How to Build a Resilient Team

We are getting lots of requests for resilience trainings these days, and I'm glad that more and more companies are trying support their employees during these difficult times. The fact that we are going through this together opens up new possibilities to talk openly about how grief, loss and trauma is affecting us all. If we approach current events skillfully and with emotional intelligence, we can find the seeds of growth in them as individuals and as groups, companies and communities and build skills that stay with us long after the current crises is over.

Richard Tedeschi, a psychology professor and distinguished chair of the Boulder Crest Institute, identifies 5 elements of post-traumatic growth:

1. Education – our experience transforms certain core beliefs and we learn about new possibilities of being and acting in this world. This can be painful and empowering at the same time.
2. Emotional regulation – learn to observe your emotional life from a distance and refocus your mind on resources, strengths and helpful strategies
3. Disclosure – we need to open up about how a difficult experience affects us emotionally, and we need others to invite us to tell our stories (leaders take note!)
4. Narrative development – how you tell your story makes a huge difference on how you experience your life. How has the experience changed you in positive ways? For instance, do you experience more connectedness with others who are similarly affected? How did this experience lead you to recalibrate your priorities and values?
5. Service – finding ways of helping others helps us to feel better after difficult experiences. Start with something small.

The lesson to be learned from this is that that resilience is as much a psychological skill as it is a social practice. On the one hand, we can learn to adjust our perspective on our experience and develop a mindset that allows for emotional growth. On the other hand, especially as leaders, we need to invite others to tell their story, find the time to truly listen, and help them to find the good in the bad. For companies, this means 1) strengthening the resilience skills of individuals, 2) training leaders in empathy skills (my favorite techniques are empathic listening for emotional support and editorial listening for narrative development), and 3) providing the space for meaningful conversations to take place (e.g. during workshops with skilled facilitators).

The research shows that one benefit of supporting employees in these ways is that these skills stay with them long after the current crises is over. They will be better equipped to handle the vicissitudes of life from now on and experience more connectedness and psychological safety in their team, leading to improved well-being and better performance.

If you are interested in boosting your organization’s resilience, we’ve put together an online learning journey that trains the core skills or resilience at all levels and gives teams the opportunity to grow #strongertogether.

Please reach out to [email protected] for more details.

Deutschsprachige HR-Verantwortliche k?nnen sich hier zu einem kostenlosen Probe-Workshop Resilienz am 06. Aug. anmelden: https://tsol-germany.de/resilienz-gratis-workshop-fuer-hr/