Five ways to build mentally resilient teams

Building mental resilience is as important for teams as it is for individuals. It’s often helpful to cultivate teams that are a close-knit band of people, with shared values and purpose. Anxiety is contagious, so being able to deal with anxiety collectively as a group is important. Here we explain our model, TEEAM, which describes the five elements of fostering and maintaining team resilience. 

Time

Take the time to understand and get to know each other. Part of building mental resilience is about awareness of ourselves and the impact we have on others. We need good relationships in the workplace for the organisation to thrive. Understanding individual work motivations is incredibly important if you’re working as a team. When we take time to understand, natural pairings and groups with mutual understanding can form

Experience

We can often learn from each other and share what we have been through before to help others. Think about the experiences you’ve had that have boosted your mental resilience and how you could pass on knowledge to your team. Sharing experiences can help you pull together during difficult times. Don’t assume younger team members don’t have the wisdom or that older team members harbour all the experience; we can all learn from each other.

Encourage

Support and encourage each other; celebrations and rewards are important. Recognising the big and the small wins is an incredibly powerful tool in building team resilience. The benefit of taking time to get to know your team is that you’ll understand individual requirements for recognition

Action

Look at goals and the steps you are taking to do what you say you will. Don’t let the say-do gap become an issue within your teams in a way that impacts trust. Knowing you can rely on each other is essential in building resilient teams.

Monitor

Keep an eye out for any signs of stress or burnout within your team. Look out for breaks in resilience, which may manifest itself through challenging relationships. Make sure key team members aren’t shouldering all the burdens or carrying others who are either less experienced or less able. Checking in regularly can build helpful social connections that are a key element of resilience.

Some of this links to mental health first aid and the insights we gathered from becoming mental health first aiders. Resilience is all about your ability to bounce back. Read more about how to build mentally resilient teams.

Jenni Field is the founder and director of Redefining Communications and author of Influential Internal Communication. She has created tailored resilience workshops for clients around the world. This was an extract of a blog originally published on her website. Read the original post.