Resilience & Consistency - the keys to successful individuals and teams

Last week I provided some observations from the Director’s Chair on episode 4 of the XVenture Family Challenge TV series brought to you by ecostore. The episode airs on the 10 network in Australia and Three in New Zealand every Sunday afternoon. 

This week I turn to the first semi-final in the series, episode 5 which featured four families looking to win a place in the final. 

As a reminder, here’s a quick overview. Over eight weeks, we took sixteen families from across Australia and New Zealand and set them a range of fun and engaging challenges recording each for the TV show. Each week, four teams competed over three very different challenges testing out teamwork, adaptability, cohesion and resilience. The two teams that performed the best went through to the semi-finals, leading to a final where one team won the overall title and $25,000.

Throughout the program, the families had no idea what challenges they would be facing so making it difficult to plan. Teams and their individual members have an option: take on a performance improvement mindset (PIMS) or focus attention and time on frustration and disappointment (FAND). The families who performed really well throughout, had all their team members buying into a PIMS.

Before the program was recorded all team members undertook a diagnostic to obtain a reading on their emotional agility, resilience and leadership. (EARL). All the families in this episode recorded solid EARL scores prior to the program commencing with the average being 64.9%, which is not dissimilar to many other successful teams we have measured over the last twelve months. 

From the outset, this semi-final had a different feel. I think that this was mainly due to families having a better understanding of the environment, the process and had some sense of their own identity and how best to tackle the challenges.

The first challenge faced was called Dulcet Tones. This was one of the most difficult challenges the families and the production team had to deal with in the TV series.  Way out of the comfort zone, applying all the creative powers; the teams had to build their own family lyrics to music written by Grammy -winning songwriter, Eliot Kennedy. All done against the clock and then, the most frightening experience for many: deliver the performance with all the lights, cameras, crew and being judged by Eliot himself.

Observing the dynamics of families working under intense pressure with a deadline to make a statement about who they were was profound. That evening, the production team were abuzz about the experience we had just witnessed. Every family’s approach was so different although every member committed fully to the process. Seeing the solutions unearth was incredible. It confirmed one thing: every human being is inherently creative. Kids led parents and parents led kids. No one person controlled the journey so communication and sharing of ideas became the norm.  Mainly because no one had experienced anything similar to this. 

We had created a World first, with Eliot judging live from the UK at 2.30am in the morning!

The biggest lesson: we have a habit of giving ourselves far too much time to come up with solutions. Several times we have led businesses in building a strategy and they have been surprised that with sensible structure and rules around attitudes, behaviours and communication a team can create something quickly and effectively.

As it is the semi-finals, we lifted the level of intensity. Challenge two was no exception. Walk on Water was one of  most physical of our challenges, with a twist. Two teams, competing head to head to get a number of pieces of a puzzle across water via floating mats and then build the puzzle. Fastest time wins! 

When faced with big challenges, too often our habit is to go hard early and then run out of steam later. Observing how best to get across the floating mats expending the least amount of energy would be really important here. Only a couple of the family members really worked this out thereby participating fully and still relatively fresh to help with the puzzle at the end. Having someone calm who could keep a clear head in building the puzzle at the end was also important. Nothing worse than being out of breath and having to concentrate!

The encouragement of parents to kids and kids to parents should not be underestimated either. All too often when things aren’t going to plan we have a habit of dropping our head. This has more of an impact on those around you than you can imagine.  From the sidelines at kids sport to my work in elite sport, this occurs. In this challenge it did not, and this helped in the team performance.

The third and final challenge was a definite challenge for all. Firstly the production team faced a big decision. All set up to deliver a challenge on the beach, due to adverse and dangerous weather conditions we scrapped our plans and within an hour had created a brand- new challenge in a safer environment. Two Wheel Rescue probably delivered the most important message throughout the TV series. Working with expert medical staff, all the teams were taught basic CPR then after undertaking some physical exercise by travelling a distance on a bike, they had to work as a team to undertake CPR to their mannequin. A senior paramedic and technology linked to each mannequin helped in the judging of this challenge which ultimately demonstrated that we can all learn this important life skill.

Teams who did well on this challenge were the most effective active listeners, ensuring they didn’t confuse the physical part of the challenge with being the fastest. At no stage did the instructor tell the teams to ride their bike as fast as they could, yet some participants did. This may have affected their CPR performance which needed to be regular throughout.

Before leaving Eagles Nest, EARL scores were measured once more for those families returning home. (emotional agility, resilience and leadership) The two families who left the program after episode five showed an average increase of 9.3% on these EARL scores. All the team’s scales increased with social skills, intrinsic motivation and leadership all in double figures. These are very high increases and a very satisfying outcome.

As I said in my reflection on episode four, our mind handles and remembers negative experiences much more deeply than positive ones. The power of a setback to increase frustration can be over three times as strong as the power of progress to decrease frustration. “The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement and Creativity at Work” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011). 

In this episode, the production team experienced some setbacks of their own, with a couple of important mistakes made: a first for a fantastic team.  One of the keys to really successful individuals and teams is to understand, acknowledge and to take on board the experience however good or bad they are perceived and move forward with lessons of this quickly. In full and open reflection, experiences which were once perceived negative can often switch into some of the most meaningful lessons of our lives. This certainly occurred and with a “no blame” culture the learning was deeper and richer for all of us.

For those interested there are behind the scenes/funny moments digital clips available at: https://www.xventurefamilychallenge.com/behind-the-scenes

You can watch the XVenture Family TV series on Sundays on The Ten Network at 3.00pm and at 5.00pm on Three www.xventurefamilychallenge.com

#positiveTV #leadership #resilience #emotionalagility #family

Mike Conway is CEO and Founder of XVenture. He is APAC Insider CEO of the Year 2016. He is also the mental resilience and EQ advisor to Sydney FC and Australian National Soccer Team and Hon. Prof. at University of Wollongong; clinical hypnotherapist and psychotherapist, member of the Australasian Neuroscience Society and Member of the International Positive Psychology Association.

To explore and learn more from XVenture about this subject, or any of XVenture's tailored individual, team and organisational programs and content visit: www.xventure.com.au or call 02 9922 1622 or drop in Suite 1, 385- 389 Pacific Highway, Crows Nest, 20265. Feel free to send Mike a LinkedIn message too.