A second way to manage the broader issues around developing resilience is to have the team recognise their role, both individually and collectively, in creating a supportive working environment. One key part in this is how they behave when celebrating success, again on an individual and collective level. However, under workplace pressure the converse situation may be more relevant, in which case how do the team deal with perceived failure (and that's not to say that this shouldn't be celebrated too). All of these different team dynamics can be effectively addressed with well selected and sensitively delivered experiential activities.
Yet choosing and using tools on the basis of what's going to bring the surest success is a trap that needs to be avoided. Teams will quickly see the falsity of challenges that they perceive to be too easy, they won't be as engaged and will be quick to point out that 'real life's not that simple'. The level of challenge should be high and this is recognised in the design of RSVP Design tools (see the previous article for some words about allowing the team to set their own targets). When the activity is completed the team should feel that they had to work for their success; and it's at this point that the clearest evidence about how they go about celebrating task success will be available. Is the level of celebration congruent with the challenge, is everybody involved, does everybody agree that this is true success? All questions that are material for the review. But don't place all the emphasis on this final task success, how were the smaller, incremental achievements celebrated? Those encouraging moments are often the building blocks and key indicators of a supportive team environment.
Colourblind is an activity that is initially perceived by many teams as very very challenging, and it's only when they start working that a route to success becomes evident. In this climate each small success is an opportunity for recognition and praise - are these opportunities accepted? Similar opportunities present themselves in e.g. Electric Maze and
I've said already that how supportively the team deal with perceived failure is also important in creating a truly supportive working environment. I've had great success in utilising the mid-exercise break that's built into Simmetrics to have teams explore the way that they feel about the inevitable negative results that are part of the way the exercise works. This allows for consideration of how they might react to these occurrences, how they might be reframed to be opportunities to build team cohesion. In a less obvious way Minefield also offers the chance to explore relative success and failure, and as it has numerical values attached to this it's sometimes an easier route in to particular teams.
Look out for part 4 on reflection to resilience - coaching within teams.
