How to Know if Your Team Has Low Resilience

Team resilience is the capacity of a group of people to respond to change and disruption in a flexible and innovative manner. In the face of adversity, resilient teams maintain their work productivity while minimizing the emotional toll on team members. 

A team’s resilience can vary depending on how well resilience is fostered within the group and the amount of stress, change, and trauma the team is experiencing at any given time.

Teams with high resilience are more innovative, proactive, and collaborative. They are excellent problem solvers and work through conflict. Teams with low resilience struggle to achieve their goals.

Given the stress caused by the coronavirus, your team may be struggling. To get a sense of your team’s resilience, look at the following factors:

Sick Leave

How much sick leave are team members taking? Are most employees exhausting their sick leave? High rates of minor illness may indicate low resilience.

Interoffice Conflict

How well do employees collaborate? Are there simmering feuds among staff? Do employees avoid each other? How much do employees interact in staff meetings? Constant unresolved conflict between staff members may be a sign of low resilience.

Planning

Do employees plan for the future? Are they proactive, anticipating issues, or are they reactive, only responding to daily taskings? Lack of future planning is common when there is low resilience.

Staff Turnover

Is there high turnover among staff? Would employees take a new job even without a promotion or salary increase? High turnover is a red flag for low resilience.

Productivity

Is productivity low? While it can be hard to tell whether productivity is suffering due to lack of staff and resources or low resilience, compare productivity with previous time periods. If productivity is lower than it has been in the past despite no change in staff and resources, it may be caused by low resilience.

Problem-Solving

Are team members overwhelmed by simple problems? Do they get stuck once they hit a barrier? How much innovation do you see among the staff? Teams with low resilience struggle to problem solve.

Morale

Are people generally happy in their jobs? How do they feel at the end of the day? Do they look forward to coming to work? Low morale may be a sign of low resilience.

Reckless Behavior

Are staff members not following the rules or being insubordinate? Is their behavior reckless, with little regard for the impact on themselves or others? Reckless behavior may increase if there is low resilience.

If you find that your team’s resilience is low, check out my blog on the 7Cs of team resilience to learn more about how you can support your team.

What helps you identify whether your team has low resilience?

___________________________

To learn more about how you and your team can thrive in adversity, visit my website, and follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. And, check out my online Resilience Leadership course.

When Your Boss Has Low Resilience

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

I recently consulted with someone who described her boss as very quick to anger, exploding at the staff without warning or reason. She is clingy, insisting that employees join her for social activities and always be available for her to vent. She is moody, rarely sleeps, and her cynicism is harsh and corrosive.

As you can imagine, this behavior negatively impacts the office she supervises. Staff resilience is eroding, and her team is breaking down. Employees are demoralized, and a few people have already quit.

It sounds like this boss had once been impressive, but after years of chronic stress, her resilience was extremely low. She had become toxic. My colleague asked me for advice on what to do. Here's what I suggested:

Speak With Your Boss

If you have a trusting relationship with your boss, consider speaking with her about what you're seeing. Review my blog on how to help someone with low resilience. Your intent must be positive. You have to want to help her eliminate problematic behaviors and be a more effective boss. If your boss isn't open to talking, don't push. Just let her know that you want to help and that you're available if she would like to speak with someone.

Find a Colleague to Help

Look for a colleague who has a trusting relationship with your boss and see if that person will initiate a non-judgmental, well-intentioned conversation. Explain that you don’t want to gossip or complain, but you need someone who can help support your boss through a difficult situation.

Talk to Your Boss's Supervisor

While many of us are reluctant to go around our boss and report problems, this is a time when your boss's supervisor could be a valuable ally. When explaining the situation, focus on the behaviors you've observed and the impact it is having on you. Avoid drawing conclusions or making judgments. You're not complaining about a bad boss; you're helping your boss's supervisor understand that there is problematic behavior harming you. You are seeking assistance in eliminating that behavior. If this sounds scary, it is. If you can bring a group of employees together who can speak from first-hand experience, that sometimes makes it easier and is less likely to be viewed as personal.

Go to HR

If initial efforts to address the problematic behavior are not successful, consider talking to your organization’s HR office. If you have an Ombudsman or Office of the Inspector General, consider getting them involved.

Transfer or Quit

If all else fails, consider asking to be relocated within the organization or quitting. Working for a supervisor with low resilience who is engaging in problematic behavior can harm your resilience and set the team up for failure. There are times when quitting is the best option. If you don't want to leave, look for a short-term detail in another office to get a break. Let people know you're interested in making a lateral move to another position in the organization.

Focus on Your Resilience

If you decide to stay, and efforts to improve your environment fail, commit to keeping your resilience as high as possible. Make your resilience a top priority and do what you can to contribute to your team's resilience. Review this blog on how to survive a toxic work environment.

Have you worked for a boss with low resilience? What has worked for you?

___________________________

To learn more about how you and your team can thrive in adversity, visit my website, and follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. And, check out my online Resilience Leadership course.

How to Help Someone With Low Resilience

The holiday season can be tough on people. With coronavirus, this year is particularly difficult. If you notice that a colleague is struggling, what can you do?

Too many of us do nothing. The worst thing we can do is gossip about the person, trying to figure out what’s going on. Supervisors may confront or discipline an employee for poor performance.

Since low resilience may be causing these changes in behavior, the best thing you can do is talk to the person and find out what is going on.

Many of us are reluctant to delve into a colleague’s personal life. We worry we may infringe on the person's privacy, violate an HR rule, or make matters worse. We also risk becoming too emotionally involved or being manipulated.

Luckily, we can talk to colleagues about resilience in ways that will minimize these risks and manage our fears.

To have a fruitful conversation, your colleague must trust you. That's why it is essential to build trust with colleagues early on. If a colleague doesn't trust you, he may be defensive and suspect you have bad intentions. If there isn't trust, find someone your colleague does trust, and ask him to have the resilience conversation.

If you opt to have the talk yourself, decide ahead of time how much time you can devote to a conversation and find a comfortable environment that allows for privacy. Allow time for your recovery after the conversation in case the discussion ends up being emotional or stressful for you.

When you start the discussion, be clear and direct, describing the behavior changes you’ve been seeing. Show compassion and caring. Communicate that you’re raising this issue because you want to be supportive.

Then, ask open-ended questions. By asking open-ended questions, you're giving control to your colleague to decide how much to tell you. You are not violating a person's privacy if he wants to tell you what is happening. If he doesn't want to talk, let him know that you're okay with that and available to talk later if he changes his mind.

The most important thing you can do is listen. These conversations make many of us nervous, which causes most of us to say more. Fight your desire to speak and instead really listen to what your colleague is saying. If self-disclosure is appropriate, keep your own story short and shift back to your colleague’s story. The focus of the conversation should be on your colleague, not on you.

Most people want to jump into problem-solving much too quickly in these conversations. And, they start telling the person what to do instead of listening to what is going on. Resist the temptation to fix the problem. Instead, after you've spent time hearing the story, ask questions that help your colleague find his way forward. 

Be careful not to make any judgments. For example, telling a colleague that you think he'd benefit from mental healthcare is judging. Instead, use self-disclosure to make suggestions. (When my mother died, I found counseling very beneficial. Where do you think you can get support?) Or, continue to ask questions that help the person reach conclusions. (What do you think is causing this? What have you explored so far?)

Avoid become your colleague's only support or letting these conversations absorb too much of your time. If you feel your colleague is becoming too dependent on you, explain that you cannot provide as much support as he appears to need. Then, offer to help him explore where he can find the help he requires.

These conversations are hard, and it is okay if you make mistakes. Helping colleagues with low resilience is a skill that you'll improve with practice.

Have you talked with a colleague with low resilience? How did it go?

___________________________

To learn more about how you and your team can thrive in adversity, visit my website, and follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

How to Know When Your Resilience is Low

2020 has been a tough year hasn’t it? We are still in the midst of an unprecedented global health crisis. Sharp divisions and social unrest in our communities has many of us on edge. It’s not surprising that many of us are exhausted, worn down, and struggling to keep up with simple tasks and responsibilities.

Resilience helps us thrive despite the adversity we are facing. Resilience is a state of being that can fluctuate depending on the levels of trauma or stress we are experiencing at any given time. It is helpful to know the common characteristics of low resilience and what behaviors you may exhibit when your resilience is slipping, so you know when you should engage in resilience enhancing activities or need to assist others in addressing their resilience.

Not everyone exhibits the same characteristics, which range from mild to severe in nature and can last for varying durations. For example, I have trouble sleeping when my resilience is low and I find myself getting irritable much more quickly than normal. When I see that I'm not sleeping well and am irritable, I prioritize spending time rebuilding my resilience.

Here are some common characteristics of low resilience:

Irritability/Anger

Being quick to anger and irritable is one of the most common characteristics of low resilience and often leads to conflict in the workplace. When my resilience eroded after Iraq, I found myself being more combative with peers and quick to fight about an issue. As I rebuilt my resilience, I became much more patient and collaborative.

Persistent Illness

One of the most frustrating characteristics of low resilience is constant illness. Since our immune systems are depressed when our resilience is low, we cannot fight off the viruses and bacteria that naturally bombard our systems. I normally never get sick, but for two years after I left Iraq, I seemed to catch every bug in the office and had constant stomach ailments. Once I bounced back, I rarely got sick again.

Trouble Sleeping

Trouble sleeping is extremely common among people with low resilience. Many of us focus on how to sleep better without realizing that instead, we need to enhance our resilience. For two years after leaving Iraq, I rarely slept more than 4 hours per night. I thought it was just part of growing old but once I bounced back, I started sleeping much better and when my resilience is high, I sleep great.

Becoming Isolated or Over Clingy

As our resilience diminishes, people can either start to isolate themselves from other people or become too dependent on having family or friends around them. I stopped socializing and making new friends. Unfortunately, by isolating myself, I cut off an important way to enhance my resilience which is to build a social support network.

Moodiness

As resilience decreases, there can be a change in our body's hormones that causes mood swings. We can experience extreme highs and lows, sometimes several times a day.

Overreaction to Normal Stress

When a car cuts us off on the highway, most of us are slightly annoyed. A person with low resilience may overreact and become enraged. Small irritants become major problems.

Easily Depressed/Crying

Some people with low resilience find they feel sad a lot and cry more easily than they used to.

Poor Memory

In the State Department, we often saw this when personnel would study a foreign language after serving in a dangerous overseas posting. They would struggle to learn the new language because of their lack of memory. Once their resilience improved, they found language learning much easier.

Lack of Hope

The most troubling characteristic of low resilience is the lack of hope and a vision for the future. This can sometimes evolve into despair. This makes it hard to plan and problem solve and can manifest as cynicism and a lack of caring. People may also find themselves taking unnecessary risks or engaging in reckless behavior because they just don’t care.

By paying attention to your behavior, you'll soon learn how to tell when your resilience is low. How do you know your resilience is low?

To learn more about building your resilience, check out my other blog posts.

 ___________________________

To learn more about how you and your team can thrive in adversity, visit my website, and follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.