Building Resilience in your Team

Resilience is an important quality in today's workplace, especially as we face the uncertainty and stress associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. While modern technology ensures that many employees will be able to stay productive as remote workers, company leaders and team managers should remain cognisant of the mental and emotional wellness of their colleagues – this is an incredibly anxious time for many.

So why is resilience important, and what can you as a company leader do to build resilience within your team.

Why Resilience is Important

Resilience has been defined as:  "the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change." Put another way, resilience means that no matter how often life knocks you down, you can and do get back up. Clearly, resilience under current circumstances can be a make-or-break attribute for the continued success of individual employees, departments, and even entire organisations.

Research has confirmed this vital truth again and again. For instance, one long-term study found that resilient employees can actually thrive under the most adverse of circumstances, either by retaining their current position, furthering their career within the company, or even branching out to a new role. 

What if an employee is not a "naturally resilient" person? Fortunately, resilience is not just a trait inherited at birth: it is a skill that can be cultivated. As such, it is the job of management to help employees build resiliency, even under the most trying of times.

How to Build Resiliency

There are several ways that managers can help their team members to cultivate a strong sense of resilience in tough economic times. Here are 3 key methods that team leaders have used to great effect:

Cultivate a learning-oriented mindset 

The great enemy of resilience is perfectionism. Many organisations that embrace the pursuit of perfection as one of their core values find that their employees are ill-equipped to handle adversity. Why? Simply put, because the concept of corporate "perfection" ignores the realities of human error and unanticipated setbacks. In contrast, when you urge your employees to treat each mistake and obstacle as an opportunity for growth, you promote resilience in your team as a whole.

Strengthen your personal relationships at work 

Great managers and mentors understand this one simple truth: it's never "just business." Employees are people, and require the respect and dignity that any other human deserves. As a manager, you cannot put blinders on and focus on quotas and productivity metrics alone. Take the time to get to know your team members. Ask them how they are doing. Schedule feedback sessions over Zoom or Skype that don't involve corrective feedback. By doing so, you will promote a strong culture of collaboration and trust - and build a robust support network for your employees.

Emphasise your company's mission and purpose

A study conducted several years ago found that 90% of employees in purpose-driven organisations felt engaged in their work - compared to only 32% in companies not focused on their purpose. A strong sense of purpose can bind teams together during hard times, and motivate individual workers to push through for the greater good. When you regularly stress the core mission and purpose of your company, such as how its products or services contribute to the well-being of the community, you help your workers to see where they fit into the "big picture," which in turn can help them to bounce back from discouragement or disappointment.

Resilience will be needed in the days and weeks to come - even after the COVID-19 outbreak has passed into memory. By implementing the above suggestions and maintaining an optimistic outlook (and the positive language that goes along with it), you'll build your team's resiliency and help them to close ranks and get through this difficult time.