Surviving, Coping or Thriving? Seven Places to Look Before Your Next Change Programme
Resilience is observable. Here is what it looks like across The Resilience Wheel
Resilience is often talked about as if it were invisible, a private inner quality that only reveals itself in a crisis. In practice, it shows up every day. It is there in what people say in meetings, how they respond to a setback, whether they ask for help, and what they do with a difficult piece of news.
That makes it observable. If leaders know what to look for, they can read their own resilience and their team's before the next wave of change lands, rather than discovering the gaps halfway through it.
States, Not Types
The most important principle is that resilience describes a state, not a fixed type of person. The same leader can be thriving in March, coping in June and surviving in September, depending on workload, change, health and what is happening at home. Labelling someone as "not resilient" is both inaccurate and unhelpful. Asking "where are they right now, and what would help?" is far more useful.
I use three states in my everyday work with leaders:
• Surviving - early strain is visible. Tension, irritability, procrastination and narrowing focus. Getting through the day is the priority.
• Coping - holding the line. Performance is maintained, but through effortful management, with little slack left if anything else lands.
• Thriving - steady performance at a sustainable pace, positive energy, recovering well from pressure and treating challenge as solvable.
Two Models, Used for Two Different Jobs
Readers of this blog will also have seen my field guide, Spotting the Difference, which uses eight states. It is worth being clear about how the two fit together, because they are designed for different purposes.
Surviving, Coping, Thriving is the everyday leadership model. It is quick to use, maps directly onto the seven dimensions of The Resilience Wheel, and helps leaders and teams check in on themselves regularly. It is the model I use in programmes, coaching and team sessions.
The eight-state field guide is the deeper diagnostic. It is for when something is clearly wrong and a leader needs to work out what. It separates four different kinds of struggle (burnt out, disengaged, floundering and languishing), each with a different cause and a different fix, and extends the continuum to flourishing, the peak state beyond thriving.
In short: use Surviving, Coping, Thriving to check in. Use the eight states to diagnose. Someone who is "surviving" in the everyday model could be burnt out, floundering or something else entirely, and the field guide helps tell those apart.
“Use Surviving, Coping, Thriving to check in. Use the eight states to diagnose. Different tools for different moments.”
The Resilience Wheel Framework.
Seven Places to Look
Working with leadership teams, I have built a bank of over 300 observable behaviours across the three states and the seven dimensions of The Resilience Wheel. Here is one example per dimension to show what each looks like in practice.
1. Attitude
• Surviving: "Why does this always happen to us?"
• Coping: "Let's just get through it."
• Thriving: "What can we learn from this?"
2. Purpose
• Surviving: loses sight of why the work matters; responds to whoever shouts loudest.
• Coping: knows the priorities, but rarely connects them to meaning.
• Thriving: uses purpose to decide what to stop as well as what to start.
3. Confidence
• Surviving: avoids decisions or over-checks them.
• Coping: decides comfortably in familiar territory, hesitates in new situations.
• Thriving: makes the call with incomplete information and owns the outcome.
4. Adaptability
• Surviving: resists change or freezes in the face of it.
• Coping: complies with change, slowly and with effort.
• Thriving: adjusts early and looks for the opportunity within the change.
5. Support Network
• Surviving: isolates; "I'll deal with it myself."
• Coping: leans on a small number of people, mostly to vent.
• Thriving: asks for help early and offers it freely.
6. Meaning
• Surviving: tells catastrophising stories about setbacks.
• Coping: tells neutral, factual stories; "it is what it is."
• Thriving: reframes setbacks as learning and helps others do the same.
7. Energy
• Surviving: running on caffeine and adrenaline; breaks skipped.
• Coping: energy tightly managed, with little left at the end of the day.
• Thriving: protects recovery and spends time on the strengths that energise them.
Running a Quick Self-Check
Leaders can use these seven dimensions as a five-minute weekly check. For each dimension, ask: which description sounds most like me this week? Patterns matter more than any single answer. A leader who is thriving on Purpose and Attitude but surviving on Energy and Support Network has a very specific, and very fixable, risk profile.
The same exercise works for teams. Asking a team "where are we on Adaptability right now?" opens a far more useful conversation than "how is everyone feeling about the change?"
Going Into Change While "Coping"
Most teams I meet are coping. That is not a failure. Coping is how most organisations function most of the time. The risk is what happens when a significant change lands on a team with no slack left. Coping can tip into surviving quickly.
Before launching a change programme, three moves help:
Check where the team is across the seven dimensions, not just on workload.
Build some slack back in before asking for more: remove something before adding something.
Strengthen the weakest dimension first. If Support Network is low, no amount of change communication will compensate.
What These States Are Not
Used badly, any model like this can do harm. A few principles keep it useful:
They are not performance ratings. Someone can be surviving and still delivering excellent work, at a cost. Keep these conversations out of appraisals.
They are not clinical labels. They describe observable behaviour at work, not mental health diagnoses. Where there is concern about someone's health, the right step is a supportive conversation and professional support.
They depend on safety. People will only place themselves honestly if they trust the information will be used to help them, not judge them. Leaders who go first, and name their own state, make that far easier.
What Helps People Move Up the Continuum
Each state calls for a different response. Treating everyone the same, usually with a generic wellbeing initiative, tends to help those who need it least.
From surviving to coping: reduce load where possible, protect basic recovery such as breaks and leave, and increase connection. People in survival mode need fewer demands and more support before they need new skills.
From coping to thriving: build slack back into the system and help people reconnect with Purpose and their strengths. Coping teams often have the capability already. What they lack is the margin to use it well.
Sustaining thriving: offer stretch and learning, and keep an eye on load. Recent research shows engagement and exhaustion can co-exist, so thriving on the surface is not a guarantee of safety underneath.
The leadership task is not to move everyone to thriving and keep them there. That is unrealistic during sustained change. It is to notice movement early, particularly downwards, and respond to the state someone is actually in.
Resilience is not a reserve that only reveals itself in a crisis. It is visible every week, in ordinary behaviour, to any leader who knows where to look.
For L&D Professionals
Observable behaviour markers give L&D a way to measure programme impact beyond satisfaction scores. Asking participants and their line managers to place themselves on Surviving, Coping and Thriving across the seven dimensions, before and after a programme, produces practical evidence of change. Reserve the eight-state field guide for diagnostic conversations where something is clearly wrong and the cause is not yet clear.
Ready to have a conversation?
See where you, or your team, sit across all seven dimensions today.
Resilient Leadership Diagnostic:
theresiliencecoach.co.uk/resilient-leadership-diagnostic
Resilient Teams Diagnostic:
theresiliencecoach.co.uk/resilient-teams-diagnostic
Book an introductory call:
zcal.co/russellharvey/intro-call