Our partner institution the Nanovic Institute for European Studies has been regularly organizing various activities for member institutions of the Catholic University Partnership. Over the last couple of years, it organized a week-long Summer Leadership Program and selected alumni of this program were invited to participate at the Advanced Leadership Program. This program was expected to take place in Rome, first in June and later in December 2021, but due to the complicated pandemic situation it had to be rescheduled for the year 2022. In the meantime, for future participants of this program, the institute prepared an online talk on the topic of Resilient Leadership. The talk was delivered by the director of the institute Professor Clemens Sedmak on December 14, 2021.

Clemens Sedmak is the author of the book The Capacity to be Displaced: Resilience, Mission, and Inner Strength (Brill 2017), in which he deals also with the topic of resilience and how it “makes people flourish in adverse circumstances”. As it was clear from his talk and the following discussion, this timely issue could be viewed from various perspectives, especially during the complicated times of the ongoing pandemic. In his talk, Sedmak introduced three types of resilience: resilience of the leader, resilience of the institution and resilience of the leadership. Subsequently he focused on five pillars or characteristics of resilience: capacity to adjust, sense of direction and sense of roots, social sense and cooperation, sense of control and agency and, finally, sense and culture of hope. He emphasized these are important aspects of acquiring stronger resilience. During his talk, Sedmak developed several interesting points, illustrated them using colorful examples from the past and point out to significance of striving for resilience.

The talk was attended by participants from the the CUP universities. Our Catholic University in Ruzomberok was represented by Marek Babic, Marketa Rusnakova and Eugen Zelenak.