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5 Ways Leaders Can Create Resilient Company Cultures

With what is going on in the world today, we are definitely living through a time and age that most of us have never experienced before. Given all the chaos and uncertainty over the past few years, resilience plays a huge role in benefiting us not only as leaders but as human beings. Resilient employees experience increased productivity, lower turnover, and have lower health care costs.

So, let’s go over my top five tips that I believe will help you create a resilient company culture.

Tip #1: Unlock Group Wisdom

 

If you want to create a culture that has resilience as one of the cornerstones, one of the  primary illusions that many people have is that the leaders have to have all the answers surrounding resilience. However, this is not the case, and when we allow the company to share its resources, we often have exponential opportunities.

An example of this occurred while we were going through a workshop with various leaders. One of the very first things we was asked them was:

How do YOU define resilience?

Many of them came up with really good definitions, but all of them had their own spin on the common theme of resilience:

Bouncing back strong after an event. 

You as a leader can take the same approach surrounding resilience by asking questions to the group to come up with different variations of what they believe to be true for them.

Another way to unlock group wisdom is by asking your team to think about a time in their life where they thought something was impossible and didn’t know or think they had the strength to make it through.

Once they can identify this time in your life, it is then critical to help them verbalize how they got through that difficult time. This is very helpful because as a leader, if you can help open up their mind and show that they have experience with resiliency and have shown examples of it in the past, they can take that successful method and implement it in future situations.

Tip #2: Create Ways for Employees to Share Their Strengths

 

A hot topic right now in the world of successful leadership and organizational development is allowing employees to work within their strengths. Part of the reason why it’s such a trending theme is because it works! It’s a data supportive initiative, meaning that when people hone into their strengths and are able to work within them, it generates exponential results. This includes 16% higher employee engagement, 10% increase in performance as well as 53% lower attrition.

How to Get Employees to Share Their Strengths

So the question ultimately becomes – how exactly as leaders do we get others in a company culture to share their strengths? You can achieve this by the following examples:

  • Meetings where the sole focus is to share strengths
  • Implementing a technology or internal platform which show a list of strengths
  • Facilitating specific training exercises around journaling and sharing them with the group

Whichever way you choose to implement it in your organization, it serves a dual purpose. Firstly, it allows people to understand their own strengths, creating a more resilient mindset. Secondly, it brings forth the strengths that are available within the organization which they might rely on.  Resilience can be a complex topic because it draws upon strength and vulnerability simultaneously.

Tip #3: Create Conditions for Vulnerability

When people feel comfortable being vulnerable within a team or organization, it gives them a sense of confidence and resilience. The opposite of this is alternatively true as well because when people feel like they aren’t able to be vulnerable or show up to a team as their true selves, they sometimes may doubt what they are capable of. In this case, their resilience goes down.

Some examples on how you as a leader can create conditions for vulnerability:

  • Create more opportunities for deep connections where people can share and learn about each other.
  • Create a work life around Daniel Pink’s three elements of intrinsic motivation
    • Autonomy
    • Purpose
    • Mastery
  • Use the CHANGES Cards question deck to help understand not only ourselves but each other 

Tip #4: Challenge Employees to Work Hard Within Good Boundaries

The challenge around working hard can create discipline and confidence. If people are challenged to word hard, it might give them the confidence that they are able to accomplish more than they thought they would be able to. In that regard, challenging others can be beneficial. However, this idea is a double-edged sword because you want to be able to hold the fine line of good boundaries. This is because you don’t want to challenge others to work 70+ hours a week due to it having the opposite effect. Doing this can create a less resilient culture because of the burnout.

This is where we need to find a balance between the two. Challenge others to go a little further than they are capable of going while still prioritizing self care.

A question you can ask yourself in order to make sure you are challenging other properly:

Are my expectations congruent with the culture I want to create?

Tip #5: Create an Environment of Radical Responsibility

My final tip for leaders who want to create a resilient company culture is to implement an environment of radical responsibility. This refers to the idea that there is always an opportunity for learning and improving. This idea at its core is very synonymous with many resilient cultures. It requires the development of an organizational culture that encourages trust, accountability, and flexibility.

A really good example of implementation of radical responsibility is when every time you meet, you debrief something that happened using a 3 step process.

The 3 step debrief process includes:

  • Step 1 – What are the wins in the process and what did we do really well?
  • Step 2 – How did I grow or evolve through the process or challenge
  • Step 3 – How did WE grow or evolve through the process or challenge.

If you found this article interesting and want to learn more, feel free to watch the video version of 5 Ways Leaders Can Create Resilient Company Cultures. 

As usual, schedule a time to connect if you have any questions.

Be well,

Michael

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