Beyond Bounce Back: Intentional Resilience as Competitive Advantage | Tissa Richards

What if everything you’ve been told about resilience… is wrong?

In this episode, executive coach, keynote speaker, and author Tissa Richards joins Anu Arora to redefine resilience as your greatest competitive advantage—not something you grit through in a crisis, but a daily, intentional practice that shapes how you lead, decide, and innovate.

Tissa’s new book, Rethinking Resilience: Fueling Your Competitive Advantage, challenges the old “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” narrative and the pressure to always “bounce back.” Instead, she introduces intentional resilience: a proactive, learnable preparedness muscle you build in small micro moments long before things get hard.

Together, Anu and Tissa explore:

• Why traditional, reactive crisis resilience keeps us stuck in survival mode

• How to move from “Why is this happening to me?” to “What can happen through me?” and reclaim your agency

• The mindset shift from pressure and burnout to clarity, communication, and choice

• The flywheel of intentional resilience and the key elements that resilient leaders and teams share

• How values, innovation, and resilience are tightly linked—and why organizations that know what they stand for are better prepared for disruption

• The Circle of Control exercise: separating what you can control, influence, or release as noise

• How intentional resilience supports leaders and teams navigating rapid change and AI impact

• Why documenting wins, asking better questions, and pausing before reacting are powerful micro practices you can start today

Tissa also shares her personal story as a recovering tech founder who chose values over short-term gain, shut down her cybersecurity startup, and then rebuilt her life and work from the ground up. Her journey shows how resilience isn’t about pushing through pain—it’s about staying anchored in who you are, even when everything is on the line.

Whether you’re leading a team, coaching leaders, navigating organizational change, or simply trying not to burn out in a noisy, always-on world, this conversation will help you:

• Shift from reactivity to intentional resilience

• Turn pressure into power

• Build a more grounded, values-based way of leading yourself and others

🎧 Listen in if you want to…

• Strengthen your resilience without glorifying struggle

• Create more clarity and alignment in your team
  Use micro moments to rewire your habits and responses

• Stay steady and human in a world of AI, uncertainty, and rapid change

📚 About Tissa Richards
Tissa Richards is an executive coach, keynote speaker, and former tech founder who helps senior leaders and teams build clarity, conviction, and resilience so they can lead with impact and integrity. She works with global organizations, executive teams, and boards, and is the author of Rethinking Resilience: Fueling Your Competitive Advantage.

👉 Learn more about Tissa and her work:

• Rethinking Resilience: Fueling Your Competitive Advantage

• Website

• Youtube Channel

• Instagram Page

🧘‍♀️ About Anu Arora
Anu Arora is a leadership coach, facilitator, and mindfulness teacher who works with organizations and individuals to build emotional intelligence, conscious leadership, and cultures of compassion and clarity.

👉 Learn more about Anu’s work and offerings at her website www.anuarora.com.

If this conversation sparked something for you, please:

• Subscribe to my podcast

• Share this episode with a leader, colleague, or friend who’s navigating change

• Leave a review or comment with one micro moment you’re going to start practicing this week

Let’s move beyond survival mode—and build intentional resilience as a daily habit, a leadership edge, and a way of life.

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