Resilience

In a workshop this week there was a lengthy discussion about resilience.  The team described resilience in many ways including mental toughness, the ability to get back up after a failure, persistence and staying positive in tough times.

How’s the resilience in your team?

Having a resilient team means that you can rely on people to carry on through challenges and setbacks, it also creates better commitment to your team goals.

How can you create more resilience in your team at work?

The power of positive dialogue – Increase your awareness of how many positive conversations you have at work.  Talented leaders can highlight positive events and achievements no matter what the situation.  Taking the time to highlight learnings, achievements and small wins in a meeting can change the mood of the team enormously.  So often we focus on what we haven’t done and what’s missing.  Instead change the emphasis and discuss how much progress has been made and how much you have learned as a team.

Be supportive – Teams that feel supported by their manager are more likely to be proactive and achieve more.  We speak to managers who feel that they spend their days with a long line outside the office that never goes away.  Consider your management style. Do your employees know that you support them if they are proactive?  What is your approach when something goes wrong? Do you look for blame, or do you use failures as a learning opportunity?

Life Balance – Modeling a good life balance and encouraging others to do the same can create better physical resilience in your team.  Taking a short walk at lunchtime can often give you a better perspective on work.  Congratulate your team for the hard work they do during the day, instead of staying back night after night. 

Recognise good work – When team members know they are likely to be recognised for their work, they are more likely to persist with difficult challenges or a hard project.  There are many effective ways to recognise good performance.  Whether you offer recognition informally, as an agenda item in a team meeting, via a group email, or by telling more senior managers about your team member’s performance.  The important element is that your team knows that you see what a great job they do and that you appreciate it.

Creating resilience to help support high performance doesn’t have to be expensive or time consuming.  Raising your own awareness about creating positive dialogue, searching for ways to give good feedback and supporting your team to be proactive can give them more confidence and create better morale at work.