Building resilient teams

A recent Wall Street Journal article that centered on how making yourself “indispensable” by being the only person who can do a task or who has key knowledge is actually not a productive strategy for immunizing yourself from a layoff. This came as no surprise to me, as I have worked with knowledge hoarders who were eventually let go. In most workplaces, when things get tight, the most essential people to keep around are not necessarily the ones who are the most technically proficient or “best” at what they do. Most employers want to keep the flexible people who are willing to stretch their knowledge and abilities by taking on new challenges, and who are ready and willing collaborators.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

At the same time, I have also observed that organizations don’t know how to nurture these qualities, and many individuals who haven’t been exposed to them end up perpetuating practices such as staking out territories of control and hoarding knowledge — creating conditions that are counterproductive to long term success. By contrast, in my experience, organizations that encourage and nurture resilient teams and collaborative cross-functional practices most often have the strongest outcomes over time.

A common form of working across functions or disciplines is to pass work through stages where different people are responsible based on their core strength, but as one of my colleagues once noted, serial responsibility is not cross functional. While it can be hard to envision something different or put it into operation on a new team, this mindset change can grow your own skills and adaptability while strengthening the team as a whole.

Members of high-functioning resilient teams understand that diverse perspectives and expertise are valuable at every stage in a project. They are interdependent on each other, but also open to (and prepared for) an influx of new personnel. As individuals they are accountable to each other — generous with their knowledge and skills, and respectful of the knowledge and skills of their team members. While processes help set the guidelines and expectations, getting to this point is not about strict adherence to a set of tools or a process, and ultimately high-functioning resilient teams must be flexible and adaptable. Some characteristics of these teams include:

• No one is “in charge.” Leaders guide rather than dictate, and team members across practices work together toward shared goals.
• Team members know and understand what outcomes they are driving toward, and feel connected to the client and helping them succeed.
• Team members step up to do tasks that may be outside their core skill set.
• Team members all feel part of decision making. This is not the same as consensus — sometimes consensus is needed, whether or not it is, the team should have a chance to weigh in on decisions and understand why they were made.
• Team members should feel empowered to take action when there are blips.
• Team members are willing to conduct retrospectives on their processes and their work and adapt and change based on what they have learned
• No function is excluded from meetings or activities — inclusiveness is the default, and overlaps are considered strengths.
• No one is protected to “just do their work” — people do need to engage with others on the team.
• Team meetings aren’t just status checks or one person delivering information, they are opportunities for bringing real work to the table for collaboration, problem solving, and planning

Ideally, these norms are set up at the beginning of a project by establishing project charters, working agreements, roles and responsibilities, and broad processes for meetings, documentation, and decision making. But even with these processes in place, natural flow and shifts over time will both change practices and change what the team needs, so it is crucial to have regular check ins on team health throughout the project to ensure resilience. This can be done by starting with a few questions:

• Has anything changed with clients or stakeholders?
• Have we brought on new team members?
• Are we following our working agreement?
• Is the working agreement still working for us?
• Are we comfortable with how we manage conflict resolution?
• Are we regularly working together, or only checking in with each other?

Keeping track of the team’s health and resilience will help you ensure everyone feels valued throughout the project, and collectively build context around organizational goals and objectives, prioritize and solve problems, and measure success.