The Power of Resilient Teams
Why do I focus on resilience or the ability to bounce back after a stressful situation? And why specifically do I like to focus on a team’s ability to bounce back?
After working in corporate America for decades as a project and change manager, one thing I’ve seen is a whole lot of stressed out teams. If you think about what a project manager does, it’s all about coordinating, organizing and helping the team understand the mission to get stuff done.
In today’s workplace, that mission or scope on what needs to get done can often change overnight. When those changes happen, the challenge is not letting it negatively impact the team’s morale or capacity to deliver.
That’s where resilience comes in.
Resilience is one’s ability to bounce back after a difficult situation.
In my career, I’ve seen plenty of difficult situations: layoffs, projects suddenly losing funding, timelines being cut in half, or clients redirecting after the team has already done the work. These can feel like gut punches, especially if the team has been working long hours only to be told the project is going on a shelf, or if layoffs suddenly remove half the team. Sometimes it’s as simple (and as stressful) as the main tool being used by the team has been bought out by another company, forcing them to learn a new system overnight (this just happened to me and my team!).
These interruptions aren’t just logistical. They take an emotional hit on the team. Morale drops. Suddenly people want to go to happy hours every day after work just to vent. Negativity creeps in. Even a high-performing team can slip backward into the storming phase of Tuckman’s Model. Suddenly everyone on the team is arguing about roles, resisting new processes, or feeling overwhelmed.
That’s life.
But it’s also when we need resilience the most.
Teams are made of humans, not robots. And one person can become the strength for the whole group. One person can shepherd the team away from negativity, allow a little venting, and then say, “Okay, what are we going to do now?”
That cheerleading role matters.
Sometimes, it’s the difference between spiraling downward or bouncing back.
As a Scrum Master, I saw this firsthand. My role wasn’t just making sure the team had tools, access, and systems. It was also about being that cheerleader.
One negative voice can drag a team down, but one positive voice can pull everyone up.
That’s why I found HeartMath®’s work on team resilience to be so compelling. I originally discovered HeartMath® during my own journey of building up what’s called the window of tolerance. This is your nervous system’s range for handling stress without shutting down or defaulting into fight, flight, or freeze.
The wider your window, the more you can face challenges without breaking.
I started learning about my own window of tolerance back in 2012 and brought those practices to my project teams. And it worked. Later, I learned about HeartMath®’s team resilience training for practitioners and I signed up. Now I bring that training into my client work.
And here’s what I’ve learned about the power of resilient teams…
Resilient teams transform challenges into opportunities for growth. When a group learns how to adapt to these moments of change and challenges together, the uncertainty becomes a training ground for trust and innovation.
As humans, your team can’t avoid stress and challenges. That’s impossible. But your team can develop the collective strength to move through it without losing momentum. A team that knows how to bend without breaking is a team that can face change, disruption, and even failure and still come out stronger on the other side.
To learn more about how Nimble Up helps individuals and teams build resilience by using HeartMath® tools, visit this page or schedule a free call with me. As a HeartMath® instructor and trainer, I can recommend resources and workshop that would best fit your team’s unique needs.