Log In

Leadership Academy

Leadership and Resilience

For a Team's Ups and Downs

academy

Resilience is a fundamental characteristic of high-performing teams. In this course, you’ll learn to build a team that is capable of rebounding from setbacks, recognize the role resilience plays in generating engagement, and foster psychological safety.

In this course we’ll talk about how to create a team environment that encourages resilience as way to respond to challenges. We’ll discuss how to create a team environment that encourages psychological safety and the role resilience plays in producing engagement. You’ll also learn about the “Forest Fire” strategy that promotes recovery or regeneration after failure as a resilience-building tool for teams.

Lesson 1

INTRODUCTION

course objectives

Create a team environment that encourages resilience as a mechanism for a team member’s response to a challenge.
Create a team environment that encourages psychological safety as a mechanism for an individual’s response to a challenge.
Recognize the role resilience plays in producing engagement.
Identify the “Forest Fire” strategy to promote recovery or regeneration as a resilience tool for teams.

Learning Objectives

In an organization, the unexpected happens more often than we would like it to. Team that are able to meet those challenges with resilience are typically high-performing teams.

Other attributes that typify resilient teams include courage, fortitude, heart, and grit. How well does your team rebound when encountering the unexpected?

Wrestling With Resilience

Neither a “push” nor “pull” strategy works in isolation. The best leaders find balance between the two. A team’s resilience is a direct reflection of how they’re led.

reflection activity

Push and Pull

We all have our own experiences with learning through push and pull methods. Reflect on yours as you answer the following questions.

Activity: Push and Pull

Email

(Optional) Only used to send you your response.

Think about a skill you were taught in the past. Name the skill and the teacher in the blanks below. Then reflect on approaches to teaching as you answer the questions below.

As a child, I was taught to:

by whom:

Identify their Push / Pull style and select one of the options below.

My teacher primarily used PUSH to teach me.

My teacher primarily used PULL to teach me.

What were the consequences, both good and bad, of this approach?

Now consider how your team would describe your leadership style and select one of the following.

They'd say I primarily use a PUSH style.
I push my team to stretch their capabilities, take on aggressive goals, and drive themselves hard.

They’d say I primarily use a PULL style.
I understand that safety and culture make a team achieve great results.

They'd say I balance PUSH / PULL.
I’ve always been good at pushing my team’s resilience when necessary and pulling toward safety when required.

What are the consequences, both good and bad, of how your team views your leadership style?

Name

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Lesson 2

Resilience in the Orient Pillar

Psychological Safety and Performance

Leaders looking to build team resilience must provide a high degree of psychological safety to fuel performance. Your job as a leader is to orient to a balanced perspective—“pushing” for efficiency and “pulling” with psychological safety to build team resilience. And a resilient team is an engaged team, which is the most important attribute a leader can build in their workforce.

reflection activity

Psychological Safety

Creating psychological safety within a team requires consistent and conscious effort. Consider how you will make that effort.

Activity: Psychological Safety

Lesson 3

Resilience in the Assemble Pillar

Scarcity and Innovation

Mitigate the trauma of hardship by assembling an environment that supports risk-free sharing, growth, regeneration, and innovation.

As a leader, provide enough constraints to foster innovation without losing the psychological safety that lifts resilience to its true potential.

reflection activity

Assemble Exercise

Too much access to resources can hamper a team’s resilience. Consider your team’s access to resources as you answer the questions below.

Activity: Assemble Exercise

Lesson 4

Resilience in the Act Pillar

Shackleton’s Vision

Setting and maintaining a clear vision is critical for team resilience. The true story of Ernest Shackleton and his crew can teach us much about building resilience, even in life-threatening circumstances.

reflection activity

Vision

How would you describe your vision for your team? Is it enough to help you overcome difficult obstacles? Will it help your team be resilient? Consider your vision for a current and significant project as you answer the following questions.

Activity: Vision

Email

(Optional) Only used to send you your response.

Consider your vision as you answer the following questions.

In the space below, write your 30 second or less “elevator pitch” for the vision you have for your team for a current and significant project.

Next, commit to three things you can do to help share your vision with your team. Include a “by when” date to hold yourself accountable.

Comments

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Lesson 5

Resilience in the Achieve Pillar

Recovering from the Ashes

After a fire, the forest begins a process of recovery and regeneration. A forest is in recovery when the mix of trees, shrubs, grasses, and other plant life return in a similar type and mix to what was previously there.

Regeneration describes when a new plant species replaces the ones that were there. A team can at times benefit from old habits, paradigms, and ways of working being replaced by something more adapted and resilient.

reflection activity

Recovery and Regeneration

The nature of your work and industry may make fires a rarity or completely predictable. Either way, you can build forest-like resiliency in your team by constructing a strategy for looking past the fire and embracing the growth and renewal opportunities that follow.

Activity: Recovery and Regeneration

Email

(Optional) Only used to send you your response.

Consider a “fire” you are currently experiencing, see looming in the distance, or can reasonably predict might happen as you answer the questions below.

When the blaze is over, you have the following possible growth strategies.

Recovery. The damage was significant, and people are hurting. I’ll need to express empathy to those who remain, give them time to heal, and provide the assurance of new growth so they don’t get mired in negative emotions and can get back to where we were.
Regeneration. Despite the initial shock, the fire has consumed many of the things that were holding the team back or keeping us stuck in the status quo. As a leader, my job is to help those remaining to transition as quickly as possible to a vision that can include new ways of thinking, doing, and working together.

What is the “fire” that you are experiencing or anticipate in the future?

Which growth strategy, recovery or regeneration, will work best?

Recovery

Regeneration

How will you implement your recovery or regeneration strategy? Be specific.

Name

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Lesson 6

Conclusion

Summary of Resilience

High performing teams are, by nature, resilient teams. Resilience, like the most valuable skills, takes time to develop.

As a leader, whether or not your team begins that journey depends on your ability to champion it, model it, and make resilience a fundamental part of your team’s culture.

We care deeply about helping you live your best life.

So much so, that I want to give you a free copy of my most recent book, Spiritual Resonance, to help you fully discover yourself and live authentically.

We’ve also created an assessment to help you discover your Identity, and have trained AI to understand and talk to you about your specific results!

Rusty Lindquist

Author, Founder, CEO Life Engineering

Responses

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.