expert, mental wellness advocate, storyteller, and founder of Resilient Minds. With 20 years of global marketing and leadership experience, he has led creative teams across five continents and seen firsthand how pressure, change, and burnout affect performance. His message is simple: resilience may be called a soft skill, but it is one of the sharpest tools we have for modern work.Email: carre@resilientmindsco.comLinkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/carre-le-page/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/carrelepage/ Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity. Learn more: www.manyachylinski.com/servicesSubscribe to the newsletter: manyachylinski.com/notesPlease subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

July 15, 2026Episode 2821 min

185: The Human Side of Crisis Recovery, Part 2

Send us Fan MailSilence after a disruption is louder than most leaders realize. When people are scared, overloaded, or grieving, they don’t just listen for facts, they listen for proof that someone is steady, honest, and actually paying attention. Listen to part two of my presentation to the Business Continuity Institute's (BCI) Business Continuity & Resilience Awareness Week (BCAW+R) 2026. Mine was one of dozens of presentations on the topic: Think You're Resilient? Well, Think Again.In this episode, we talk about why uncertainty is inevitable in the first hours of a crisis, and why waiting for certainty can destabilize teams even more than bad news. If you lead in business continuity, crisis management, or any high-pressure environment, this conversation is a practical guide to communicating when you don’t have perfect answers.We share a personal story that reveals two radically different leadership responses to the same basic request: “I’m struggling, and I need help.” From there, we break down what psychological safety looks like when the stakes are real, including why many people can’t explain what’s happening to them yet, why forced disclosure can shut people down, and how invisible psychological injuries can outnumber visible physical impacts in disasters. The goal is trauma-informed leadership without turning leaders into therapists, just humans who can name reality clearly.You’ll also get a simple, actionable five-question culture audit to pressure-test your resilience culture before the next incident hits: information flow, operational versus human communication, timing of check-ins, whether “I don’t know” is acceptable, and whether people feel safe asking for time off. We close with concrete ways to build human recovery checkpoints into your post-incident process, so “systems back up” isn’t the only milestone that matters.If this helps you rethink how you lead under pressure, subscribe, share it with a leader who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s one message you wish leadership had said during your hardest week?Listen to the first part of the presentation here.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity. Learn more: www.manyachylinski.com/servicesSubscribe to the newsletter: manyachylinski.com/notesPlease subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

July 8, 2026Episode 2722 min

184: The Human Side Of Crisis Recovery, Part 1

Send us Fan MailYour systems can be back online while your people are still underwater.That gap, the space between operational recovery and human recovery, is where a lot of what people think of as resilience fails. I take you inside the question that changed my work: How confident are you that your business continuity plan will hold up when the team executing it is terrified, traumatized, or numb?Listen to part one of my presentation to the Business Continuity Institute's (BCI) Business Continuity & Resilience Awareness Week (BCAW+R) 2026. Mine was one of dozens of presentations on the topic: Think You're Resilient? Well, Think Again.In this episode, I discuss the contrast between what people think resilience culture is in an organization and what it really is. Not perks. Not slogans. Culture as leadership behavior under pressure, psychological safety, and the trust signals people scan for when their brains are overloaded.We dig into why decision-making degrades in crisis, why silence from leaders makes people invent scarier stories, and why saying “we’re back up and running” can land as emotional whiplash for some. You’ll also hear about the two timelines every crisis creates: the measurable operational recovery timeline and the messy, non-linear human recovery timeline that can last months or years, sometimes leading to PTSD or delayed struggles that are easy to miss.If you care about crisis management, business continuity planning, or simply leading people through hard days, this is a practical reframe you can apply immediately. Subscribe for part two, share this with a leader who owns the plan, and leave a review with the one communication habit you want every crisis leader to practice.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity. Learn more: www.manyachylinski.com/servicesSubscribe to the newsletter: manyachylinski.com/notesPlease subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

July 1, 2026Episode 2628 min

183: Zero Gray Leadership, with Kirk Driver

Send us Fan MailAmbiguity from leaders can teach people to hesitate, to gossip, and to lower their standards. I sit down with Kirk Driver, a 34-year veteran of the Fort Worth Police Department and the creator of the Zero Gray Leadership system, to get practical about what clear leadership looks like when the stakes are high and the pressure is real. If you lead a team, manage a department, or simply want a healthier culture at work, this conversation is packed with tools you can use immediately. We talk about why confidence is so often mistaken for arrogance, and how life experience, military training, and plain old maturity can shape the way a leader walks into a room. Kirk shares a simple but powerful framework he learned early on: mission, people, self. We talk about what that order means in the real world, how morale changes when leaders take initiative, and why self-care is not indulgent; it is operational. His point is clear: if you do not protect your resilience, your judgment and your relationships pay the price. Kirk’s distinction between head failures and heart failures gives leaders a fair way to coach, correct, and hold the line without crushing good people. Kirk Driver is a keynote speaker, a 34-year veteran of the Fort Worth Police Department (ret.), and the developer of the ZeroGray Leadership system to help organizations eliminate the internal organizational ambiguity that is often a barrier to team success, while promoting absolute accountability through all rankZero Gray Leadership: https://www.zerogray.com/Email: kirk@kirkdriver.com Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity. Learn more: www.manyachylinski.com/servicesSubscribe to the newsletter: manyachylinski.com/notesPlease subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

June 24, 2026Episode 2527 min

182: Trust-First Leadership In The Age Of AI, with Tamar Cohen

Send us Fan MailA CEO calls employees “low-value human capital,” companies brag about AI while cutting people loose, and somehow, workers are told to just be resilient.To be honest about what that does to trust and what leaders can do differently, I sat down with Tamar Cohen, founder of Halo Effect, to talk about the real human cost of fear-based management and the very real business costs that follow.Tamar shares two stories that changed how she thinks about leadership: one boss who responded to a scary personal moment with a simple, powerful line, “Tell me what you need, I’ll get it for you,” and another who pushed her to deliver a high-stakes presentation while she had pneumonia. We use those extremes to distinguish between supportive and dehumanizing leadership, especially in high-pressure environments where burnout is always lurking.From there, we dig into resilience as momentum, why trust is a lagging indicator, and why layoffs don’t magically create efficiency when the people who remain are disillusioned and overloaded. We also talk about the AI bubble and what it really costs companies, from data cleaning to training to massive infrastructure bets, and why the promised ROI can be harder to reach than leaders admit.Most importantly, we lay out a practical, human-centered AI operating model: be transparent, bring employees into decisions about the AI tools you want to use, invest in real upskilling, map processes before automating, and communicate clearly about how roles will evolve. If you care about employee experience, organizational culture, the future of work, and leading through AI without breaking trust, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share with a leader who needs it, and leave a review with the best (or worst) leadership line you’ve ever heard.Tamar Cohen is the CEO and Founder of HaloEffect. She doesn’t talk about employee engagement, she’s working to replace it. She equips leaders with a new operating model for work experience in an era where AI, distributed work, and trust erosion are reshaping how people contribute. With a background in CX, EX, and organizational design across global enterprises, she translates complex workforce signals into strategies that drive retention, performance, and belief in the workplace.Email: tcohen@myhaloeffect.comWebsite: www.myhaloeffect.com LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tamarcohen Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity. Learn more: www.manyachylinski.com/servicesSubscribe to the newsletter: manyachylinski.com/notesPlease subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

June 17, 2026Episode 2422 min

181: Whose Choice Are You Living? With Graham Skidmore

Send us Fan MailIf you’ve ever looked at your career and thought, “I did everything right, so why do I feel so wrong?” this conversation is for you.We sit down with Graham Skidmore, co-founder of Harmony Health, to unpack what happens when corporate success collides with wellbeing and why the system can feel fine until you step outside the lanes it was built for.We talk about the moment Graham hit the C-suite in a 20,000-person organization and realized he was the most miserable he’d ever been. From there, we get practical with a definition of happiness he uses as a compass: leading a life of self-guided choices while loving yourself, others, and your surroundings. That leads to one of the simplest, most disruptive questions you can ask on a hard day: whose choices am I operating on right now?Then we zoom out to leadership, resilience, and the future of work. We challenge one-size-fits-all systems that demand conformity and then blame individuals for struggling. We explore individualized support, neurodiversity, and why investing in humans as individuals can unlock overlooked talent. We also take a human-centric look at artificial intelligence: AI as a way to augment human intelligence, personalize learning, and free people to do the creative, empathic, problem-solving work machines can’t.If you care about employee wellbeing, ethical AI, and building healthier workplaces that actually fit real people, you’ll get a lot from this one.Graham Skidmore believes we can create a world of happy, healthy, productive and empowered people, by investing in people as individuals and their potential. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/graham-skidmoreYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@understandingthescienceofyouHarmony Health Institute: https://harmonyhealthinstitute.com/Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity. Learn more: www.manyachylinski.com/servicesSubscribe to the newsletter: manyachylinski.com/notesPlease subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

June 10, 2026Episode 2332 min

180: Human-Centered Leadership, with Chase Sterling

Send us Fan MailWe sit down with Chase Sterling, workplace well-being expert and founder of the Wellbeing Think Tank, to get honest about what support actually looks like when someone is stressed, grieving, or barely holding it together. The throughline is resilience—a human process that requires time, space, and genuine psychological safety at work.We talk human-centered leadership in practical terms: focusing on the human so performance follows, recognizing that people bring invisible burdens into meetings, and building cultures of belonging that do not depend on fake cheerfulness. Chase shares why non-toxic positivity matters, how leaders can hold space instead of trying to fix emotions, and why transparency beats polished messaging. We also talk about feedback, accountability, and giving people a clear chance to change.Then we zoom out to the systems level: employee retention, turnover cost, healthcare costs, and the future of work. Chase challenges the current moment of record profits paired with layoffs, calls out when greed drives decisions, and argues that AI is a useful automation tool but not a replacement for critical thinking, creativity, and humane judgment. If this resonates, subscribe, share the episode with a manager or teammate, and leave a review. What is one thing a leader has said or done that made you feel genuinely supported at work?Chase Sterling, MA, is a speaker and the founder and executive director of Wellbeing Think Tank known for amplifying experts over influencers and providing educational events that support individual and organizational wellbeing. Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity. Learn more: www.manyachylinski.com/servicesSubscribe to the newsletter: manyachylinski.com/notesPlease subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

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