Team resilience — your stabiliser to meet stormy seas

We often talk about strategies having to be pivoted during times of disruption. But chaotic times can also create cracks in the fundament of a hard working team. Team resilience is a term psychologists have been looking into more in depth now. It is described as the factor that can help keep the team strong during these shaky times, and have them bounce back better and more empowered after the storm has subsided.

Your team might be performing well, extremely well even. Delivering on time and everyone is busy and happy. The team is moving fast and with a clear path. And then boom. Something changes in the company, insecurity takes over, the friendships turn sour and people start looking out for their own interests. Delivering on — especially now — crucial tasks is put on the backburner.

Because performing well during optimal circumstances, has little to do with how well you cope with a blow to the solar plexus. It’s not how well you fight, but how well you get up again. A resilient team is able to perform well even quickly after a rough period.

It goes against most peoples natural instinct, to interrupt a winning streak in order to talk about threats, possible future problems and ask possible hard questions. Unfortunately resilience is best shown in storms, but needs to be built during calm seas.

Everyone on board

The first thing you need to do is make sure you are strategically aligned. Where are we, what are we doing, and most importantly — why? By unifying your team you can make sure that all that engagement and energy is channeled into beneficial production. I often compare this to the football team of five-year olds I’m coaching. They are super-engaged but if they don’t know what to do, they run all over the place, in every possible direction. While these kids do this in the very literal way, this works as an analogy for engaged co-workers with no clear mission as well. Asking these questions to a poorly performing team will give you an array of answers. Or even a team that’s performing well today, but is running the risk of being shattered when times get less stable.

Set the right course

Goals are not only for smooth sails today, but for how to evolve and think long term about sustaining this level of performance.

Divide your goals into four categories:

Results. What results do you want to achieve?
Development. What is your plan to keep evolving?
Performance. How do you want your results to be met? Lucky coincidences happen and might make you reach your KPI. Say you want to increase the amount of middle sized companies as customers. But you so happen to land yet another huge customer. So you've met your result goal but not your performance goal. Your performance is there to make sure you keep reaching your result goals even when the market for a particular segment is saturated.
Process. Responsibilities are dynamic. What works today might need an update for the next problem you face. The process in itself is an important tool to keep the team adaptable and thereby resilient.

This sets the basis for an all-covering target. Successful teams have considered all parts of their vision.

The 7 C:s of resilience

Psychology researcher McEvan and Boyd conducted a study proving seven areas that support a resilient team. If your team has a good strategy and behaviour within all of these areas you are more likely to be resilient.

The 7 Cs of team resilience

Culture. A routine of assessing resources and a culture of improvement.
Care. A healthy work-life balance and good stress management.
Celebration. Having an optimistic outlook and celebrating success.
Capability. Continually seeking feedback, expanding network and support.
Connectedness. A sense of belonging within the team, being supportive and cooperative.
Community. Sharing goals and purpose, but also being adaptable and proactive.
Consistency. A stable, solution-oriented focus, being persistent when challenged.

How well-prepared is your team?

There are a lot of factors within each category to look at when assessing a teams chances to ride through a storm. Based on these we have made a small diagnostic questionnaire that will give you an idea of the areas where your team is well equipped and what areas you need to work on, to create a resilient and long-lasting team.

Contact me if you would be interested to hear more about how we have worked with clients to look at team resilience and for a dialogue about how we could add value to your organisation.