Why is team resilience such an important topic at the moment?
Studies have shown that there have been major rises in anxiety and depression since the start of COVID-19. This coupled with the impact on the economy, many people still furloughed, rise in unemployment, it’s becoming clear that mental health is going to be a significant challenge across our society and workplaces in the coming months and years.
The PERMA model was introduced by Martin Seligman in 2011 through his research into flourishing and thriving. With 5 core pillars, all equally important and combining to give a foundation of positive wellbeing that can be learned.
Interventions focusing on PERMA have demonstrated effectiveness in improving wellbeing, optimism and preventing and reducing anxiety and depression. Although ‘relationships’ might stand out as the core pillar for team resilience, we should be looking to fulfil all 5 needs to build teams that can thrive and perform beyond the sum of their parts.
5 Tips for Team Resilience & Performance
Positive Emotions: Embedding positive habits of attention into the team’s routine (e.g. sharing ‘3 positive things’ at the start of meetings)
Engagement: Help team members open up conversations about their individual and team strengths to motivate and support collaboration (e.g. a feedback activity where each person needs to give every other member of the team a piece of feedback about what they do brilliantly)
Relationships: Encourage interactions that boost a sense of fun in the team (e.g. using platforms such as Yammer to playfully share updates, polls, gifs etc.)
Meaning: Focus a team’s attention back to the deeper purpose of their work (e.g. a team has to create a motivating one-sentence purpose statement for their work and each individual does the same for their role)
Accomplishment: Celebrate more kinds of success – not just the big wins (e.g. quick surveys or virtual meetings that focus on ‘What progress have we made?’; ‘What mistakes have we learnt from?’; ‘Who have we helped? Etc.)