How to Strengthen Resilience in Yourself and Your Team

Posted on May 20, 2023 by Jennifer Vachon MA , One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.

In today’s complex, uncertain, quickly changing world, resilience is critical. In this article we will explore why it is a superpower and provide specific actions you can take to strengthen resilience for yourself and your team.

Resilience is a combination of skills and behaviors that help people thrive despite setbacks and maintain well-being, relationships, and work performance under stress. Resilience is not just about how we react to adversity or picking ourselves up after a fall. Resilience is also about preventing ourselves from falling in the first place. Simply stated, resilience improves performance. People who are resilient tend to be more engaged, satisfied and committed at work. Increased engagement leads to increased productivity. Resilient teams recover easier from setbacks and adopt change faster.

Developing resilience is particularly important for leaders. When leaders are resilient, there is a positive influence on company culture. Resilient leaders tend to set an optimistic, forward-focused leadership tone and style that trickles down and positively influences employee attitudes, feelings, and behaviors. In addition, when leaders are resilient, they are more likely to be more open. This results in more creative new ideas, problem solving, and encouragement in others.

When working with leaders on building resilience, I often coach people to think of resilience as a mindset and a muscle. As a mindset, resilience impacts how you think about the challenges you face. It’s an attitude of possibility, learning, and growth. When met with an unexpected bump in the road, someone who has developed resilience will be likely to view that bump as a learning opportunity, an interesting challenge to be solved, and something to celebrate once it has been resolved. Someone who is less resilient is more likely to feel discouraged and frustrated and may even give up. As a muscle, our resilience gets stronger the more we use it. Someone who is more resilient knows they can train themselves to be resilient and practices resilience-building behaviors regularly and over time. They practice resilient behaviors when things are going smoothly, which make them easier to continue when adversity strikes.

Since resilience is a combination of skills and behaviors, knowing how to develop it can feel overwhelming. When I coach clients on resilience, we focus on building regular habits to support four specific practices. These practices include managing emotions, self-care, connection, and self-compassion.

1. Learn to Manage Your Emotions

Practice managing your emotions in the heat of the moment (this can be easier said than done). Learn to become aware of your feelings while you are experiencing them. This takes continual practice as you are strengthening your self-awareness muscle. As soon as you notice you are having a reaction, name the feeling. For example, if you are feeling frustrated, say to yourself, “I am feeling frustrated”. It can be surprising, but often just naming the feeling can help you regain composure. That’s because in applying the rational part of your brain to name the emotion, you are in essence putting your rational brain back in the driver’s seat.

Another effective strategy is taking time to step back and create a little distance. Whether it is taking a walk, listening to music, meditating, or even just taking five deep breaths, taking that beat can also help you de-escalate the emotion and make space to re-engage that thinking part of your brain that has been disconnected while you are triggered.

Once you have re-engaged your rational brain and created some space, it’s time to get curious. Ask yourself questions to understand what bothered you, and what triggered the feelings. Ask yourself whether you’ve made any assumptions? Consider where the other person might be coming from. Ask yourself what you needed that you didn’t get in the situation. Ask yourself what you want now.

Finally, broaden your perspective by considering options. When we have a strong emotional reaction to something, it’s likely that we are single tracking and highly focused on one particular “reality” that our emotional mind has created in the moment. Challenge yourself to identify multiple possibilities. Include best case, worst case, and several realistic possibilities that are different from your initial reaction or assumption. This helps you can decide on an action to take that is based on strategic thinking and thoughtful choice instead of an initial emotional reaction.

2. Practice Consistent Self-Care

As we take care for ourselves, we build resilience. As a leader, when you practice self-care, you not only become more resilient yourself, you also model it for others. Cultivate resilience through self-care on your team by showing that you value wellness and self-care in the workplace through in your policies, practices, and day-to-day actions. For example, take walks, stop working to eat, and encourage your team to do the same. Invest in tools such wellness incentives or make apps available to support meditation and learning. Ask what help and support people need so that you understand what they are concerned about and how you can help them become more resilient.

I coach leaders to attend to sleep, nutrition, activity, and stress as a primary method for increasing resilience. Too often – and I speak from personal experience here – busy leaders double down on work and pay the price in health. Working endless hours does not build resilience. It depletes us and makes it more difficult for us to rise up when adversity strikes. Most leaders know what they should do in terms of self-care, but making it a consistent practice is another matter. I encourage my clients to start small, and I show them how to create habits over time, and to set up systems to make self-care as easy and automatic as possible.

3. Foster Social Connection

Maintaining social connection can promote resilience by boosting happiness, reducing stress, and providing a sense of belonging and psychological safety at work. Having someone to talk to can help us manage our emotions. Having someone to help can help us move our focus away from dwelling and toward positive forward-focused action. When working through change or difficult situations, a team that is well connected will be more efficient and productive.

Building and maintaining connections in today’s overloaded, distributed, and constantly changing world of work takes intention and maintenance. Connection is important for resilience at every level in an organization. Leaders can practice connection building with their peers, their direct reports, executives, and customers.

I work with leaders to create a culture of connection in their teams and their organization. Finding and creating opportunities to be open and vulnerable, encouraging authenticity, and asking for and providing feedback are all things that leaders can do to foster connection in the workplace. Informal get-togethers, celebrations, and recognition of success inside and outside of work can also help. Even taking time to smile, to say hello, and to ask a colleague how they are can make a difference.

4. Learn Self-Compassion

If you are like most of the leaders I work with, you are incredibly hard on yourself. You may not realize it because you’ve been that way for so long. There is an automatic voice we all have. A voice that scolds, that judges, that dismisses. Sometimes we call this voice a saboteur, or a gremlin. This voice can get very LOUD sometimes, and often results in feelings of shame and fear and defeat.

When I coach leaders on developing resilience, I help them increase self-awareness so that they can recognize the automatic voices. Once we are aware of the voices we can begin to make choices about how we want to respond. Resilient leaders learn to respond to those voices with love and compassion.

One tip to practice self-compassion is to imagine that whatever you are struggling with is actually happening to a close friend. How would you feel toward your friend? Consider how you might respond, encourage, or support them. Then, apply that reaction to yourself.

When we build a habit of self-compassion, we are more likely to keep a positive, future focused outlook. During times of adversity we are able to maintain a growth mindset and see challenges as learning opportunities.

The great news about resilience is that it is a completely learnable superpower. And we don’t need to wait for something difficult to occur to build resilience. You can take steps today to build resilience. Whether by working with a coach or on your own, you can take steps to help manage emotions, practice self-care, foster connection, and learn self-compassion.