Quicksand - Resilience Part 2

On Vision, Tenacity, and the Leaders Who Confuse Exhaustion with Resistance

“So, what’s new at work?” That’s how I started a recent conversation with a friend. 

I quickly learned that the question was a landmine. Francine* answered. Boy did she answer.

“Well, I was asked yet again to revisit our project management process this week. Because that must be the cause of the issues - not the lack of a cohesive direction. Right? Oh, and to help to realign the team leads because we missed the mark in this last sprint again - due to competing priorities. If I have to have the same f*cking conversations again next month, I’m going to quit. This is untenable. And I can only hold myself and the team together for so long with duck tape and doughnuts.” 

She wasn't struggling because she lacked resilience. She was struggling because nobody could tell her what she was supposed to be resilient toward.

That distinction is everything.

*Names changed to protect the exhausted. I’ve know many a Francine in my career.

Resilience Part 2: Vision & Tenacity

We’re back with Part 2 of our Resilience series, examining the 6 elements in the P6 Resilience Framework. [check out Part 1: Stop Weaponizing Resilience]

In this piece, we’re looking at the tension between Vision and Tenacity.  

Vision and Tenacity are two of the most powerful forces a leader can cultivate. Vision is the development of meaning and clear goals—a motivational force that orients effort over time. Tenacity is the unshakable persistence to bounce back from setbacks and keep moving forward.

Together, in a healthy culture, they create something remarkable: leaders and teams who know where they're going, protect their energy deliberately, and push hard in ways that are sustainable.

But right now? Leaders are demanding tenacity without offering vision.

That's not a resilience strategy. That's quicksand.

The Struggle can kill you

Most people misunderstand quicksand. It's not the sand that kills you. It's the panic. The faster you thrash, the faster you sink.

When vision is murky—or constantly moving—teams do the same thing. There's no solid ground to push from. No clear outcome to orient toward. No framework for deciding what deserves your energy and what doesn't. So people do what seems logical: they work harder. They stay later. They try to outrun the ambiguity.

And they burn out. Faster than they would have if you'd just told them where you were going.

We've spent years treating burnout like a personal failure. As if the people who hit the wall simply didn't have enough grit. But burnout doesn't happen most often when the work is hard. It happens when the work is unclear. When effort feels disconnected from outcome. When you can't tell if anything you're doing actually matters.

Unclear vision isn't just an inconvenience. It is the condition that makes burnout inevitable.

The signal we keep ignoring

We watched this play out in real time with what everyone called "quiet quitting."

Let me tell you what quiet quitting actually was: people setting rational limits in the absence of a reason to give more. Teams—exhausted, unoriented, unseen—making a quiet decision. Until you help me understand why I'm doing this, I have no more energy to give it.

It was not a character problem. It remains a leadership problem.

Leaders pointed at their people and said “You're disengaging. You’re not giving 110% anymore.” instead of asking themselves “Have I given them a reason to engage?” Those are two very different diagnoses. They lead to two very different responses.

And right now, we're watching the exact same pattern repeat itself with AI.

Organizations everywhere are demanding that their teams pivot, learn new tools, redesign entire workflows—with no clear articulation of why. Not why AI matters in the abstract. Why this team, doing this work, in this organization, is moving in this specific direction, and what success actually looks like at the end of the year.

Teams are being asked to be tenacious about a destination nobody has described.

When they slow down, when they hesitate, when they push back—leaders reach for resilience like a weapon. We need you to lean in. Stay focused. Be persistent.

Persistent toward what, exactly?

Vision as Liberation

When Vision works the way it's supposed to, it doesn't just orient people. It liberates them.

A clear vision creates the container that makes everything else possible. It answers the questions that silently drain energy every single day: What are we building? How will we know when we get there? What matters enough to fight for, and what can we let go?

That clarity is what makes tenacity sustainable. When people can connect their effort to a meaningful outcome—when they know their energy is pointed at something real, valued, and measurable—they don't need to be told to be persistent. Persistence becomes chosen.

And clarity gives people permission to say no. That is not a small thing. The ability to decline, protect your energy, hold a boundary without guilt—it's only possible when you have a clear yes to point to. Without vision, every request feels equally valid. Every ask feels like it deserves everything you have. And the result is a team running in every direction, thinning out everywhere, depleted because nobody helped them decide what actually mattered.

One of the simplest shifts? Before you dive into the tasks—before the status updates, the problem-solving, the endless what and how—reconnect your team to the why. What are we building? Why does it matter? How does today's work connect to that? That connection creates positive energy that can then be used in service of meeting your goals.

That's not a soft opening. That's structural. It changes what gets prioritized, what gets energy, and who feels seen.

Earning their effort

So here's where the accountability actually lands.

If your team is burning out, the first question isn't are they resilient enough? It's ‘have I been clear enough?’

If people are disengaging, coasting, pushing back—before you diagnose a resilience deficit, ask whether you've given them a vision worth being tenacious about.

Burnout is a signal. Disengagement is a signal. Quiet quitting was always a signal. The leaders who dismiss those signals as attitude problems or character flaws miss the most important data their teams will ever give them.

Read the signal. Then do the real work. Set a vision and earn their tenacity with your clarity and support.