David Walker and Nicky Carew reflect on our recent “Leading Resilient Organisations” webinar and the messages for leaders developing a resilient organisation.

We have been talking about the importance of Individual, Team and Organisational Resilience over the past few weeks and last week 70 people joined us in a lively debate in our webinar.

Although The Change Maker Group has been working with organisations in change for many years, now every organisation feels that they are deeply entrenched in change – COVID-19 has made sure of that.

Personal Resilience

The first question we tackled was how to help individuals be resilient.  Our own Vanda North, co-creator of the powerful Mind Chi technique, demonstrated BEAT – which stands for Body, Emotions, Actions, Thoughts – and the power of spending just a minute a day (as part of an 8 minute a day Mind Chi resilience exercise) helping to create a positive energy in your physical body, as part of your emotions, integral in your actions and to focus your thoughts.

You can catch up and watch her video here:

How resilient our organisations are in this time of change will depend on how individuals, that you need to pull together, can meet the challenge head on.  When an individual is working to their strengths you have the best opportunity to have an agile response to change – they will be working to their best potency and, in consequence, be less stressed, more resilient. And, of course, organisational agility relies on resilient people.

That is where The Change Maker Profile is extremely valuable – it is the only resource that highlights an individual’s contribution to the organisation – what they bring to the party – and helps them value the complementary different contributions made by colleagues.  When you know how to harness the best of each person you have a unique change making team.  You use the Profile to help you resolve real world business problems.

When we are working at our best, a Game Changer may have some great ideas for change but probably value someone with a strong Strategist preference to clarify how and if these ideas are driving the purpose and for keeping that vision.  The Play Maker preference will naturally energise the teams and orchestrate them to be effective.  The Implementer really knows how to drive a project through and can hand over to the Polisher who will pay attention to the final perfection to delivery.

We are all made up of a unique combination of each of the proclivities illustrated here.  It is likely that we will have a particular inclination to one or two of them.  Recognising what they are allows us to understand what people want to and can contribute to our organisation’s success in change.

Leadership and Resilient Organisations

That led us to explore with Dr John Mervyn-Smith, Chief Psychologist of The GC Index – the psychometric engine behind The Change Maker Profile – what role leadership has towards overall resilience of an organisation.

As John said in his video contribution to our webinar

“it is useful to understand what puts individuals under pressure because we’re all different in that regard. What might put you under pressure won’t necessarily put me under pressure. If you can have insight into that then we can help build resilience in individuals and teams.”

He then goes on to explain how our proclivities, in the context of The GC Index framework (which applies to The Change Maker Profile), helps predict how individuals will experience pressure. Knowing that helps people look after themselves, colleagues and teams.

Turning to resilient teams he says that there are three ingredients that are key for the team leaders to pay attention to – Perceived Resourcefulness, Optimism and Connectedness. These all work interrelatedly rather like this cog diagram.

If you can help individuals to understand what people want to contribute – their perceived resourcefulness – then they will be contributing in the best way they can and this directly makes their contribution feel more valued and they are more resilient. The Change Maker Profile is focussed on this area.

When you create an environment of optimism everyone’s energy levels are more resilient.

And when people feel part of a common purpose and bigger movement, a tribe if you like, then the sense of connectedness creates interdependence and a resilient team. Leaders need to engender the actions and culture of ‘you are not alone’ and ‘we’re in this together’ to help build that cohesiveness and connectedness with a common purpose and shared goals.

You can watch John’s full video contribution here :

 

Putting all of this together, it is for leaders, as well as the individuals themselves, to work out how to develop the resilience that everyone needs. Having this model at the front of the minds will help leaders build the resilience that everyone needs, with everyone optimistically maximising their personal contributions, to shared goals and with a connected culture.

 


Contact Nicky at [email protected] and David at [email protected]

Please get in touch or book a free discovery call. We’d love to chat.