By Rudee Robertson | March 17, 2026
In early childhood programs, resilience is often talked about for children, but it begins with the adults who lead the work every day. When leaders are intentional about how they relate to staff, what they believe about their teams, and how they respond to stress, they shape the conditions for everyone’s resilience.
Your Resilience Starts with Reflection
The Devereux Resilient Leadership Survey (DERLS) was created to help leaders pause, reflect, and take stock of how they promote resilience in their staff. There are no right answers; instead, the survey invites leaders to notice their strengths and choose one or two areas to intentionally grow over time.
By asking yourself how often certain practices feel like “Almost Always,” “Sometimes,” or “Not Yet,” you create a roadmap for your own leadership development. This kind of honest reflection is itself an act of resilient leadership, modeling that growth is continuous and grounded in self-awareness.
Relationships: The Foundation for Everyone’s Resilience
The first area of the DERLS focuses on relationships and highlights how critical your daily interactions are to the climate of your program. When you cultivate supportive teamwork, challenge staff to do their best, and work side-by-side with them as needed, you communicate that no one is in this work alone.
Encouraging staff to show empathy to others and fostering trust are not “extras,” they are core resilience practices that impact how safe and supported people feel at work. As relationships strengthen, staff are more likely to bring their full selves to the job, which ultimately benefits the children and families they serve.
Internal Beliefs: How You See Your Staff Matters
The Internal Beliefs section of the survey recognizes that what you believe about your staff shapes how you lead. Delegating to encourage ownership, nurturing staff strengths, and encouraging creativity sends a powerful message that staff are capable, resourceful, and valued.
When you demonstrate that you value diversity and work with staff to create a common vision and mission, you help build a shared sense of purpose. Modeling and encouraging positivity and optimism does not mean ignoring challenges; instead, it means holding hope and possibility in front of your team, even in difficult seasons. These beliefs ripple outward into how staff view themselves and the children and families they support.
Initiative: Turning Resilient Beliefs into Daily Actions
Resilience is lived out in what leaders do, not just what they think or say. The Initiative items in the DERLS focus on the everyday behaviors that make a difference: modeling and teaching effective communication, encouraging collaborative problem-solving, and praising and celebrating staff contributions.
Supporting staff development and learning, being open to new ideas, and enjoying staff and sharing positive moments all contribute to a culture where people feel seen and appreciated. Striving for manageable workloads and encouraging staff to ask for help are powerful ways to protect staff well-being in a demanding field. When leaders take these actions, they are actively building the capacity of their teams to stay engaged, flexible, and hopeful – qualities children and families feel in every interaction.
Self-Control: Modeling Healthy Coping in Stressful Moments
The Self-Control portion of the survey points to how leaders respond when things are hard. Validating the feelings of staff, establishing clear and fair expectations, and encouraging flexibility are all key elements of a resilient culture.
When you share healthy coping strategies with staff, you are not only supporting their well-being, you are modeling the same skills you want staff to use with children and families. In this way, your self-regulation and coping strategies quietly guide the emotional tone of the program, influencing how conflicts are handled, how change is navigated, and how stress is managed.
Starting Small: One or Two Steps at a Time
The DERLS encourages leaders to reflect on their strengths and then “start small” by choosing one or two areas to improve. This approach honors the reality that leadership is demanding and that meaningful change comes from focused, sustainable efforts, not perfection.
By consistently investing in your own resilient leadership – across relationships, internal beliefs, initiative, and self-control – you create a healthier environment for yourself, your team, and ultimately the children and families who depend on your program every day.
Ready to get started? Grab your copy of the DERLS below!
