How New Managers Can Instill The 7 Cs of Team Resilience

We live in uncertain times, so it’s unsurprising that resilience has been the highest-ranking soft skill sought by employees over the last two years. According to Udemy for Business, interest in the topic skyrocketed by 194% from January to February 2021 alone.

Several factors known as the 7 Cs contribute to team resilience. And, when they’re instilled in a team, that group is less likely to experience burnout, more able to adapt to challenges and stress, and more receptive to change.

The 7 Cs of team resilience don’t happen of their own accord or through wishful thinking. As a manager, one of your goals should be to cultivate those factors in your team. Find out more about them and how you can take your first steps toward cultivating them in the workspace.

Resilience: the capacity to respond

The most basic definition of resilience is the capacity to respond flexibly and innovatively to change and disruption. A resilient team maintains its productivity while minimizing the emotional impact on its members when faced with adversity or challenging circumstances within or outside the company.

If managers don’t make the effort to cultivate resilience within their teams, adverse circumstances and events could erode what little resilience is present. This leads to an increased risk of burnout, conflict, mistakes, and even physical and mental illness.

To prevent this, as a new manager, you can familiarize yourself with the 7 Cs of team resilience and take steps to instill them in your team, ‌ensuring they’re prepared for the unexpected.

The 7 Cs of team resilience

The 7 Cs of team resilience are:

• Culture
• Competence
• Connections
• Commitment
• Communication
• Coordination
• Consideration

Let’s take a closer look at them below.

1. Culture

The culture of a resilient team is expressed in the shared history, identity, purpose, and values that bind the members of that team together. The shared stories that describe those cultural factors enable them to express who they are together.

There are several ways that you can build a strong team culture. But they all generally begin with defining that culture to foster a strong team energy. Other steps include:

• Looking for inspiring examples of how other companies build and evolve team culture
• Recognizing how you as a manager set the tone
• Defining your core values and your company mission

You should ensure you keep your expectations clear, reinforce team culture through activities such as off-site social events, one-on-one mentoring, group involvement in charity events, weekend family activities, and fostering a culture of care in the workplace.

2. Competence

Your team members are more resilient when they have the knowledge, skills, and capacity to meet the demands placed on them, especially during crises and times of stress. The knowledge and skills of the individual team members are not only beneficial to them, as they can share that knowledge and those skills with the rest of the group.

Assess your team’s competence through skills audits or competency assessments and, if possible, use IoT-enabled smart technology to identify areas in which skills or competencies may be lacking. When you know what’s needed, you can offer the appropriate training and development through group training and one-on-one mentoring by more experienced employees.

3. Connections

A team in which the members have formed strong relationships with one another, and in which they’re treated as individuals, is more resilient. Regular organized team-building activities and social events can foster closer and stronger connections between your team members.

In addition to scheduling casual moments for your team, it’s advisable to implement a buddy system (AKA peer coaching), setting communication norms, splitting a larger team into smaller teams, and asking for and acting on feedback.

4. Commitment

Your team members will be more resilient if they’re committed to each other and to their shared mission. This commitment is usually demonstrated through loyalty and respect, keeping promises they’ve made to each other, and offering something valuable, such as effort, money, or time, to support each other.

Some of the steps you can take to build greater commitment within your team include acknowledging and celebrating individual and group accomplishments, clarifying roles and responsibilities, organizing team-building activities, communicating strategies and goals clearly, and ongoing training and development.

5. Communication

Your team members will be more resilient when they’re well-informed about what’s going on in the workplace. They’ll also be better placed to share information with one another.

In addition to encouraging open channels of communication through regular meetings and an open-door policy in your office, you should also encourage critical thinking, questions, and encourage different points of view.

6. Coordination

Your team members will be more resilient when their goals align with those of your business or organization, and when they’re synchronized with each other. Understanding the value of working in sync with each other means they’ll also be more likely to work through conflict.

You can drive better team coordination by aligning your team around a common purpose, creating and documenting a detailed plan, defining clear roles and responsibilities, and centralizing internal communication.

7. Consideration

A considerate team is a resilient team. In addition to supporting each other’s professional goals, your team members also will support each other’s personal needs, and they will express appreciation for and gratitude to each other.

You can lead the way to fostering greater consideration within your team in various ways, including:

• Boosting morale through showing gratitude and giving praise
• Taking a positive angle or offering a solution instead of a complaint when one team member gossips about another
• Arriving at work, events, and meetings on time
• Decluttering shared space to make life a little easier for your team members
• Planning meetings in advance and communicating the information to your team in good time

Conclusion

By introducing and instilling the 7 Cs of team resilience, you’ll build a team that will be more collaborative, flexible, and innovative. Your team won’t only be prepared for the unexpected, it will thrive when the going gets tough.