How can you build team resilience in a changing environment?

Totally agree, you have to make sure this is an ongoing process. Already by onboarding of new team members, they must also be coached so that they are aware of what is expected of them, know what the goals are, their own contribution, and possess the instruments required to succeed.

This is one area which I have found extremely useful in my past experience. In a fast changing environment, and especially in today's remote working scenario, frequent and honest communication helps in resolving doubts, bringing all on the same page and giving them the perspective bigger picture. It helps the team to align to the bigger goal, and build a strong sense of purpose for each contributor. This is a basic foundation of building resilience.

I believe that resilience is more about how often you can recharge more than how far you can endure! At the everyone of us has a limit of her/his resilience. Without anticipating and recharging, one will eventually reach the break-point. Identifying your best "Charging" source and the frequency you need to "Recharge" to help you expand your resilience, is an individual journey by itself that requires deep self-awareness and understanding of our self motives and triggers. For me, I found Mindfulness and some short breathing meditation practices (some as short as 3-min), helped me both as a source of recharge but also as way to get clarity on what I or my team really need to come-over certain challenge during an ever changing environment.

It is important to clearly articulate the rationale behind our actions. “WHY we are doing this? “ By providing a comprehensive explanation of the challenges we face and the opportunities that lie ahead, we can foster a stronger commitment. Equally crucial is articulating our team responsibility, expectations and goals. It is important for them to recognise that we’re ALL in this together and share the same objectives. By showing our commitment and aligning our efforts, we can create a more effective team!

When handling the dynamic organizational changes, it is vital to have fully transparent and inclusive communication with all the team members. By candidly sharing the context about the change in terms of ’why’ and ‘what’, the team aligns well. Also, one must make conscious effort of respectfully listening to each and every insight for improvement, without being judgmental about where it is coming from. This will bring the holistic set of ideas on the table and also galvanize the team together to succeed in managing the change.

Trust starts with the leader of the group and creates an environment of security. Within a trusting team, employees have confidence that their supervisors and peers will stand by them during mistakes, providing assistance in a non-critical manner when needed. This environment cultivates a sense of security, encouraging open and sincere communication

The key to empowering and trusting your team is clearly outlining expectations and boundaries from the start. Believe people will do the right thing (most will). If they don't deal with the exceptions.

I've learnt that giving the team the opportunity be part of the change by involving them in the work and driving the change themselves helps with the mindset shift. This however takes time at the start, but provides for more lasting sustainable change management down the road.

This is a tricky one, in my experience. In a rapidly changing world, you act on several things at the same time, and cause/effect relations are blurry, to say the least. Under such situations, you need to empower the team to find quick, original solutions - or else you lose the team. And again you need to have coached the team beforehand, so the are ready when needed. Empowerment is - in my view - a function of the role, not of experience, age and so on: if a person is not ready, then she should not occupy the position. If ready, then the person should enjoy all empowerment associated with it

TRUST... If you don't trust your team, you will never build a team, you will have a group of people doing there tasks; if you are lucky, they will be passionate and motivated but Trust is the first ingredient for success.

It is important for everyone to understand the why, and the WIIFM. Why is this the right thing long term for customers and the organization. Cross-functional teams typically represent departments directly impacted, team members need to know how this will affect them and their department team members who will be looking to them during and after the project as the person responsible for the outcome. Giving external examples of organizations that were successful or failed at a similar endeavor helps the learning in a non-personal manner.

Yes, we are more apt to commit (in our hearts, not just in our heads) to that which we help create, to then team up more readily with those around us to bring those outside the circle ... for what reason they are outside ... inside. This results in really spirited action and execution trust to tackle the mission together, including when we need to course correct, back up, practice/repeat new team plays, reset priorities. These cycles result in very powerful relationship trust building to keep us moving and innovating. Even radically collaborating to DESIGN our way forward, not just solve problems.

Fostering collaboration and learning is key to resilience. In change, teams must unite, using diverse skills for creative problem-solving. Create a supportive environment that promotes teamwork and knowledge sharing. Encourage learning from mistakes and seeking new challenges to build a resilient, collaborative team.

Leverage technology to promote collaboration and support the different means of communication to be inclusive. There are people who are naturally shy to speak on big meetings for example, and having some online platform to ask question in writing will encourage more participation even with the shy ones.

In the wake of a change, give team members a degree of autonomy in how they approach their work. Allowing them to make decisions within their roles can increase their sense of ownership and control. Many times things slow down after a change, which in itself can be scary. That's the perfect time to encourage team members to learn skills outside their immediate roles. This helps create a more versatile team that can handle a wider range of tasks and gives individuals a greater sense of value.

Sherri Mandell, author of The Road to Resilience, from Chaos to Celebration writes "We experience resilience when we are enlarged rather than diminished by our challenges, when facing adversity causes us to change, grow and become greater." A leader's support in promoting overall well-being is critical. Part of that support is to guide towards & nurture lessons learned from a period of adversity. An authentic leader will hold space and provide the psychological safety an employee needs to become accustomed to the change through understanding what the change taught and how the lessons learned can be applied moving forward.

Modeling genuine care, thoughtfulness and kindness (clear is kind) while being empathetic shows your colleagues we are all in this together.

It all starts by leaders showing the example. No emails should be sent after business hours. No phone calls should be placed during week-ends. There needs to be a line between professional and personal time. And it's up to the leader to walk the talk.

In leading a team, you have to understand that you are dealing with people; and people have lives outside of work, people have feelings, have needs, wants, and fears. Supporting a team's well-being starts with understanding them as human beings and then figuring out how can you give them enough direction without strangling their creativity or Giving them just enough "good" pressure to stay focused, but not enough to burn them out.

Along these lines, as leaders we need to help our team members alleviate imposter syndrome. Especially with a new role and/or promotion. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and buried in busy. It important for folks to know what success looks like and have a clear path to get there.

During the uncertain times of change, the team members increasingly depend on guidance and cues from the leader. Providing them with frequent progress updates and appreciating their contributions towards the bigger cause, could elevate their performance to a much higher level. I have experienced exponential growth in teams when they see your optimism, confidence in their capabilities and receive instant appreciation / recognition.

Having a vision for the future is something a manager or leader can control in times of change. I've always set a "Big, Hairy Audacious Goal" [BHAG] to communicate the importance of focusing on the future, even if the present is crummy. Keeping your team focused on what they can control about the future creates organizational resilience in the face of uncertainty.

Cultivating a positive mindset is crucial for team resilience. Inspire and motivate your team, highlighting change benefits and framing challenges as learning opportunities. Foster confidence, optimism, and a growth mindset to navigate change effectively.

If you want to cultivate it, you need to role model it. Create psychological safety through a positive and can-do mindset. It's contagious.

Continuously highlight the importance/significance of the journey itself. The end result is ultimately an outcome and usually a team will celebrate briefly and refocus on the next objective. A leader can reframe the positivity associated with navigating the changes by putting more emphasis on celebrating the inputs.

Resiliency is often used to describe the ability to “bounce back”. I prefer to look at resilience as the ability to meet planned deliverables & agreed targets, irrespective of the environment. Change is an aspect that can require resilience. Resilient teams require trust and psychological safety. If we go back to Maslow’s hierarchy, it is not reasonable to build on the next skill until the previous layer of the pyramid is met. Professionally speaking, this means in order to expect your teams to “ignore” or disregard the change/ distractions around them and focus on their key deliverables and performance, they need to have trust in their peers/ leaders and they need to feel safe to express their concerns and questions.

Authentic resilience comes from a side of us that is rarely spoken about in business , our spirit. Our spiritual well-being requires attention - seeking a foundation that is greater than any difficult situation that we will ever encounter in business or life. We should ask (and be able to answer), “Where does my hope come from?” “Where does help come from when things seem hopeless?” “How can I stand alone if necessary?” Image how resilient one can be who says and believes - “My hope comes from the LORD, the maker of Heaven and Earth.”

Understanding that change can come rapidly and can be incredibly disruptive, the key here is to focus on things that are NOT related to environmental change. By this, I mean focus on the person, not the task at hand. One of the major mistakes leaders and managers make is to paint their people with too wide a brush. They rarely take the time to understand what motivates them as unique individuals and just assume that something like tossing more money at them will ensure the team stays together. At the very least, leaders and managers should adopt Dan Pink's concept of understanding the motivators of Purpose, Autonomy, and Mastery with each person, which are agnostic to change, and create an environment where those are achievable.

No degree of hostility, uncertainty break a team as much as their leaders fragility. The only way to conquer uncertainty while leading teams is to be objective, to shun speculation, to put behind self interest

In times of significant change it is important to ensure you address your teammates’ fears of loss. It’s not the change itself that people dislike or want to avoid, it is the fear of what they perceive they may lose because of the change.