There’s no term we use more often in the office than “team resilience.” But team resilience isn’t a buzzword, it’s a collaborative, moving process that can affect the way your team and business functions, how they handle and adapt to stressors, failures and transitions.
Team resilience isn’t about the individual, which could be all about individual self-management, but rather the collective power of values, communication and a shared commitment to breaking through. It is one of those things that team resilience can do for a team to not just get by during the good times but through the rough ones. But it will not happen in isolation: resilience of teams is a leadership and employee responsibility effort.
From an enterprise level to a business function, there’s no organisation that cannot reap the benefits of team resilience. Team resilience can play a very important role for Customer Success teams because their roles, their environment, and the Customer Success results can affect the whole organization. When developed and utilized effectively, team resilience in Customer Success can assist CSMs to respond more effectively to customer feedback, customer problems and problems-avoidance.
Learn everything you want to know about creating team resilience in any space and the impact of team resilience on Customer Success.
What Is Team Resilience?
Resilience of the team is an operating system, ethos, and culture that describes a team’s ability to grow, recover from stress, bounce back from experiences, and continue to be a unit no matter what. ‘It is imperative to have a resilient team now in the world of work as it will help your team through the good and bad times.
Here are some of the advantages of team resilience:
- Flexible during boom: In a successful period, resilient teams harness their collective advantages to deal with change induced by growth. These can be increased workloads, changes in the problem, new responsibilities. A resilient team will not struggle with these shifts, and won’t be crushed (or fail to cope).
- Effective problem solving: When the going gets tough, nimble teams are capable of being extraordinarily successful in taking on the challenge head-on. They can work in harmony, solve problems and collectively solve issues. This kind of problem-solving skill will not only save a team from the storm but can even set them up for expansion during a down time.
- High Performance That Lasts: The teams that have been proven to be resilient are the teams that deliver a high-quality result over time. In imagining the picture of a optimistic and flexible mindset, strong teams promote a culture of improvement and innovation, which will keep them successful no matter what.
Another benefit of resilient teams? They’re also up for a common workplace ailment: burnout. Work-related burnout “sometimes” is reported by 76 percent of team members and “often or always” by 28 percent of team members Burnout is not an easy and desirable situation to be in: teammates will work at a less high quality, mistakes will be made, and work will be lost. Rather, resilient teams are more willing to survive and burn out.
Even though having and retaining a strong team is a good thing, not many teams actually count as one. As few as 2% of teams possess all the qualities of a resilient team and 17% possess the second most resilience, according to one study. This research also discovered that one in five groups exists entirely outside of the realm of a hardened team and as individuals.
There’s no place that team resilience isn’t created and nurtured. Whether you’re starting from scratch with resilience or your team is resilient and you want to continue to roll, there’s always work to be done. And organizations need to be different about creating team resilience, in good times and in bad.
In the Good Times, Creating Team Resilience Building
When everything is rose-coloured, everyone benefits. Leaders euphoric, bills paid, customers satisfied, growth potential there. But a strong group doesn’t rest on their laurels when things are good and the company is in growth. Instead, they take advantage of these good times and invest in this period to establish a good foundation for future challenges.
Here are some ways to build team resilience in good times:
1. Recognize Achievements and Milestones
And in the best of times, sup on triumphs, big and small. When everyone is appreciating one another and their work, that sets the mood and gives the team an added sense of meaning and worth. We already knew that employee recognition was essential: we have research that indicates 70% of employees will quit the company if they aren’t recognized and that recognition-enabled employees are 8x more productive.
2. Support and Promote a Friendly, Flexible Culture
You can’t build team resilience unless you can be supported and admired, and leaders can help create a culture of cooperation and support. Open communication, listening and respect are key factors that help team members support one another during the easy and the tough times.
3. Put money into Training Courses and Workshops.
In the best of times, investing in professional growth is an investment in your team’s future. Programmes and seminars develop the skills of each person and group, so the team is ready to adapt to new requirements. It’s also an effective way of building the team and creating a mindset of continuous learning which is a cornerstone of resilience.
4. Promote Open Communication and Transparency
When the economic times are good, you have to be open with your mouth. Every team meeting is a time to share stories and learn together. Clear communication helps everyone get along so there’s no misunderstanding. That transparency comes in handy when things do go wrong on the team, because people are used to having candid conversations.
Leaders must also have a feedback and criticising culture. It is an attitude that is really invaluable when problems arise as everyone is used to working together on a solution.
Navigating Tough Times Together
When it’s not working and conditions aren’t being great, team resilience is even more important. When team strength slips in this period, the team and the company can be let down. The team might become unable to move along with it, team members will become stressed and burnt out, and the team might be reduced in its capacity to problem solve and act appropriately. Morale, unity and even communication among the employees can also suffer.
In bad times you have to do everything you would during the good times and more to build team resistance. Below are a few other tips for sustaining team resilience during a storm:
1. Identify Potential Obstacles
When dealing with challenges, first you have to be conscious of the situation. Successful teams do problem identification ahead of time, doing extensive testing to uncover obstacles. That means analyzing internal and external conditions that might affect the team’s performance, so that proper measures can be taken to limit the risks.
2. Develop Backup Plans
It is the signature of tough groups. Teams plan accordingly in case of a problem. These are plans that define the route to respond in the face of unpredictability, so the team can respond quickly and decisively.
3. Foster a Sense of Unity
Teams are resilient, when things go wrong. Leaders are also instrumental in creating a sense of safety so team members can share and bounce off each other. Support for team problem-solving during difficult times also makes the team more adaptive and resourceful to find solutions from all perspectives.
4. Encourage a Healthy Work-Life Balance
Having the right work-life balance is important during rough times. Resilient teams are also mindful of downtime and want their team members to relax, recharge, and be good to themselves. This is a critical balance that allows for sustained team resilience by avoiding burnout and allowing teammates to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Team Resilience and Customer Success
Creating team resilience is an essential part of every function in an organization, but especially effective for Customer Success. That’s because Customer Success Managers are liable to be flexible, agile and ready for anything — that’s what this work is all about.
Here are a few reasons Customer Success should focus on resilience in the team:
1. Continuous Customer Engagement
Customer Success teams need to be on the ground with customers constantly to establish and maintain connections and support customer journeys. When resilient CS teams can take on the demands of changing customers without fear of disrupting or losing that engagement and deliver value. And they can even have a customer relationship model in place to facilitate engagement over time.
2. Adaption to Customer Feedback
Resilient Customer Success teams are more open to customer feedback and react quickly to that feedback. They’ll not take feedback as criticism, but as a possibility for improvement, an attitude of always improving service.
3. Handling Customer Challenges
Troubleshooting and Problem Solving is an element of Customer Success. Teams that are resilient are calm and successful when it comes to customer problems so the customer experience is not compromised by a setback.
4. Cross-functional Collaboration
Customer Success teams work with other departments, like sales, marketing, and product. Team resilience allows you to communicate and collaborate across all functions, so that the whole organization collaborates to deliver value to the customer.
5. Proactive Problem Solving
Anticipatory problem solving is Customer Success. Becoming proactive is part of addressing the needs of customers and catching bugs before they become big problems. Unwavering Customer Success teams are the ones who can identify any issue in advance before it happens. They anticipate the issues and collaborate to put preventative steps in place, so the customer experience is as low as possible.
6. Building Customer Trust and Loyalty
Loyalty and trust are another giant objective for Customer Success and they’ll have a better shot at that when they’re strong. By showing that Customer Success can weather storms and deliver value every time, Customer Success can help nurture the long-term relationships that Customer Success consists of.
Customer Success is not about trying to please the customer, but exceeding them. In this mission, building team resilience can be an instrument for success in an organisation and for offering continuous excellence to customers.
Do’s and Don’ts of Creating Team Resilience:
- DO know what Team Resilience is in Customer Success and what the main benefits are (Adaptability, problem solving, continuous high performance).
- DON’T FORGET TO POTENTIALISE team toughness in times of need by acknowledging success and milestones, providing supportive & collaborative culture, investing in trainings & workshops.
- DO exercise fortitude in difficult periods by recognising what might get in your way, having a plan B and staying in unity.
And DO know exactly what Team Resilience means for Customer Success.