One reason is that these leaders model skills like decisiveness in the face of uncertainty and setting boundaries to maintain their own wellbeing, which cascades down through their teams. Second, when we asked the direct reports of highly-resilient leaders to evaluate their teams, they told us their teams have higher overall performance, are more agile, and are more innovative than those headed by leaders with low resilience. If a leader copes well with challenges, his or her team is likely to do the same. Teams with highly resilient leaders also experience significantly less employee burnout and turnover. The direct reports of highly resilient leaders are themselves three times more resilient on average, our data shows. This presents a number of big advantages.įirst, the impact of resilient leaders is multiplied through their teams. The solution? Focus your resilience-building efforts on the team level. Any seasoned leader can tell you large organizations are like freighters, shifting direction only slowly. But focusing on company-wide change is daunting.
How is fostering resilience in your workforce best accomplished? Individual interventions take time to scale and have an impact. Where to focus resilience-building efforts presents a challenge for HR leaders.
They have fewer sleep issues, exercise more, and reported finding more meaning in their work. Highly resilient employees were 31 percent more productive during the pandemic than the least resilient workers, for instance. The report, Resilience in an Age of Uncertainty, shows that the bottomline benefit for organizations that build resilience is clear. Our team of behavioral scientists at BetterUp recently published research that sought to uncover the impact of resilience on organizations. Resilience provides a buffer against uncertainty and is the necessary platform upon which innovation and productivity in tough times is built. To prepare, organizations must cultivate resilience, not just after the stock market crashes or a novel virus emerges, but every day and every year. These events that upend the world are known as ‘Black Swans’, and while each one feels rare and unpredictable when it arrives, organizations actually face such disruptions regularly. It’s time for companies to act, not simply react to unexpected crises.