Ahead of our HR Leadership Forum with Bill Lawry focused on improving resilience, we share the importance of resilience for sustainable, successful teams and organisations, and practical advice on how to enhance this within your team.
Why is resilience important?
Resilience is a vital element of a high performing, successful team. This is because today’s business environment is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) and it’s paramount that senior leaders and teams are able to perform at their best and bounce back quickly – no matter what. Successful teams are able to produce great results time and again even when the going gets tough. They are resilient because they remain focused in the face of pressing situational demands and challenges and they have the ability to bounce back quickly from setbacks.
Successful, resilient teams have the following characteristics:
• Continuously able to produce great results when the going gets and stays tough.
• Persistent and remain goal-focused in difficult times.
• Ability to quickly bounce back from setbacks and get back on track even when events or emergencies occur out of their control and without warning.
Teams with low levels of resilience may look like this:
• Senior leaders and team members have a negative and pessimistic mindset.
• Focus on what they can’t control and adopt a victim mentality.
• Are unproductive, focusing on the wrong things and complete work slowly, distracted easily.
• Poor engagement among team members.
• Low energy levels due to lack of sleep, poor health and low mood.
Enhancing your team’s resilience is not always an easy thing to do. We have recognised that teams with a strong resilience have the following things in common:
1. They pull together when times get tough
A successful team will not wait until hard times to pull together – they support each other and work really well together before a crisis hits. However, when a crisis does hit, they remain goal-focused and support each other to be at their best, when times are not only tough, but when the workloads are high and things don’t go accordingly. This is because each team member has adopted a growth mindset which means they see challenges as opportunities to learn and improve, to make and learn from mistakes. With this mindset they focus on the things that they can control and work on solving these issues together. Furthermore, they promote a healthy, positive and safe environment, in which health is prioritised and life outside of work is encouraged.
2. They are tenacious, have grit and perseverance
A successful team gets themselves back on track, even when events or emergencies occur outside of their control and without warning. They remain goal focused in these difficult times and preserve to achieve success.
Click here to view Bill Lawry’s full article:
