Cultivating Resilience in the Workplace: Strategies That Go Beyond Individual Training
Summary: Workplace resilience has become a hot topic in organizational circles, and for good reason. But here's the thing most training programs miss: resilience isn't just an individual skill. It's something that gets shaped by the environment people work in. In this article, I break down how leaders can approach resilience from an organizational level, not as a replacement for individual training, but as a powerful complement to it. We'll look at how environment shapes behavior, and I'll share a few practical strategies you can implement to help your team bounce back faster when challenges arise.
Why Resilience in the Workplace Matters
In recent years I have grown increasingly interested in the topic of resilience. For our purposes, we could define resilience as the capacity to recover quickly and bounce back from difficulties or hardship.
As a sports fan, you often hear about players who statistically speaking are not that impressive, but somehow teams they are on always seem to win. When describing this kind of individual, you may hear commentators say something about the "intangibles" they bring to the game. You can't quite put your finger on it, but clearly the evidence is there that winning follows that player. I believe there is a similar dynamic in the workplace when it comes to resilience.
What started as a corporate buzzword is now gaining real headway for its research-backed benefits. Studies have shown that workers with high resilience have better outcomes in difficult work environments, including fewer absences, lower likelihood of depression, and greater productivity. Furthermore, research has found a significant negative correlation between workplace resilience and stress, suggesting that higher resilience is associated with substantially lower workplace stress levels.
Some people and organizations just seem to be more resilient than others, and it makes a clear impact on business outcomes. Thus, many leaders and organizations are starting to jump on this wave and push for more resilience training. However, one missing piece I am seeing is that the majority of training out there approaches this subject from a very individualistic perspective. In other words, it focuses on skills and strategies for helping employees improve their own resilience as an individual. Now don't get me wrong, this is valuable, and I even coach on this myself. Yet what people miss is that resilience on a group level involves different principles than on an individual level. Furthermore, the environment one is immersed in can significantly impact the degree to which they can express resilience. Consider the following example.
Environment Shapes Resilience More Than Willpower
In his famous book, Atomic Habits, author James Clear gives us a great example of the importance environment can play in our behaviors. During the Vietnam War, roughly 35% of American soldiers tried heroin while stationed there, and about 20% became addicted. This alarmed U.S. officials, who feared a massive wave of addiction when these soldiers returned home.
However, something surprising happened: when researchers followed up with soldiers after they returned to the United States, only about 5% of them relapsed within a year, and just 12% relapsed within three years. This was dramatically lower than typical relapse rates for heroin addicts, which usually hover around 90%.
Clear uses this example to make the point that environment shapes behavior more than willpower. This has a lot of carry-over to how we should think about resilience. Of course, beating addiction, or simply implementing any new habit, can require a great deal of resilience. Change is often uncomfortable and consumes energy. Furthermore, we tend to also think of resilience as a product of willpower. While there may be some truth there, I would like to suggest that environment also plays a huge role in how resilient someone can be, or not.
This carries profound implications for leaders, in that not only should we be thinking of training the individual resilience of our teams, but also thinking strategically about how we can adjust the environment they work in. Thus, in the following section I have unpacked a few strategies that can help leaders promote greater resilience on an organizational level. These strategies should not be thought of as a replacement for individual training, but rather a complement to it. With that said, let's dive into the strategies.
Organizational Strategies for Building Resilience
1. Promote Agile Decision-Making
This may not be the first thing people think of when they hear the word resilience. However, let's remember that resilience is the capacity to recover quickly and bounce back from hardship. One thing that requires is adaptability. The less capacity you have to bend, the more likely you are to break, and overly rigid systems often create unnecessary strain for many teams. Time and energy wasted through multiple levels of approval and meetings can compound stress as deadlines approach and reduce our mental capacity.
Teams immediately become more resilient when leaders can push authority down the line and empower their teams. The faster and more flexible a team is, the more effectively they can respond to problems. This will increase their confidence in dealing with problems and help preserve their energy.
2. Create Self-Sufficient Teams
Similar to the previous principle, many teams rely far too much on their leader. Not only does this drain leaders, but once again it compounds stress as team members are constantly having to wait on, or follow up with their leader to deal with issues. In addition to this, it robs your team of precious development reps that would grow their confidence and capacity to handle problems.
Whenever a leader can provide their team with training and opportunities to become more self-sufficient, the more resilient they will become. A great example is conflict resolution training. Often a leader has to play the part of mediator in team disputes. However, if we can create a proper system for managing conflict and equip our teams with the tools to settle their own disputes, greater resilience will follow. This can extend to other areas as well, including more effective systems for accessing information and automating tasks.
3. Embrace the Power of Optimism
This is a hard one for many leaders to swallow, because we tend to see optimism as being similar to naivety in the workplace. Many people with great pride will declare, "I am a realist!" Or perhaps even, "I am a pessimist." The truth is we are ALL pessimists as our brains are hardwired for threat detection and response. Yet those who practice greater optimism see immense benefits in business outcomes.
We need to realize that optimism is not irrational confidence. Rather, it is a confidence in our inner resourcefulness and willingness to accept contradictory information to our fears. The truth is, many of the things we worry about never come to pass, yet we never seem to challenge those notions. Realistic optimism acknowledges problems and limitations while also believing that they are temporary and will be overcome. So how does this practically fit into your organization?
It starts with leaders. If a leader is overly negative, it will create a tone amongst the team and cripple their resilience. Thus, prioritize resilience training with your leaders and implement practices that highlight progress and what's going right.
One simple practice I love is called Celebrating the Wins. This can be added as a segment to any of your regular meetings, where each team member shares a personal or professional win from the last couple of weeks.
Another great practice is Thinking Hats. This can also be a portion of meetings where after talking about problems, you tell the team "we are now putting our optimism hat on." From there your team can only talk about what's going right, or what the opportunities are. Encourage them to think completely blue sky. The key here will be also giving them room to talk about problems and their concerns. Otherwise they will be distracted when trying to engage optimism.
Implementation in Your Workplace
Those are a few simple strategies you can implement to improve resilience on a group level. As I said, these are not a replacement for individual resilience skills, as that is very important as well. We need to see these as a complement. Giving your team resilience training, in addition to implementing some higher-level strategies such as these, will go a long way towards promoting a culture of greater resilience in your organization.
Of course, I did not have time today to do a deep dive into these tips. They were more meant to give you a conceptual framework of how you can be thinking of adjusting your environment. However, if you need assistance implementing these strategies in a way that is tailored to your team's needs, I would encourage you to explore leadership coaching.
During our sessions we can take a deep dive into your style of leadership and organizational culture so we can ensure a strategy that fits your goals. Furthermore, I also provide resilience training in a variety of formats so we can approach resilience from multiple levels. If you are interested, go ahead and book a free 30-minute Discovery Call with me to get the process started!
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