Building Resilience for You and Your Team
Welcome!
I’m Susan. I help leaders and organizations increase their impact, confidence, and results through coaching and unique people strategies and programs that wow employees and boost business!
Burnout won’t go away once the pandemic is gone, so we must all learn ways to boost our resilience for the long-run. And for those leaders among us who are used to powering through and rarely, if ever, taking the time to refill our tanks, we need to shift our mindset. We need to recognize these tips as ways of making ourselves a more efficient leader by putting our own wellness first and adopt a “do no harm” mentality towards our team.
Increasing your resilience takes time and intentionality. There are four core components—connection, wellness, healthy thinking, and meaning.
1. Connection
How much you put into cultivating connections will determine your long-term success and satisfaction.
Stay connected with sources of support and seek new support groups as needed.
Talk about what you’re going through with peers and family.
2. Wellness
It’s important to take care of yourself first and be your own well-being officer. This is important not only so you are ready and able to lead your team, but that you model the behavior you want your team to follow.
Focus on holistic health management: physical, mental & emotional
Test drive your wellness resources from company benefits.
Know what your priorities and non-negotiables are.
Schedule wellness activities (workout, bedtime, etc.) on your calendar.
Involve others in your wellbeing journey for support & accountability.
Allow for failure and revisit goals regularly; adjust as needed.
3. Healthy Thinking
Promote a belief in your ability to cope with current and new challenges.
Activate positive emotion.
Promote an approach of survivorship – keep things in perspective, accept change & maintain a hopeful outlook.
Find joy and gratitude daily--be specific and thank others.
4. Meaning
Seek meaning at both work and home.
Be helpful to others. Helping others promotes a sense of well-being.
While we can work on increasing our resilience individually, it’s equally important for leaders to make sure they are fostering a work environment that supports their team’s resilience as well.
As a leader, you must recognize and deal with the collective grief your employees may be (and likely are) feeling. As a manager, you can exhibit presence, patience, and hope with your team. It is important that you resist the psychology of the powerless and demonstrate those areas you and your team still can control.
Tips to build resilience within and across your team:
Foster a sense of belonging among workers and within your organization.
Build and reinforce positive, interactive relationships. This can be tricky while many of us are working remotely, but not impossible. (More ideas to come on this in a future blog.)
Create meaning through work. 20% rule – research shows when you spend up to 20% of your time in work that’s most meaningful to you, burnout rates are half of those who don’t.
Enable an internal locus of control.
Support autonomy and flexibility. This will look different for each of your team members, so be sure to discuss with them what this looks like for them and what they need. Listen to learn versus giving advice.
Create opportunities for growth and development.
Be resilient, transparent, empathetic, and authentic (yourself).
Consistently lead from your heart, as well as your head.
Communicate openly and regularly with your team, fostering 2-way dialogue in a psychologically safe environment.
Empathy is humble curiosity. Use phrases like,”help me understand”, “tell me more”, “I never thought about it that way”.
Start having conversations about resilience before it becomes critical.
Discuss adversity and how they do or can overcome it. Share past success stories to remind them it is possible.
And finally, here’s a quick strategy you and your employees can use to wind down each day. It will boost your sense of accomplishment, readiness for the day to come, and spread goodwill across your team, making you all the more resilient!
3-2-1 way to end your day
Take 6 mins at the end of each day to reflect/write:
3 minutes: jot down all the things you accomplished that day.
2 minutes: capture your 1-2 intentions for the following day.
1 minute: identify someone you want to thank (and thank them).
If you would like support in increasing your or your team’s resilience so you can thrive and not just survive in the coming year, I would be honored to help you. Schedule your complimentary strategy session with me.
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Colleen McCreary’s recent LinkedIn post caught my attention. It highlighted a recent quote from Jennifer Aniston where she succinctly captured the essence of a pervasive challenge that many individuals, particularly women, face in the professional world: the struggle to assertively ask for what they want and deserve.
Aniston stated, "There was a time in my world, my career, where I realized it's not being aggressive or combative or bitchy or emotional to stand up for what you deserve and what you want. It's a tough muscle to build. And also be loved and respected. It's hard to achieve."