“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are the ocean.” – Ryunosuke Satoro

Contrary to what some may think, creating resilient teams is not a hiring problem. It’s a culture problem. This is because resilient people do not make resilient teams.

Wait, what? Let me say that one more time: resilient people do not make resilient teams.

What does this mean exactly? It means two things: First, having resilient people on a team will not guarantee that the team itself will be resilient. Second, the absence of resilient people on a team does not preclude the team itself from being resilient.

Resilient individuals may not necessarily behave in ways that help the team to which they belong properly anticipate, cope with, and adapt to threats to the collective group, even if they are adept at doing these things for themselves. For example, at its very extreme, you could imagine a highly resilient individual who abandons his team at a time of need to protect himself. The person is saved; the team is not.

If it’s not the people, what then makes teams resilient? What is the missing ingredient?

• Goals that are clear and that unify individual interests. Part of what makes teams brittle are the small ‘s’ stressors they deal with every day. These aren’t major calamities, but rather chronic issues like a lack of clarity on team goals, which cause anxiety due to needless ambiguity. Resilient teams have clear and broadly understood goals that unify a team’s members in their pursuits both day-to-day as well as during times of adversity.

• Codified principles that guide behavior in good times and bad. Different teams do this in different ways. Some options include statements of team values, decision-making tenets, and standard operating procedures. Goals unify teams around the what; principles unify teams around the how.

• Team-level habits of a learning organism. A learning organism is an organism that adapts dynamically to changes in the environment in which it operates. In biology, often these learnings become an encoded part of their genetic make up and thus persist over time. Resilient teams are the same: not only do they learn, they are always learning, they learn quickly, and what they learn becomes a part of who they are.

• Open and honest channels of communication. John Gottman, an American psychologist who spent decades studying martial relationships, said he could predict the likelihood of divorce by simply studying how couples talk to each other. Similarly, the resilience of a team depends heavily on the quality of its channels of communication. Are team members honest with each other? Is expertise prioritized or does rank and seniority matter more? Is bad news communicated early, often, and with openness?

• A culture of calm under pressure. Mirror neurons cause the vagal response of one individual to affect the vagal response of another during times of adversity. Or, said more simply, panic is contagious. It is important, therefore, for teams to practice responding calmly under pressure. Life is full of ups and downs. Take advantage of these minor panics and use them as ‘fire drills’ to help teams prepare for the real high-pressure events if and when they occur.

Team resilience rests not on the resilience of the individual person; rather, it rests on the resilience of the interpersonal interactions across these individuals. The more team members are goal aligned, operate under a common set of principles of good behavior, learn quickly, adaptively and well together, have honest and open channels of communication, and maintain calm under pressure, the more resilient a team is.

As it turns out, in nature, this phenomenon of making something strong out of ingredients that are individually weak is common. Consider hydrogen bonds, which are individually weak, but strong in the way they combine to form water. Or, concrete which is easily pulled apart but incredibly strong when compressed. The secret, of course, lies in the way in which the individual pieces are combined to make the whole.

As you reflect on your team, how would you describe the goals, principles, and culture that make your team more than the sum of its parts?

Photo credit: Hannah Busing on Unsplash

References

Alliger, G. M., Cerasoli, C. P., Tannenbaum, S. I., & Vessey, W. B. (2015). Team resilience: How teams flourish under pressure. Organizational Dynamics, 44(3), 176-184.

Carrère, S., & Gottman, J. M. (1999). Predicting divorce among newlyweds from the first three minutes of a marital conflict discussion. Family process, 38(3), 293-301.

Chapman, M. T., Lines, R. L. J., Crane, M., Ducker, K. J., Ntoumanis, N., Peeling, P., Parker, S. K., Quested, E., Temby, P., Thøgersen-Ntoumani, C., & Gucciardi, D. F. (2020). Team resilience: A scoping review of conceptual and empirical work. Work & Stress, 34(1), 57–81.

Stoverink, A. C., Kirkman, B. L., Mistry, S., & Rosen, B. (2020). Bouncing back together: Toward a theoretical model of work team resilience. Academy of management review, 45(2), 395-422.