The Personal Success Podcast with Ryan Watts

Springing Forward with Learning Part 1: Redefining Resilience with Russell Harvey

Russell Harvey · November 21, 2025

Executive Coach · Leadershipin

Interview with Russell Harvey

Springing Forward with Learning Part 1: Redefining Resilience with Russell Harvey

Podcast: The Personal Success Podcast with Ryan Watts

November 21, 2025 · 33 min

Listen to Russell Harvey on The Personal Success Podcast with Ryan Watts.

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Springing Forward with Learning Part 1: Redefining Resilience with Russell Harvey

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Key topicsLeading Well When the World Won’t Slow DownChange is no longer something leaders navigate occasionally - it is the environment they lead in every day. Russell explores the difference between leaders who are simply surviving relentless change and those who can genuinely say: “There’s a lot going on, and I’m good.” Drawing on nearly two decades specialising in resilience, Russell offers a practical perspective on what resilient leadership actually looks, sounds and feels like when the pressure is real and the uncertainty isn't going away.Before You Add AI to Your Team, Fix the Human OneOrganisations are racing to adopt AI, but Russell believes leaders need to ask a more fundamental question first: what makes our team work brilliantly together? Only then can they understand where AI can genuinely improve performance. With deep expertise in leadership, resilience and navigating persistent change, Russell offers a refreshingly human perspective on AI: the biggest challenge may not be the technology, but how well we lead the people using it.Off the Record — What Leaders Admit in Coaching and Never Say in the BoardroomRussell Harvey has coached leaders to board level for over 6,000 hours, and the same admissions come up in private: they are guessing, they are tired, and they can say neither out loud. Most organisations treat that silence as strength and reward the executive who never wavers, which is how confident-looking teams commit to decisions nobody in the room believes in. Drawing on 18 years with organisations from the NHS to Novartis and Kerry Group, he describes what changes when a leader finally gets one place to think honestly: how they pressure-test a decision before announcing it, and how they pass that same permission down to their own team. Listeners leave able to hear what their leadership group is not saying, and knowing what to do once they hear it.View all topics →

About Russell Harvey

The Resilience Coach | Resilient Leadership Expert

100,000+ People positively affected6,000+ Executive coaching hours£12M+ ROI delivered by RWE npower leadership programme20+ years Learning, leadership and organisational development

Russell Harvey is The Resilience Coach - a resilient leadership expert, executive coach, facilitator and keynote speaker who helps leaders and organisations perform at their best when the world refuses to stand still.

With more than 20 years in Learning, Leadership and Organisational Development, 6,000+ hours of executive coaching and over 70 published podcast appearances, Russell is an experienced and engaging voice on resilience, leadership and navigating persistent change. He has worked with leaders across organisations including Novartis, the NHS, AB World Foods, Kerry Group and The Co-operative Group.

Russell’s work goes beyond helping people simply cope with pressure. He believes true resilience isn’t about “bouncing back”, being tougher or pretending everything is fine - it’s about springing forward with learning and becoming better equipped to lead because of the challenges you’ve faced.

His approach connects the human side of leadership directly to what matters to organisations: engaged people, stronger cultures, better decisions and improved performance. His work has delivered measurable results, including a leadership programme that returned £12 million to the business and a Resilient Leader Programme that achieved more than 1,100% ROI.

In August 2025, Russell achieved his long-held purpose of positively affecting 100,000 people.

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About this episode

In Part 1 of this conversation, Ryan sits down with UK based resilience coach and facilitator,Russell Harvey, whose mission has been to positively affect one hundred thousand people through his work on resilience, leadership and business as a force for good. In July twenty twenty five, he hit that number and is now exploring his next chapter of purpose.

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Russell shares the story behind becoming The Resilience Coach... from teaching English in Hong Kong and feeling the magic of other peoples light bulb moments, to being made redundant six times and finally deciding to build a practice that centers human behavior, learning and leadership. He and Ryan explore why resilience is not just about pushing through hard times, but about springing forward with learning so that challenges actually change how we live and lead.

They dig into Russell s Resilience Wheel and strengths based coaching, unpacking why your homework is not to fix your weaknesses but to spend more time in the work that energizes you. Along the way, Russell draws a sharp line between genuine resilience and the toxic version that just tells people to keep going and stay positive.

In Part 1 you will hear

• Why Russell set a goal to positively affect one hundred thousand people and what it looked like to actually reach it • How a year of traveling and teaching in Hong Kong revealed his love for creating light bulb moments in others • The career journey from learning and development into launching The Resilience Coach after repeated redundancies • Why strengths based work matters and why your lowest scoring strength is rarely where you should spend most of your time • How to think about being “good enough” at some tasks so you can spend more time in your natural strengths • Russell s definition of resilience as springing forward with learning, not just bouncing back to who you were before a challenge • A tour of the Resilience Wheel... attitude, purpose, confidence, adaptability and agility, support network, self talk and energy • Why most people only think about resilience once something unpleasant happens and what it looks like to build resilience before that point • The early signs of toxic resilience at work... “you just need to be resilient and positive”... and why that message is so dangerous

Connect with Russell

• Website... theresiliencecoach.co.uk • LinkedIn... search Russell Harvey The Resilience Coach

Connect with The Personal Success Podcast

• Subscribe on YouTube... youtube.com/@thepersonalsuccesspodcast • Learn more about Ryan s coaching work... ryanwattslifecoaching.com

Guest: Russell Harvey