Do You Push Your Teams to Bounce Back Faster?

Would we be better off creating systems that do not require constant bouncing back?

Resilience has become one of the most misused words in management speak. Leaders praise teams for pushing through or bouncing back, as if the ability to absorb endless strain were proof of strength. But endurance and resilience are not the same. Endurance is about surviving the extra pressure, not managing it. Resilience is not about how long people can keep enduring. It’s about how intelligent leaders design the course the course of action. Resilience means organizations design environments that prevent people from breaking under strain.

Research has shown that leaders can’t afford to mistake a team’s endurance for resilience.

Many organizations they simply expect employees to endure more, in other words they don’t build resilience. The result is exhaustion or fatigue disguised as dedication. Individuals or teams appear dedicated but are running on vapors. I’ve heard many managers talk about the agility of their team. Unfortunately, what they really are celebrating is overwork from their teams that haven’t yet crumpled.

Endurance is a feel-good scenario, because it looks like progress, at first. When everyone pulls together, the team works late to meet a deadline, an individual improvises through a product or service crisis, or a few workers take on more work during a hiring freeze. A manager may call it resilience, although by repeating the cycle many times, and it becomes the thinking. Staff and teams learn that being reliable means being continually available.

You may be wondering why this mistake happens.

It is because managers have been taught or tend to measure effort or exertion. They see individuals appearing to be coping well and presume that all is well. But the reality is, the more a manager or team-leader relies on brave effort, the more fragile the individuals and teams become. When the same employees keep taking in the stress without true support, the organization quietly drives burnout (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/burnout).

Business leaders who want to build resilience into their individuals or teams need to quit fixing on their people’s capacity to recover. But, instead start focusing on their organization’s capacity to assimilate the strain. Which means changing their attention from motivation to mechanics. This is because this is how work is structured, how proper decisions are made, and how recovery is built in. Here’s what that looks like;

• You need to reward prevention, and punish firefighting.
• Building recovery into the workflow, will help your staff feel respected.
• By spreading the strain across the organization’s structure, you lessen the load.
• Finally, you need to lead with resilience

When managers are working through every weekend or are answering emails at midnight, they are telling and training their teams to do the same. When leadership behavior can visibly show rest, it tells the staff that I am valuing my time and I want you to do the same. Do you want sustainable or justifiable performance? If you show your staff that it is safe to rest or pause research has shown that you will have more sustainable performance over the long-run.

Resilient leadership (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/leadership) is more about creating the conditions in which surviving the extra pressure isn’t always required and less about motivating people to push harder. Endurance feels heroic in the moment, but it’s a warning sign over time.

If you’d like more assistance with this key to your business survival, call me at 519-539-2267.