One thing I learned about winning together

Spain showed us two powerful images within the space of a few days. The first was one of joy. The Spanish Women’s National Team lifted the World Cup and the country celebrated together. For a brief moment, differences disappeared. Success has a remarkable ability to unite people.

Only days later, television screens showed a very different reality.

The events in Ceuta confronted Spain (and Europe) with difficult questions about responsibility, borders, humanity and political priorities. Whatever your personal views may be, one thing became immediately clear: unity becomes much harder when interests collide and difficult choices have to be made.

Watching those two events play out, reminded me of something I have learned throughout my own career. For more than twenty-five years I have worked with executive teams across Europe and North America. I have participated in discussions about restructurings, business transformations, cost reductions, operating model changes and leadership transitions. Some decisions affected thousands of employees across multiple countries.

Those are not the moments leaders look forward to. Yet those are precisely the moments that reveal the true strength of an organisation And one lesson has stayed with me throughout all those years.

Success rarely tells you much about culture. Pressure tells you everything.

When business is growing, people generally collaborate. Budgets are available. Promotions are possible. Teams celebrate achievements together.

But real leadership begins when circumstances change. Resources become limited. Departments compete for investment. People disagree. Employees become uncertain about the future. Stakeholders expect answers that simply don’t exist yet. At that point organisations don’t suddenly develop resilience. They reveal the resilience they have, or haven’t, been building for years.

The organisations I remember most positively weren’t necessarily those with the strongest strategy or the highest-performing executives. They were the organisations where trust already existed before difficult decisions became necessary. Where leaders had learned to disagree respectfully. Where accountability was shared instead of avoided. Where difficult conversations were normal rather than exceptional. Where people understood that protecting the organisation sometimes meant putting collective success above individual interests.

That doesn’t happen by accident. It requires leadership.

Not the kind that delivers inspiring speeches when everything is going well. The quieter kind. Leaders who create psychological safety. Who build trust before asking people to follow them through uncertainty. Who explain difficult decisions honestly. Who remain visible when answers are incomplete. Who demonstrate consistency between words and actions.

Looking back, I realise that many of the transformations I was privileged to support were never really about structures, technology or operating models.

They were about people. About whether people trusted one another enough to move through uncertainty together. Whether they believed leadership would act fairly. Whether they continued to see themselves as one team instead of separate interests competing for survival.

That is why resilience cannot be implemented when a crisis arrives. It has to be built every single day.

Today, as an executive coach and advisor to senior leaders, this is one of the conversations I enjoy most. Not because every organisation faces a crisis. But because every organisation eventually faces pressure. The teams that thrive are rarely the ones that avoid difficult moments. They are the ones that prepared for them long before they arrived.

That may be the most important lesson leadership has taught me. Winning together is easy. Sharing responsibility is where great teams are built.