29.01.2018 Isabel Hempel 5567

Why resilience is important in a team

Everyone is talking about resilience. Not least because health insurance reports are increasingly showing that mental stress at work is on the rise. Ella Gabriele Amann has been working on the topics of resilience and agility since the early 1990s. In this interview, the founder of the ResilienzForum explains why resilient team structures are more important for companies today than ever before and why people are naturally strong crisis managers.

Ms. Amann, what does team resilience mean?

Ella Gabriele Amann: Resilience stands for the ability of managers and their teams to continuously adapt to new requirements and act appropriately in the face of stress, change processes and crises.

Whereas teams used to be more concerned with optimizing economic processes, e.g. streamlining production processes more and more, becoming more effective and efficient, other skills are also required in the service society.

This is because wherever a company is not only concerned with automated processes, but above all with the provision of services, boosting innovation or cushioning crises, cooperation, co-creation and communication are even more important than before. 

Why is the topic so topical right now?

I myself have been working on the topics of agility and resilience since the mid-1990s. At that time, however, the terms were not yet as established as they are today. People tended to talk about dealing with unforeseen changes, change and crisis management.

But even in the mid-1990s, the question was how employees could cope with increasingly rapid change processes and the introduction of new technology. However, the increase in psychological stress only became so significant at the beginning of the 2000s that the first companies began to think about issues such as stress and burnout prevention.

With the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the topic of resilience finally became acceptable in the business world. Studies showed that those companies that had invested in terror prevention and redundant systems (e.g. IT back-ups) suffered the fewest casualties and consequential damage. They were able to recover from the crisis more quickly after the attack, were more flexible and therefore more adaptable and ultimately more stable than other companies. 

What exactly is a crisis?

A crisis often arises when we are confronted with circumstances that we did not expect. One approach is therefore: expect the unpredictable. Organizational researchers Karl E. Weick and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe also published their book "Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty" in 2001. They examined the characteristics of teams that have to deal with potential crisis situations on a daily basis, such as firefighters or nuclear power plant employees.

When dealing with critical and unexpected situations, resilient teams demonstrate a high degree of flexibility and responsiveness and utilize the strengths of all team members. This also means that, in case of doubt, the employee on site decides on the next step and not the line manager, who is often not directly involved in the crisis. An important insight is therefore that when dealing with crises today, it is less about a team's resistance to stress and more about its resilience.

What is the difference between stress resistance and resilience?

Both terms stand for the resilience of a system, but they represent different strategies. If a team is resistant to stress, then the team is virtually insensitive to stress. The stresses are there, but the team is not affected or impacted by them. Here is a simple example:

A team is unexpectedly exposed to a year of unbearable noise and constant distractions from a new construction site across the street. However, the team reacts to this potential stress only insignificantly because care was taken during the construction of their own office building to install windows that are able to screen out potential noise from outside as far as possible. This is good stress prevention. It also means that the team is protected from the cold in winter. In addition, an air conditioning system ensures appropriate temperatures all year round in which it is easy to work.

Let's take a look at the office building next door. The employees there work in a very beautiful old building. There are large rooms and stucco on the ceilings, but unfortunately the old windows still let a lot of the construction noise through. There is also no air conditioning, which means that it is impossible to work productively with the windows open, especially in spring and summer. It's simply too loud.

Developing stress resistance to noise is an almost insurmountable challenge for humans - because the ears are virtually always active and cannot simply be turned up or down. The result: after just a few weeks of construction noise, employees' nerves are frayed. Productivity drops and the entire team's resilience is challenged.

So what would be a resilient approach? The manager and team sit down together and first determine the exact stress situation for each individual in the team.

Who in the team reacts particularly sensitively, who copes better with the noise? What ideas are there for dealing with the stress appropriately? There is no "one solution for all" strategy here, because installing new windows, for example, is out of the question. The team must now demonstrate a high degree of flexibility and adaptability for the duration of the construction work, while at the same time ensuring that work processes remain stable.

The result could be that some employees swap offices. Those who are sensitive to noise move into the offices at the back, while the others move to the front for the duration of the construction work. Two meeting rooms in the well-insulated building next door will be shared on an hourly basis for a year.

In addition, some employees are allowed to work from home on a daily basis. Additional headphones with a noise-canceler function are being purchased for employees in the offices who are particularly affected by noise, etc.

Resilient teams therefore react sensitively and individually to stress. A good feedback and error culture plays a major role here. Weak points are communicated well and people learn to compensate for them creatively and using various strategies. The entire team is required to develop solutions - no longer just the manager.

How can you build resilient team structures in your company?

Resilience stands for a mindset that is characterized by different attitudes and principles than stress resistance. Resilient teams work less hierarchically. Tasks are distributed more situationally and on the basis of individual talents, strengths and gifts. Objectives are more frequently adapted to changing conditions.

In the event of an acute conflict or crisis, other rules also apply. The question is then no longer: "What does the boss think?", but rather: "Who knows the most about the matter and can most easily contribute to solving the problem?". And, depending on the situation, this can sometimes be the intern.

In resilient teamwork, roles and functions are more important than organizational charts and predefined areas of expertise. Because when dealing with the unforeseen and crises, you never know which skills are really required. Roles and functions can also change depending on the project phase and be assigned to different people in the team again and again.

Above all, mistakes are not seen as disruptive factors in this mindset, but are always regarded as normal and helpful - mistakes are the sources of joint learning and innovation processes. But this all sounds easier than it sounds. In practice, resilience as a model for crisis-resilient and agile teamwork is a great learning field.

To what extent does it pay off for companies to invest here?

Resilience as an attitude leads to better crisis management, fewer conflicts in the long term, a better distribution of work, fewer stressors and fewer cases of illness. Talents are promoted more strongly, employee satisfaction leads to less fluctuation, knowledge and experience remain in the company for longer and innovative strength increases. There is also less wear and tear on resources and means of production - all of which has a positive impact.

What role can the pme Familienservice play in the implementation of resilience strategies?

In my view, pme is already very aware of this culture of working. Last but not least, pme can point to corresponding awards as an employer. The employees at pme are also specially trained in the topic of resilience and therefore have a major knowledge advantage over other providers. I also see great added value in the fact that pme is able to establish the major connections between family, education and business in its portfolio.

pme is broadly positioned with its consulting services and interlinks many individual areas that can contribute to the transformation process towards a resilient company. When we look at the resilience of a manager, a team and each individual employee, we must not only focus on the company. The resilience of the family also plays a major role. For example, illness, conflicts or care issues in the family have an impact on work and vice versa. pme's consulting services are broadly based and interlink many individual areas that can contribute to the transformation process towards a resilient company - making it an ideal partner for me to tackle this process and provide long-term support.

Ella Gabriele Amann is co-founder and director of the ResilienzForum. The resilience and agility expert is the developer of resilience circle training based on the Bambus Principle® and co-developer of the SIZE Process Resilience Competence Profile. She is a board member of the international resilience association ores, where she heads the "Resilience training and quality assurance" specialist group.

www.gabriele-amann.de
www.ores.online
http://resilienzforum.com/

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