Build Your Team’s Resilience - From Home

Build Your Team’s Resilience - From Home

by David Sluss and Edward Powley - April 14, 2020

To make it through the current crisis and return to a new normal, you and your team will need to be resilient. The good news is that leaders can help create the conditions that make this possible. We’ve done multiple studies with U.S. Navy recruits that show how this can best be done - and, recently, in studying how leaders are responding to the crisis, we’ve come across valuable stories of how they can achieve this even when team members are working remotely. The key is to focus on two things: people and perspective.

People: Know your team’s resilience factors

Three “protective or facilitative factors” (as psychologists call them) predict whether people will have resilience: high levels of confidence in their abilities, disciplined routines for their work, and social and family support. Ideally, you’ll already have a good sense of how your team members stack up on these - especially the first two. But some factors may be weakened during this crisis. One of the first things you can do is establish a “resilience inventory dashboard,” by checking in individually with your reports and asking directly how comfortable they feel telecommuting, how they plan to schedule their work days, and how you might support them with any life or family commitments. To address such commitments, the managing partner at one law firm recently went to all the lawyers at the firm one-by-one to ask about their situations, and asked particularly if they needed to take care of any elderly or at-risk people. Then he redistributed caseloads and paralegal support to help out those who were in danger of being overwhelmed.

The many new challenges your reports are facing may shake their confidence, but you can boost it by actively conveying your faith in them. One mechanical engineer who was doubting her ability to telework told us how much it helped her confidence to have her manager simply tell her that he respected the decisions she made and the work she produced, and that any mistakes she made would just be tools for improvement.

Doing their jobs from home will probably require new routines and test your people’s ability to focus. Think about how you can help your team adjust. One loan-processing manager called for more-frequent quality checks while his reports were getting used to working remotely, for instance. Though that may seem like micromanaging, an underwriter on the team told us it reassured him and helped his group “slow down and not rush” despite being under extreme pressure. Leaders might also suggest time-blocking and other personal productivity strategies to encourage disciplined work habits.

Leaders can also strengthen their teams by displaying compassion. We’ve seen thoughtful managers do this by giving their reports their time, showing concern, helping them get the office equipment and supplies they need to do their jobs at home, and by making special accommodations for individuals who are at high risk because they have underlying health conditions like diabetes. It’s especially important to demonstrate that you genuinely care about your team as not just employees but people. Before broader organizational work-at-home mandates were implemented during the COVID-19 outbreak, a manager at a large oil and gas company proactively got permission from upper management to have her team telework and discussed the transition plan with each team member. One of her reports, highlighting the manager’s personal concern for each individual, said that her actions helped him feel “like a vital, contributing member of our company.”

If your people rate high on the resilience factors, that’s great, but you can’t assume they’re out of danger. Very resilient people are geared toward action and what they can control, and as result they may “panic-work” and burn out during times of crisis. You will need to take measures to maintain their resilience, too. Try to focus their energy on strategic initiatives.

People: Foster resilience-oriented conversations

A large body of research shows that the most effective way to increase resilience at work is through customized individual coaching. The results from a field experiment we did with approximately 400 U.S. Navy recruits in 2015 also point to its power. In it we asked recruits to rate their resilience at the beginning of boot camp and then (midway through the boot camp) had half of them take part in a one-on-one peer coaching session - what we called a “guided conversation” - while the other half were left to their own devices. In the guided conversations, recruits were asked to share positive experiences, compare challenges and how they were dealing with them, and imagine their future as navy sailors. The recruits who had these conversations saw a highly significant 20% increase in resilience, while the control group saw a change of less than 1%.

As a manager, you might have guided conversations with each direct report yourself, but these can be time-consuming, and the power differential between you and your reports may make these discussions lopsided. So we recommend encouraging your team members to have guided conversations among themselves on a regular basis. You might go as far as assigning pairs and requiring scheduled video chats. Similar to the recruits in our study, your team members can discuss successful experiences, problems and how they’re tackling them, and what they’ve learned during the crisis that they can still apply when things get back to normal. This last step, we believe, is essential. People need to be reminded that things will stabilize - and envision who they will be after the adversity has passed.

Perspective: Ask questions

Neuroscience suggests that the fear and anxiety we experience because of COVID-19 will naturally narrow our ability to see our future and envision creative solutions to our problems. But there are questions leaders can ask to counter this effect.

First, you can help your team members face down reality. Accepting things as they are is key to building resilience. As Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was held captive during the Vietnam war, famously noted, the optimists among his fellow prisoners (those who expected to be rescued quickly) didn’t survive: “I think they all died of broken hearts.” So ask your direct reports what plans they have in place for working remotely longer than anticipated. While they might not feel comfortable thinking about such things, they will weather the crisis better if you help them plan constructively.

You can also remind people that they can rely on and collaborate with others. Ask them, Who on your team or within your organization or within your network might be able to help you? There is power in reminding them they’re not alone, and in building a network of support during adversity. (The colleagues lending a hand will benefit as well, because helping others is one of the things that increases people’s resilience, psychologists believe.)

Perspective: Find learning opportunities

In a different longitudinal study, involving about 200 U.S. Navy recruits during training in 2015, we found that when the recruits viewed their unsuccessful experiences as learning opportunities - rather than a string of failures - it also built their resilience. In his book Crucibles of Leadership Robert J. Thomas described an approach he called “reframing the tension”: focusing the learning opportunities lying within the adversity rather than despite the adversity. That’s what college professors are doing today. Denied the ability to teach in the classroom, they’re quickly becoming experts at online instruction and learning. Is it possible that after this crisis universities will be more ready and able to take entire degree programs online while still maintaining high quality?

Another thing you can do is help your direct reports recognize special talents or skills that might be especially useful during the crisis. For example, as your team moves to telecommuting, do you have a particular member who is superb at dealing with distraction? You could have that person provide virtual training to the others. As each member sees how his or her special skills contribute to the good of the team, the group’s confidence and social support will grow.

Resilient teams will learn how to improvise in these new modes of working together. Since that will require constant adjustments, we recommend that you borrow from agile processes and have a daily virtual “standup” meeting. However, we suggest you focus not only on tasks but also on relationships: Use the meeting to increase the team’s sense of connection. For instance, you might share ideas about team hand-offs and how to ensure that they don’t become drop-offs. You can lead discussions on how well things are working, what processes can be improved, and the like. Highlighting what the team is learning during the adversity will collectively strengthen it in all three critical protective factors: confidence, disciplined routines, and support.

Any crisis is also an opportunity to build resilience among your reports. If you successfully implement the tactics we offer here, you just may find that they not only bounce back from these difficult times but emerge much stronger as people and as a team.

David M. Sluss is an associate professor of organizational behavior at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business. Through his research and teaching, he strives to help leaders create personalized and productive relationships at work. Follow him on LinkedIn.

Edward H. Powley is an associate professor of management in the Graduate School of Defense Management at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California.