4 Ways That Leaders Can Ramp up the Resilience on Their Teams

Remember that famous Timex slogan? It went like this…”It takes a licking and keeps on ticking!” That is a picture of what resilience is. Resilience is that “bounce back-ability” factor. It’s a person’s capacity for rising from adversity, regaining strength, and ultimately reclaiming (or exceeding) their earlier level of performance. When faced with challenges, setbacks, or failure, highly resilient people find a way to change course, emotionally heal, and move forward toward their goals. Resilience is key to success in both personal and professional life.

During this current era of work, leaders of hybrid teams (and now newly back-to-work teams) are seeing how their people are managing work pressure, handling personal challenges, dealing with the ongoing traumatic news cycle, all while still contributing to organizational goals. But when a team’s resilience is at risk, it brings a prohibitive cost to productivity.

The Mental Health Cost Calculator, developed by the National Safety Council and the National Opinion Research Center, shows that employees with mental distress use, on average, nearly $3,000 more in health care services per year than their peers. Also, per employee, the costs of days lost average $4,783 per year, and the costs of turnover average $5,733 per year.

However, companies that invest in programming that supports employee’s wellbeing and resilience, are experiencing:

• Fewer sick days and absenteeism
• Reduced employee turnover
• Greater rates of customer satisfaction
• Increased productivity
• Higher profitability!

Leaders are in a unique position to help their team members strengthen their resilience.

Here are 4 ways you can begin to build your team’s resilience - for their benefit and for the good of the organization overall:

1. Help them develop a growth mindset. A growth mindset is the belief that our abilities and intelligence can be developed and elevated through effort, a love of learning, and persistence. People with a growth mindset see setbacks as an opportunity to learn and grow. You can help your team members develop a growth mindset by encouraging them to reframe failures and disappointments as teachable moments.
2. Encourage them to take care of themselves. Self-care is essential for supporting emotional resilience. When we take care of ourselves, we’re better able to manage our emotions and cope with stress. Help your team members identify healthy ways to cope with stress and encourage them to make self-care a priority.
3. Show what it means to practice self-compassion. Self-compassion allows us to be patient, kind, and understanding toward ourselves when we’re facing tricky situations. It includes recognizing our own humanity and giving ourselves the same grace, we would give to anyone else. One of the best ways that you can help your team members cultivate self-compassion is by modeling it yourself, especially when things don’t go as planned on a project, you’re involved in.
4. Respect others’ boundaries and to put boundaries in place to protect the critical areas of your own life, too. This means that we need to be mindful of what is important to others and do our best not to interfere with or disregard those matters. For example, if someone has scheduled time on their calendar as “unavailable” or has expressed that certain days or times for meetings won’t work for them due to personal or family commitments, it’s important that we respect their boundaries so that they may honor their responsibilities.

As a leader, you have a responsibility to take care of yourself and your team members. By sharing and modeling these resilience-building strategies you’ll be supporting your team members in their efforts to develop that “bounce back-ability,” which will have a tremendous impact both professionally and personally.

Wellbeing is a thread that runs through all Talking Talent’s coaching and consulting programs. In one such program, our multi-day workshop, “The Power of Resilient YOU,” our clients are seeing phenomenal results as they are learning to:

• Understand the subjectiveness of wellbeing
• Reflect on the power and importance of connection
• Learn resilience strategies
• Build boundaries to protect the pivotal areas of life
• and create a personal wellbeing roadmap

We are ready to support you in helping your workers reduce the risk of overtaxing their psychological, emotional, social, and physical health. Our coaching-led approach can help your employees, managers, and senior leaders to uncover healthy perspectives and take bold steps towards reclaiming their wellbeing.

Ready to ramp up the resilience on your team? Get in touch.