Redefine Your Team’s Effectiveness
See the truth of your team’s resilience and wellbeing and unleash a new way of operating.
Does the idea of measuring the resilience and wellbeing of your team trigger alarm bells? What if undertaking such an exercise opens up a can of worms? As a leader you may choose to ignore the opportunity.
Employee Engagement Data Is Already A Maze!
Measuring how your employees feel about the workplace and its leadership is always one of those ‘gulp’ moments. To make it more palatable, we normally initiate an employee survey only once a year. We take a deep breath before opening the distilled-out, made-to-look-clean report, knowing that the results could reveal some tough home truths. The level of contentedness. The numbers considering leaving. The potential of distrust eating away at the culture.
We choose to ignore some of the deeper truths, the ‘Undiscussables’ as Steve Hearsum1 might describe them, or the ‘Deep Rules’ as Jim Detert2 calls out. In fact, we don’t really ask about these in our survey at all!
We choose to focus on what feels possible to act on. How can we make our pay and benefits more competitive? How can we ensure flexibility? Should we have the Christmas party this year and not cut the budget? We in fact displace our efforts into things we can control, rather than sit with the discomfort of not knowing what the problem really is nor how to fix it.
Given that then, why do I pose the question on measuring team resilience, a complex field touching on people’s attitudes, capacity, personal life and their wellbeing? It might make it worse!
Team Resilience Measures Unlock Team Energy
Measuring resilience and wellbeing in teams is a game changer. The data reveals the team’s actual story of what is going on. It’s both a relief and a reveal for the whole team.
- A relief because the team can all see their story for real, altogether. It’s a super simple process of each individual self-assessing, then the team aggregate results are automatically generated. No-one is exposed in the process.
And with the results there is no blind siding, teams can let go of their masks, and at the same time there is often lots to celebrate. This means that the team recognises where they:
- are nailing it, yay!
- have easy opportunities to optimise unleveraged team factors that would make a real difference to their energy, motivation and capacity. The relief in seeing that the key drivers are all actionable is palpable!
- are not coping so well
- are nailing it, yay!
- A reveal because they can see the practical ways that they themselves can activate to boost their resilience and wellbeing towards Healthy, High Performance.
Measuring resilience and wellbeing changes the whole landscape of how a team feels for the better. It’s all about getting real with the truth. And not getting too embroiled in going too deep too quickly. Resilience and wellbeing are practical matters. You can do a lot to boost them simply:
- Spend time checking in and listening to one another, Being Present to one another
- Finding ways to account for workloads across the team more specifically when some members have less capacity, others have surplus
- Boosting the team’s energy deliberately, including just having a good time, a good laugh
- Finding time to reflect –and if possible, learn- together
The key for the team is seeing clearly where they are today, and accounting for that immediately.
When teams are at Coping, they are just managing – ok for getting through challenging times or churning the day-to-day business, but it’s not the resilient state that will drive change.
When teams need to be really adaptable, pivoting because of multiple issues, their resilience needs to be higher, moving towards Breakthrough.
That needs specific attention. Once teams understand their start point, they can set a clear path for boosting the way ahead. And the path will deliver
- The right way of working to support each individual team member
- Shifting from feeling reactive to feeling proactive
- The team getting on the front foot of driving change and higher productivity
- Feeling on top of the world again, energised, clear and purposeful.
What People Say About Resilience & Wellbeing Measures
Take the global people team in one of the largest global banks who put in place a weekly resilience check- in to both support one another:
“One of the things that we implemented following the sessions and really stuck with us is the regular check-ins across the global team. I send 9 pics each week and ask them to share how they are feeling based on those, and I think it’s really created a connection given we are across 4 different global locations!“
Take the 12% uplift in resilience after just 3 months for a European team in manufacturing, who reported:
“This supportive team communication structure has led to increased confidence and trust among team members, fostering open discussions about deeper challenges and vulnerabilities.“
Take the 20% uplift in Google GE across multi-teams who experienced multiple benefits during their 2-3 year investment in resilience and wellbeing of their global team:
“Since Checkin Checkout (CICO) I feel like I have not had a bad day.”
“How my work made me feel has improved tenfold.”
The Resilience Dynamic Framework
The Resilience Dynamic has been operating in the field of workplace resilience and wellbeing for many years. With our research framework and experience, we know both the measures that count for teams, together with the key strategies for how to get on the journey to Breakthrough.
Each start point is different. Each strategy is different. And once understood, teams can fly!
To get on the journey of seeing your own team’s data:
1. Check your readiness for investing in your team.
2. Consider CICO, the simple first step towards team resilience.
3. Get in touch
Author: Jenny Campbell Founder and CEO of the Resilience Dynamic
Follow Jenny on LinkedIn for more of her thoughts, resilience research, and ideas.
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