As a leader I realized that I had to constantly foster the resilience of my team in order for us to accomplish our foreign policy goals. If I did nothing, the stress of the work naturally eroded the resilience of the team. When resilience was low, we had lots of sick leave, didn’t collaborate because of inter and intra-office conflict, lacked innovation, and were reactive rather than proactive. Low resilience can have a compound effect leading to even lower resilience among staff as morale plummets and employees see no hope for the future.
Great employees move on while
Others get stuck and their performance drops and misconduct increases. Many managers approach this state of low productivity and misconduct with performance management measures, confronting employees and using traditional supervisory tools in an attempt to improve performance and reduce misconduct.
However, if personal or team resilience is low
Supervisory tools will have little impact. Employees may want to improve but cannot. Managers cannot force a group of employees to collaborate ig database and work together as a team. I found that I could improve performance and conduct by focusing on increasing the resilience of team. Here are some pointers for managers who want to foster resilience among their teams: Model good personal resilience: Engage in resilience enhancing activities and talk about it among staff, letting them know why you prioritize these activities.
A manager who works out during
The lunch break or leaves work on time to pursue a hobby to balance the pros and cons communicates to staff that these activities are important. If you don’t email after hours or work while on vacation, your staff won’t either and all of you will be more effective once you’re back at work. Incorporate resilience enhancing activities into the work flow: Start staff meetings by going around the room and asking people to highlight what they are grateful for. Set up a jigsaw puzzle in the office so employees can rest their brains for a few minutes for a quick resilience boost.
Have an inviting lunch room that encourages
Staff to eat lunch together, increasing social connectivity. Treat rich data resilience activities as work: Like training, engaging in resilience enhancing activities is an investment in future productivity. Therefore, managers would benefit from scheduling activities during normal work hours – not in the evenings or weekends. Organize events such as award ceremonies, celebrations of achievements, or volunteer activities.