CAR Revisited: Leading When Change Has No Finish Line

Some time ago, I wrote an article called Driving the CAR Through Change, where I outlined why Courage, Agility, and Resilience (aka: “CAR”) are essential leadership capabilities during times of disruption. At the time, many of us were navigating acute, visible change—organizational shifts, market volatility, and, eventually, a global pandemic that upended how we work, lead, and live.

Fast forward to today, and something important has changed. We’re no longer in crisis mode. But we’re not exactly settled either.

If anything, many leaders I work with would say the phase we’re in is even harder.

There’s no adrenaline surge. No clear “all hands on deck” moment. No obvious finish line. Instead, there’s a persistent sense of uncertainty, fatigue, and pressure to perform as if everything should be back to normal—even though it clearly isn’t.

In this article we revisit the CAR model, looking at Change, Agility, and Resilience through a post-pandemic lens—not as a way to drive through change, but as a way to lead while the road keeps moving.

The Post-Pandemic Leadership Reality

Today’s leaders are navigating a different terrain:

• Teams are tired, even if they can’t always articulate why

• Engagement is uneven, and trust needs rebuilding

• Hybrid and distributed work add complexity without clear playbooks

• Expectations remain high, while capacity often feels thin

The challenge is no longer about surviving disruption. It’s about sustaining leadership in an environment where change is continuous, not episodic.

This is where Courage, Agility, and Resilience still matter—but not in the same way they did before.

Courage Reimagined: From Decisiveness to Truth-Telling

Traditionally, we think of courageous leadership as being decisive under pressure—making bold calls, standing firm, and projecting confidence. That kind of courage still has its place. But in today’s environment, leaders are often being asked to demonstrate a quieter, more relational form of courage.

Courageous leadership in today’s world is about telling the truth—especially when it’s uncomfortable.

It’s the courage to acknowledge:

• That people are exhausted.

• That productivity hasn’t magically rebounded.

• That not everything is within your control - or even controllable.

• That you don’t have all the answers.

Ironically, this kind of honesty tends to increase trust, not diminish it. When leaders pretend everything is fine, people feel it immediately. When leaders name reality clearly and compassionately, it creates relief—and room for real engagement.

So how can you adapt your courage for today’s challenges? Here are two practices that can help.

Courage Practice #1: Name It

Once a day, practice naming what you’re observing or noticing out loud. This can be on your own, with a thought partner, or with your team. It might sound like:

• “I’m noticing the pace has been intense lately.”

• “This ambiguity is hard, and I don’t want to minimize that.”

• “I don’t have a perfect answer yet, but here’s what I do know.”

This isn’t about oversharing or venting—it’s about grounding the system in truth. It opens up a space for exploring and addressing what’s right here, right now. And it invites collaboration, helping you move from “me” to “we”.

Courage Practice #2: Restrain Your Promises

Courage also shows up in restraint.

Over time, audit the promises you make—to your team, your peers, and yourself. Fewer promises, made more intentionally, and kept consistently, build far more trust than ambitious commitments that quietly erode.

Ask yourself:

• What promises actually matter most right now?

• What expectations need to be reset rather than reinforced?

Practicing restraint in promise-making naturally leads to you needing to share decision-making and accountability. This might seem like relinquishing control and to a certain extent it’s true. This is where courage matters.

Agility Reimagined: From Speed to Sense-Making

For years, leadership agility has been synonymous with speed—quick pivots, rapid decisions, and constant responsiveness. The problem? Many organizations are now suffering from change fatigue. When everything is urgent and every change is framed as critical, people lose their ability to orient, learn, and adapt in meaningful ways.

Leadership agility today is less about moving fast and more about sense-making.

It’s about slowing down just enough to understand what’s actually happening before deciding what to do next.

Agile leaders today are:

• Curious rather than reactive

• Willing to test assumptions publicly

• Focused on learning, not just execution

You’ve heard the expression, “measure twice, cut once”; how much more capacity could you and your team have if you cut down on revisiting decisions, focusing on solving root causes rather than symptoms?

Agility Practice #1: Lead With “What”

In meetings or one-on-ones, introduce at least one sense-making question:

• “What are we noticing that we didn’t see before?”

• “What assumptions might we be making here?”

• “What feels unclear or unresolved right now?”

These questions help teams shift from knee-jerk problem-solving to shared understanding.

Agility Practice: Build in Structured Reflection

Over time, create intentional pauses for reflection:

• After major initiatives

• At natural quarterly or project milestones

• Following periods of intense change

The key is to make reflection a repeatable leadership habit, not a one-off luxury. Agility grows when teams know there will be space to learn, not just deliver.

Resilience Reimagined: From Bouncing Back to Sustaining Forward

Resilience has often been framed as grit—the ability to push through, endure, and bounce back quickly.

But many leaders and teams are discovering a hard truth: there’s only so long you can “power through” before something gives.

Post-pandemic resilience is less about toughness and more about sustainability.

It’s about:

• Designing workloads that don’t rely on heroics

• Creating norms that allow recovery, not just output

• Shifting from individual resilience to collective resilience

Resilient organizations don’t ask, “How much can people take?” They ask, “How do we sustain effort, performance, and engagement through success and setbacks?”

Resilience Practice #1: Normalize Pauses

As a leader, model small, visible pauses:

• Take a breath before responding.

• Acknowledge when energy is low and allow space for recovery.

• Encourage realistic pacing, not constant acceleration.

These micro-moments signal that rest and reflection are part of performance, not the opposite of it.

Resilience Practice #2: Design for Capacity and Results

Over time, examine how work actually gets done:

• Where are bottlenecks forming?

• Who is consistently carrying the heaviest load?

• What roles or processes depend on unsustainable effort?

Resilience improves when leaders are willing to redesign systems—not just motivate people harder.

Your Evolving Role as a Leader

All of this points to a fundamental shift in leadership. In the today’s world, leaders are less like problem-solvers and more like system stewards. Your job isn’t to fix everything. It’s to:

• Hold competing tensions without rushing to resolution

• Create clarity of purpose when certainty isn’t available

• Tend to trust, energy, and alignment over time

This kind of leadership requires Courage, Agility, and Resilience—not as heroic traits, but as ongoing practices.

Leading for the Long Road Ahead

If the pandemic taught us how to respond to crisis, this moment is teaching us how to lead when change doesn’t end.

The question is no longer: “How do we get through this?” It’s: “How do we lead well enough—and humanly enough—to stay in it together?”

Courage, Agility, and Resilience are still the vehicle. But the destination has shifted. And the leaders who will thrive in this next chapter are the ones who stop driving harder—and start leading deeper.