Resilience Is Not a Personality Trait. It Is a Design Choice.
Photo by Nacho Juárez
In the animal liberation movement, we speak about resilience often. We praise resilient leaders. We encourage staff to build resilience. We offer workshops on stress management and self-care. These tools have value. However, they are not the heart of resilience.
Resilience is often misunderstood as a personal quality. In reality, resilience is primarily an organizational outcome. This distinction matters, especially in a movement that is asking the public to make profound moral and cultural change.
The Magnitude of Our Work
Let us begin with honesty. We are not asking the public to recycle more or to sign a petition. We are asking people to fundamentally reconsider their relationship with animals. We are asking them to change what they eat, what they purchase, and what they believe is normal. That is a big ask.
We are challenging:
Cultural traditions tied to food and identity.
Global corporate systems that profit from animal exploitation.
Government subsidies that support animal agriculture.
Deep psychological patterns such as cognitive dissonance and speciesism.
We are also advocating for beings who cannot represent themselves. Unlike most historical justice movements, the individuals most harmed cannot stand at the podium. They rely entirely on human allies.
The scale is immense. Over 80 billion land animals are killed for food every year, along with trillions of fish. The economic and political systems that sustain this are vast and well resourced. When leaders in our movement feel strain, it is not a sign of weakness. It is a reflection of the magnitude of the work. Naming that reality is the first step toward ethical resilience.
The Common but Misleading Story About Resilience
In many leadership spaces, resilience is framed as:
Emotional strength
Personal grit
The ability to manage stress
Self-care practices
Individual adaptability
These practices can help individuals survive within difficult conditions.
However, when resilience is framed only this way, several assumptions follow quietly:
The system is fixed.
The mission is non-negotiable.
The burden of coping belongs to the individual.
This framing shifts responsibility away from organizational design and onto people. If staff are exhausted, they are told to build resilience. If leaders are overwhelmed, they are encouraged to meditate more. But what if the real issue is not personal fragility, but structural fragility?
A More Accurate Definition: Organizational Resilience
Resilience is not primarily something a leader does to themselves. Resilience is something a leader designs into the organization.
Organizational resilience comes from:
Clear decision rights.
Realistic scope and pace.
Ethical and transparent people systems.
Coherent strategy.
Alignment between stated values and daily practice.
When these elements are present, leaders do not have to cope constantly. The system carries weight appropriately. When these elements are absent, people become shock absorbers for structural weakness. That is not resilience. That is endurance.
Why This Confusion Persists
The personal-resilience narrative persists for understandable reasons.
It is:
Cheaper than structural change.
Faster than governance reform.
Less uncomfortable than revisiting scope, money, or power.
It is easier to ask someone to be stronger than to redesign a board structure. It is simpler to recommend self-care than to reduce unrealistic program expansion. However, this approach can be ethically dangerous. It can normalize harm while appearing compassionate.
If burnout is treated as a personal failure instead of a predictable outcome of weak systems, the organization avoids accountability.
What This Means for Leaders
Within SPAA, we speak often about strategy, governance, theory of change, and alignment. These are not abstract exercises. They are resilience tools. When strategy is unclear, everything becomes urgent. When decision rights are vague, leaders become bottlenecks. When authority and responsibility are misaligned, stress concentrates at the top. Leaders do not become resilient by becoming tougher. They become resilient by making themselves less indispensable.
This includes:
Distributing authority.
Documenting decisions.
Creating redundancy.
Naming trade-offs clearly.
Normalizing limits.
When an organization is resilient:
Leaders are not constantly in crisis mode.
Staff are not absorbing hidden risk.
Burnout is less frequent and less normalized.
The leader may appear calm and strong, but that appearance is not a personality trait. It is a design outcome.
The Ethical Shift
A helpful distinction is this:
Personal resilience helps individuals survive within fragile systems.
Organizational resilience reduces the need for survival strategies.
Good leadership focuses on the second. This is not semantics. It is a shift in responsibility.
When resilience is understood as organizational design:
Governance becomes central, not optional.
Strategy becomes protective, not expansive.
Values become decision tools, not marketing language.
Resilience then becomes about ensuring that:
The work can continue without harm.
The mission can be pursued without depletion.
The people doing the work are not sacrificed in the name of impact.
A Final Reflection
If you are a leader in the animal protection movement and you feel strain, pause before asking yourself how to be stronger.
Instead, ask:
Where is the system unclear?
Where is scope exceeding capacity?
Where are people carrying risks that structures should carry?
Where does governance need to mature?
Resilience is not what you do to yourself at the end of a long day. Resilience is what you build so that long days are not the default condition. When resilience is designed into the organization, leaders do not need to perform strength. They are resilient because the system is doing its job.
That is the work of SPAA (Strategic Planning for Animal Activism), and the SPAA Program is there for you for free, and on your timeline. There are two options for you, one is self-learning at your own pace, and one is our 2026 SPAA Live Cohort. Please go here, scroll down, and choose which is right for your organization.
And that is the kind of resilience that lasts.
Dr. Krista Hiddema is the Founder and Executive Director of Operation Angels, a capacity-building and re-granting initiative focused on strengthening farmed animal sanctuaries. She is also the creator of SPAA (Strategic Planning for Animal Advocacy), a program that has supported hundreds of animal organizations in developing clear, coherent strategies. Krista previously served as Chief Philanthropy Officer at Vegan Grants (Karuna Foundation). She holds a doctorate in Social Sciences and a Master's degree in Organizational Development, and has spent more than three decades in senior leadership roles across the NGO and for-profit sectors. Her work centers on governance, resilience, and long-term movement strength, all in service of a more just and vegan world.