How to Build Performance-Driven Resilient Leaders and Teams in a COVID World and Beyond.

Why is it so important to build resilient leaders and teams?

As if it wasn’t already trying enough, the era of COVID has heightened our awareness of how disruptive stress and change can be to humans. 

Our mind, body, and human spirit are being impacted by current events in 2020. However, this year has revealed opportunities as well. 

Here’s what I mean…

Resilience and wellbeing have become the new super powers. And, more than ever, this is the time to renew and equip ourselves (and others) with the essential skills that produce resiliency and make room for next-level leadership capacities. Our relationships, results, and yes, even our revenue, depend on it. 

Develop Your Super Powers

Cultivating Resilience and Wellbeing for Yourself, Your Leaders, and Your Teams

The COVID era has reminded us that building performance-driven leaders, teams, and cultures in a COVID world is a real challenge. This is where being resilient comes in handy for leaders and their teams.

According to Merriam-Webster, resilience can be defined as “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.”

When we learn to become resilient, we learn to work with (and trust) the present moment to guide us, to empower us, to teach us what we must release and do to persevere. Building resilience is a process – an experience, we can lean into vs. resist. 

Wellbeing is another important factor for performance-driven leaders and teams, and Merriam-Webster defines it as “the state of being happy, healthy, or prosperous.”

In, Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, Rath and Harter (2010), identify five domains comprising overall wellbeing. They conclude that career wellbeing is probably the most important of the five for most people.  

“Wellbeing is about the combination of our love for what we do each day, the quality of our relationships, the security of our finances, the vibrancy of our physical health, and the pride we take in what we have contributed to our communities. Most importantly, it’s about how these five elements interact.”

― Tom Rath, Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements

Resilience and Wellbeing Are Connected

Because wellbeing is subjective, it is typically measured with self-reports. Wellbeing is defined (Davis, “What is Well-being?”) as feeling comfortable, healthy, or happy. Generally, it also includes feeling connected and a sense of prosperity. 

“Having good mental health, high life satisfaction, a sense of meaning or purpose,” and the ability to manage stress all play into the delicate balance that we call wellbeing (Tchiki Davis, “What is Well-being?).[1]

Wellbeing is dynamic—it’s fluid. Just like strengths-based well-rounded teams are more engaged and successful, achieving a sense of wellbeing depends on interdependent factors, which we will call practices. 

Merely knowing these practices is not enough to become more well, happy, or a better leader however.

Our strengths (super-powers) are dependent on certain tools and skills to perform at their best – to lead effectively. 

Most superheroes have a shield, a tool, if you will, to protect their strengths’ powers and be able to contribute their unique talents to the collective and the mission. To grow and maintain resilience and wellbeing in oneself and others, I’d like to suggest that coaching skills are one of these tools leaders should have in their tool box.

Build Resilient Leaders and Teams by Equipping Leaders with Coaching Skills

A coaching leader is more effective at achieving collaborative results. When leaders don’t effectively delegate or optimize the strengths of a team/organization, it adds to their stress and decreases resilience and wellbeing.  

A coach’s role is focused on the employees’ strengths and working with them on co-creating solutions, exploring options, and facilitating a way forward through the challenges. 

“Coaching Leaders” are skilled at building trust, challenging thinking, holding team members accountable, understand how to invoke engagement, and ignite self-directed performance. Building personal and team coherence is the ultimate goal. And they are your number one asset when building an organization full of resilient leaders and teams. 

Recognize, Nurture, and Utilize Interdependent Skills 

Building performance-driven leaders and teams in a COVID world requires a “work smarter, not harder” philosophy. (Which is always a good rule to follow!)

Equipping ourselves and those around us with these three supportive pillars to increase and renew resilience, wellbeing, and coaching skills will pay dividends long term.    

To discover how to create coaching leaders, check out our free eBook, The Integrated Coaching Leader™. 

For even more information, check out our courses, such as one for creating a coherent, resilient, and inclusive culture that starts with developing your leaders.

[1] Davis, Tchiki. (2019, Jan 02). What is well-being? Definitions, types, and well-being skills. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/click-here-happiness/201901/what-is-well-being-definition-types-and-well-being-skills

---

We specialize in helping teams and organizations understand and implement practices that cultivate the power of interdependence.

The Wellsiliency™ Institute has developed a series of interdependent courses to comprehensively address the knowledge and skills leaders and teams need to build strengths-based values-driven performance cultures where all experience belonging.

Is cultivating a deliberate culture that leaves a lasting legacy of positive impact in the lives of others important to your organization?

Our institute has designed five program pillars to help leaders be well and lead well through a skill progression from Whole-self Intelligence™ integration to boost resilience and confidence, strengths-based wellbeing, strengths-based team building, strengths-based leadership, and psychological safety to unleash collaboration.

We don't believe in providing superficial programs; instead, we strive to become your collaborative partner by equipping your leaders with the skills they need to create meaningful, enduring outcomes. Our ultimate goal is to help you build a legacy of leadership excellence that will make a real difference in your organization's success.

Contact us to request our 4 page FACT SHEET to learn how our comprehensive 5 PILLAR PROGRAM helps leaders create interdependent teams and organizations.  

Let’s partner to create a more harmonious and sustainable future, where cooperation and mutual support lead to thriving.