Uzma Aitqad writes about the importance of resilience in organisations, and how building a resilient culture can help those organisations thrive.
—
Why is Resilience important in organisations?
We are passing through testing times where every individual and business has been impacted somehow by the impact of COVID19.
There have been similar incidents in the history where natural or human-made disasters hit humankind. The key to surviving such events and prospering during such upheavals, remains human Resilience, same is true for organisations.
Resilience in the business world means an organisation will have a capacity to absorb stress, adapt to change & recover quickly, and thrive in altered circumstances.
New research also shows that resilient companies are generally more successful and ultimately more profitable.
A company with people who collectively manifest resilient beliefs, can move mountains and overcome insurmountable problems. On the other hand, a company undergoing stress and critical times with disengaged workers flounders in the face of adversity.
Resilience in organisations is essential because it’s not just about weathering future storms; there’s also an employer branding piece at play. Resilient organisations also tend to attract high-performance employees who themselves are adaptable and excellent problem solvers. They love to work in environments where they are appreciated for these talents; this promotes Resilience’s culture even further.
If this topic resonates with you, please check out the insights put together by Nicky Carew.
What is resilience?
Resilience is defined as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness, and a substance or object’s ability to spring back into shape; elasticity.
However, in the organisational context, it means to manifest resilient traits in the culture collectively to pull through and sail through the difficult times.
The “Resilient Culture” can be seen as a “shield” and “armour” that provides security to the business to rebound from adversity’s untoward effects.
Not all organisations possess Resilient Cultures that can help them stand the test of time; they continually struggle to define their culture.
So how we can cultivate resiliency at work?
How a Resilient Culture can be Cultivated?
A Resilient Culture helps companies survive change. In such an environment, employees don’t see themselves as victims of circumstances outside of their control, but rather as empowered individuals capable of riding the waves of whatever life hits them.
There are many ways to create and maintain a culture of resiliency. Depending on where your organisation is now, it can take some time to develop a resilient organisation.
You can check out this White Paper that explores why resilience is more important than ever for organisations to cultivate.
We recommend the following approaches for fostering a culture that inspires resiliency.
1. Start building resilient leadership
A culture of organisational resilience is built mostly upon leadership, what we refer to as resilient leadership.
We believe key leadership personnel, often frontline leadership, appear to have the ability to guide the organisation in the direction of resilience and serve as a catalyst to increase teamwork, grit, agility and commitment to the bigger purpose.
They do this by demonstrating four core attributes of self-efficacy, trust, agility and open communications while serving as conduits and gatekeepers of formal and informal information flows throughout the organisation.
When a small number of high credibility leaders model the behaviours associated with resilience, they influence people across organisation. We believe these leaders have the power to change the organisations entire Culture as others replicate the resilient characteristics they have observed.
2. Start building more resilient teams
We believe hiring people who have demonstrated resilience in past roles or promoting employees who have shown this ability helps create Resilient Culture.
All organisations need good teams who are resilient in the face of challenges; enabling your teams with development training and rewarding your employees who go out of their way to solve problems, helps build resilient Culture.
3. Reduce the hierarchy within your Culture
We believe empowering people to take decisions in their roles and reducing hierarchical tiers helps cultivate self-efficacy and agility traits resulting in more resilience.
4. Encourage candour
Another key to creating a resilient culture is to encourage open and honest feedback between teams and leaders.
If employees feel their opinion is not valued or they are not liked for their honest views, they would feel stifled and leave the organisation at the slightest event of adversity.
5. Provide basic training to manage personal stress.
The latest finding from the neurosciences corroborates that providing basic training to your people on managing personal stress, that we refer to this as developing “psychological body armour, ” helps build resilient culture. These insights put together by Vanda North on the subject are worth checking.
What are the Benefits of Resilient Culture?
Among many, the most significant benefit of building a resilient company culture is creating a workforce that continually gets to try out new challenges and explore different parts of the company. They are not discouraged by temporary setbacks, but rather excited by the possibilities.
A resilient culture is pivotal for growth, innovation, and ready for the next challenge as we head into the future of work.
Next Steps…
Bring your cultural challenges to us. It will be a delight for “The Change Maker Group” to help you understand your culture’s strengths and weaknesses to transform your organisation with resilient cultural traits.
—
Contact Uzma at [email protected]
Please get in touch or book a free discovery call. We’d love to chat.
