School of PE Blog

Stress can make or break a team. In most cases, teamwork is the only way that organizations thrive. It can be difficult to manage your own stress, let alone be responsible for an entire team. However, it's important to learn techniques to manage stress in order to build a resilient team that withstands adverse situations within an organization. Work in corporate environments is often demanding and complex, and the situations that workers find themselves in can often lead to burnout from high-pressure situations. For this reason, it's important to have strategies for overcoming stress as a team, as well as on an individual level.

Let's talk about the importance of resilience, the purpose of stress, and how to overcome stress as a team in a way that builds resilience.

What does it mean to be resilient? A simple definition is the capacity to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties.

Resilience as an Individual- As an individual, you'll face situations on a daily basis that test your resolve and try to change who you are-as well as your goals and values. These situations can be large or small and can have a great impact on your life. Being resilient and facing stressful situations in a way that leaves you not necessarily unchanged but better than before is a quality that every employer looks for. It's the answer to the "How do you handle stressful situations?" question.

Resilience as a Team- As a team, you'll deal every day with people who are there to test you. You'll be given goals to work towards and tasks to complete that won't be easy. (If they were easy, they wouldn't have been delegated to your team). Finding a way to work together and reach that goal without splitting up the team will go a long way in the longevity of a company.

Resilience as an Organization- This permeates the structure of the entire company. Hiring resilient team members will enable the company to be more forward-thinking, plan for negative interactions, and bounce back from adverse conditions.

When we talk about resilience, it's usually in conjunction with dealing with large amounts of stress, which is a simple fact of everyday life in business and at home. Resilience is the way that we respond to stress and the ultimate outcome.

It's important to understand here that stress isn't necessarily a bad thing. The Pain Doctor's article on stress states that the purpose of stress is an evolutionary response where "the body senses an event that requires an additional burst of instinctive action, adrenaline, and cortisone in increased quantities."

When we say something like, "I'm stressed," or, "That was stressful," it usually comes as a consequence of a situation that requires a higher level of these chemicals. Our fight or flight response is tied to them, and, as a perfect example in a work scenario, the addition of adrenaline in conferences, meetings, and lectures helps the team members think on the spot in order to come up with a rapid-fire, correct response.

Not all stressful situations are negative, and the addition of these chemicals is not always a bad thing. Rather, they can play a vital role in facilitating steps that can make or break a deal. Building resilience and the way we deal with the stress of a situation is what can affect the end result.

A team is a group of people that work together toward a common goal. For a team to work, they need to practice qualities like honesty, resourcefulness, compassion, empathy, and humility,

Further, a resilient team believes they can effectively complete tasks together, share a common mental model of team dynamics, improvise, trust one another, and feel safe together.

But how do you build resilience? How do you prepare your team to handle the stressful situations that they'll be part of every day? How do you teach them to go with the punches and learn how to deal with the unforeseen complications that throw you for a loop? Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Another definition of resilience is the ability of a substance to spring back into shape, referring to its elasticity. Not only will building a resilient team create longevity for a company and individual, but the added benefit of being able to spring back from being stretched thin can be attributed directly to maintaining a healthy team dynamic. Building resilience is an integral part of creating an effective and efficient team that will withstand the everyday pressures of work and increase the longevity of the organization as a whole.

Boost your team's skillset and resilience when you partner with School of PE for professional development training. Check out our website today to learn more!