Coaching Resilience: How to lead your Team towards Resilience
By guest author Cheryl Mongelard
Nadja’s thoughts
In an ever changing world where uncertainty and facing challenges is the norm, individual and team resilience are key factors for success. As a leader you play a critical role to foster resilience. You do this through role modelling resilience demonstrated through your own actions and mindset, transparency, empowerment and vulnerability; and creating a supportive and safe environment. The leader as the “firefighter” in crisis who will come to the rescue doesn’t work (anymore … or maybe never did) and can even be counterproductive and damage individual and team’s resilience - as a key for building and strengthening resilience is to be able to bounce back and overcome adversity. In her guest blog, Cheryl outlines how leaders can lead and coach their teams towards resilience.
Imagine this…
During the development of a high-profile piece of work, the proverbial has hit the fan. Your team has just encountered a significant setback in a project deliverable. The full impact is still unclear, and it’s quite possible that after months of hard work, the whole initiative could be completely derailed. You call a team meeting, and the atmosphere is tense. Some team members look worried, others defensive, and the air is filled with what’s not being said.
What happens next?
As a leader, the words you choose and how you guide your team through this can either elevate their resilience or amplify feelings of uncertainty, blame, and learned helplessness.
What Exactly Is Team Resilience?
In short, team resilience is a group’s ability to adapt, recover, and thrive in the face of challenges, change, and setbacks. It’s their ability to ‘bounce back,’ keep their eye on the prize, and persevere. True team resilience goes beyond individual effort—it’s about working as one.
For a team to be truly resilient, they need to be:
Motivated and engaged,
Confident in their ability to succeed,
Secure in the knowledge that they have each other’s backs.
Team resilience is crucial because most of our work is complex and isn’t executed by individuals alone. It requires teams pooling their skills, resources, and knowledge. How well they handle setbacks directly impacts productivity, morale, and long-term success. In other words, resilience is a sign of strong leadership—or a lack thereof.
Your Role: Leading and Coaching for Resilience
Gone are the days when leaders could position themselves above the team, demanding answers, or attempt to swoop in and save the day. Effective leadership is about coaching and guiding your team through challenges. And it’s the perfect opportunity to build upon team resilience.
How to Lead the Way
In moments of crisis, how you express yourself matters. Your team is looking to you for cues on how to react. Often, we’re unaware of how our own thoughts shape reality—this is where empathetic and persuasive leadership plays a crucial role. Your words and actions set the tone for how the team perceives and responds to the situation.
Here’s how to lead with resilience:
1. Demonstrate Resilience in Your Own Leadership
Stay composed under pressure and maintain a positive yet realistic outlook. Your ability to manage stress and uncertainty will directly influence your team’s confidence in overcoming the challenge.
2. Start with the Facts
When leading the meeting, begin by identifying what happened and how. Keeping the team grounded in reality prevents assumptions and emotional reactions from taking over.
3. Avoid Catastrophizing
Encourage your team to think realistically about the worst-case scenario and then make a plan. A great response when someone panics is: “Great, let’s prepare for that.” This keeps the conversation solution-focused rather than fear-driven.
4. Foster a No-Blame Culture
Stop the ‘blame game’ before it starts. Blame creates fear, reduces innovation, and kills motivation. Instead, encourage the team to take collective responsibility and focus on solutions.
5. Collaborate on Solutions
Empower your team by brainstorming practical solutions together. This not only taps into the collective intelligence of the group but also reinforces their sense of ownership over the outcome.
6. Encourage Proactive Problem-Solving
Rather than assigning tasks, prompt team members to step up and take ownership. This reinforces a proactive, solution-oriented mindset.
7. Empower Your Team
Your goal is to instil an unquestionable sense of capability and resilience in your team. They need to know that you believe in their ability to navigate challenges together. If certain aspects require additional resources or escalation and you are key to that, great—step in as needed. But remember, you’re not there to fix things for them. You’re there to serve and support.
The Ultimate Goal
When the team pulls through to the other side, they should be more confident, more courageous, and experience a deeper level of trust, collaboration, and resilience than before.
And guess what? They’ll respect you even more for your steadfast belief in them.
Call to Action
How do you currently support your team during challenges? Are there new ways you can coach to foster team resilience?