In my last post, I wrote about the five characteristics of resilience: positive, focused, flexible, organized, and proactive as they apply to individuals going through change.

Now I’d like to expand the notion of resilience to a larger context. Think about teams going through change. Research shows that under certain circumstances, teams can be more effective than a collection of individuals. How this happens is another topic, synergy, which I will focus on at a later date. For now, I’d like to share our observation that teams can create exceptionally strong and effective responses to change if they can draw on the varied resilience strengths of members. A team in which the least positive person sets the emotional tone for the group, the least organized person creates change-related plans, and the least flexible person leads the brainstorming process will operate very differently than one in which the most positive, flexible, and organized people are taking on these roles. It’s helpful, therefore, for teams to recognize the strengths that various members bring to the table so that people can contribute most effectively.

Some teams can have blind spots—characteristics that are hard for all of the members to apply. For instance, I worked with one team that was collectively very high on the positive characteristic, but very low on the flexible characteristic. The result was a group of individuals who felt very enthusiastic and confident about their own point of view, but were not very open to hearing others’ perspectives. Can you imagine the challenges of a team in which flexible is high but organization is low, or one that is focused, but not positive?

Think about the teams you are part of, or teams you are advising. How effectively is each of the resilience characteristics applied? How well does the team draw on the various members’ strengths? Are there shared resilience blind spots?

Moving beyond teams, we can also think of resilience as a property of organizational systems. The overall leadership of the organizations (its vision, mission, and strategy, and its culture), can both reflect the elements of resilience and support them. For example, imagine a leadership team that focuses all its energy on avoiding danger instead of concentrating on the opportunities and possibilities that exist. Imagine a culture in which failures are punished so effectively that people learn not to try any experiments. The extent to which an organization embodies the different elements of resilience is one aspect of its overall nimbleness—its ability to execute strategically important changes more efficiently and effectively than competitors.

How well do the leaders in your organization model resilience? How effectively does the organization’s culture support resilience?

As I close this resilience series, I’d like to thank a long-time collaborator. When ODR (now Conner Partners) began studying resilience some 20 years ago, one of my thought partners was Dr. Linda Hoopes, who headed up our Research and Diagnostic Services function. She was a key player in developing our tools and training around resilience, and together our work has touched tens of thousands of people. Several years ago, she formed a company, Resilience Alliance, to expand our collective reach beyond Conner Partners clients. Her firm is a strategic alliance of Conner Partners, and I encourage you to learn more about her work.

Next: Sponsors and Agents—Working Together

Go to the beginning of this series.