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Building Resilient Teams: The Foundation of Building Effective Teams

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In an era where workplace dynamics are constantly shifting and evolving, resiliency is a crucial skill that helps teams and organizations be successful. When team members have a strong sense of resiliency, they don't just endure challenges, they can emerge stronger and more capable than before. This is why resiliency is one of the skills we have included in our 2025 Building Effective Teams program.

 

Building Effective Teams Program Overview

Culture Coach's Building Effective Teams program offers a systematic approach to team development through twelve essential skills delivered as micro-learning modules. The program addresses four key competency areas: building foundations, strengthening connections, mastering communication, and driving results. Each module includes a brief skill video, educational infographic, and manager implementation guide, allowing organizations to develop sustainable team effectiveness through intentional skill development. The comprehensive curriculum covers critical capabilities from resilience and civility to conflict resolution and collaboration, transforming traditional team building into measurable outcomes through practical skill mastery and daily application.

 

Resilience Training: Developing Strong Teams

As one popular quote about resilience in hard times suggests, "It's not about how many times you fall, but how many times you get back up." This sentiment perfectly captures the essence of resilience and hope in the workplace. When teams face adversity and resilience becomes part of their cultural DNA, they develop a collective strength that drives success.

 

Coping with Change

Part of learning about resiliency is exploring how to cope with change. While we typically view self-initiated change as positive and externally imposed change as negative, we can shift this perspective. Instead of seeing change as something happening to us personally, we can view it as occurring around us, allowing us to see it from a different angle.

Successfully navigating change requires understanding what we control (our attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors), what we influence (our interactions with others), and what lies beyond both our control and influence. We often waste time and energy worrying about things we cannot change. Instead, we should focus on what we can control and pay attention to the stories we tell ourselves. By transforming negative, defeated thought patterns into solution-oriented thinking, we can better navigate the inevitable changes that come with life.


The Development of Optimism

Martin Seligman, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, is the founder of the positive psychology movement. He has spent a lifetime researching how to help people to develop resiliency.  His work shows that there are two distinct thinking patterns that influence how people handle workplace challenges: Pessimistic thinking which is Permanent, Pervasive, Personal (PPP) and optimistic thinking which is Specific, External and Temporary, Specific (SET).


PPP thinking leads to decreased resilience by viewing setbacks as:

  • Permanent: "I'll never succeed at presentations"

  • Pervasive: "I'm bad at everything related to my job"

  • Personal: "It's all my fault this project failed"

 

SET thinking builds resilience by reframing challenges as:

  • Temporary: "This presentation didn't go well, but I can improve"

  • Specific: "I need to work on my public speaking skills"

  • External: "Multiple factors contributed to the project delays"

 

Strategies for Building Resilience

  1. Practice SET thinking: When facing setbacks, consciously evaluate if your thoughts align with PPP patterns. Actively reframe them using the SET model. This can be hard to do when you first get started. By paying attention to your internal dialogue, you can catch when your thinking is turning towards the negative. Stop and ask yourself, how can I frame this in a more positive way? Challenge yourself to focus on finding solutions, not on wallowing in something negative that has happened.

  2. Develop a growth mindset: View challenges as opportunities to learn rather than permanent reflections on your ability. We all learn new things as we go through life. Much of what we learn comes from set-backs or challenges that we have faced. When we see challenges as an opportunity to learn and grow, it is easier to bounce back and to be resilient.

  3. Build strong relationships: Create a support network for perspective-sharing and emotional backing during difficult times. There are times when we all need help. Developing positive relationships outside of work is great. Developing strong professional connections at work is important as well. When you face challenges in the workplace, either on your own, or as part of a team, it is a huge help to have others who are willing to support and guide you as you navigate the challenge that you face.

  4. Manage stress effectively: Regular breaks, exercise, and mindfulness help maintain resilience reserves. We are able to bounce back better when we take short intervals to care for ourselves – both mind and body. This allows us to return to our work with new energy and a problem-solving attitude.

  5. Focus on problem-solving: Break challenges into manageable steps and focus on working your way through each of the steps until you have solved the problem.  When you solve one problem, it will increase your confidence and your ability to solve the next challenge that you face.

 

Resilience and Success: Measuring Impact

The link between resilience and success is well-documented. Teams that invest in developing personal resilience consistently outperform their peers. They show higher levels of engagement, lower turnover rates, and greater adaptability to change, all crucial factors in building effective teams. Organizations benefit from resilient employees through increased innovation, better stress management, and improved adaptation to change. When employees have resiliency, they make better decisions under pressure, they are better at problem solving and they are more engaged. Seligman's research shows that individuals can systematically build resilience through conscious thought pattern modification, making it a learnable skill rather than a fixed trait.

 

Strengthening Resilience with Culture Coach’s Building Effective Teams Program

Remember, building resilient teams is not a one-time effort but an ongoing journey. By investing in resilience training and creating an environment that values perseverance and growth, organizations can develop teams that not only weather storms but emerge stronger from them. Culture Coach’s Building Effective Teams program includes a “Strengthening Resiliency” module for just this reason. This module will help review the topic of resiliency and explore and discuss how team members can apply practices in the workplace that will strengthen their resilience

 

Through focused attention on adversity and resilience, teams learn to adapt, grow, and thrive in any circumstance. This adaptability becomes a competitive advantage in today's challenging business landscape, making resilience an essential component of long-term organizational success.


ABOUT CULTURE COACH INTERNATIONAL:

Culture Coach is a pioneering provider of cutting-edge learning solutions with a twenty-five year track record of excellence in professional development. We design and deliver training on a variety of topics and via multiple modalities, including: instructor-led, virtual, manager-led tools, edugraphics, mobile-first immersive videos. Reach out today to learn more about how we can help you deliver effective, skill-based trainings.

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