How Teams Effectively Manage Change
“Team Resilience: How Teams Flourish Under Pressure”
George M. Alliger, Christopher P. Cerasoli, Scott I. Tannenbaum, William B. Vessey
What are the researchers interested in?
Over the past few decades, several researchers have found that team’s in organizations have increased dramatically. This was reinforced by better understanding of the need for collaboration in inducing high performance. It goes without saying, that many teams undergo turbulence and imminent challenges where their resilience (‘ability to adapt’) is tested. Having worked with corporate emergencies, these researchers found these challenges have the capacity to diminish and deteriorate a team’s ability to accomplish a goal. Largely, challenging events have shown to place stress on team processes, where a team that lacks resilience will break down in communication patterns and become ever more self-reliant.
Before we dive in to this study, let’s look at how team resilience is defined and what are some challenging situations that could test a team’s resilience.
Team Resilience
After thorough research, there seems to be a consensus amongst IO psychologists on the definition of team resilience. Researchers define the term as, a team’s belief that they can cope with difficulties and their ability to adapt positively to acute and chronic challenges. In simpler sense, we believe that resilient teams can cope, recover, and adapt positively to demanding challenges.
“[Team Resilience is] the capacity of a team to withstand and overcome stressors in a manner that enables sustained performance.”
Understanding Challenging Situations
From what we have read, there are several challenges, which can be distinguished between chronic and acute. Chronic challenges will have long-lasting effects and teams are likely to endure stress for a lengthened period of time. These challenges can be exceptionally damaging, because their impact on teams will accumulate over time. To give an example, some teams’ chronic exposure to the ambiguity of job roles and a lack of clarity in their assignments will have the ability to drain a team’s efficiency. On the other hand, acute challenges are rapid and short-lived that teams face. Examples can include, an irritated customer, a sudden increase in workload, and system failures. To give a few more examples:
Unclear team roles
Interpersonal conflicts with teams
“Crisis” events (e.g., recession, mass lay-offs, external growth)
High consequence work (e.g., safety, critical planning)
Insufficient resources
Burnout and exhaustion from overwork
What method did they use?
Over the past 25 years, Alliger and colleagues worked with a multitude of teams from a wide-ranging selection of industries. As an example, they have worked alongside NASA space mission teams where they were able to examine how team resilience plays a crucial part in their success. Above all, they observed qualitatively how resilient teams manage and coordinate challenging situations.
What did they end up finding?
Over several courses of research on different companies in different industries. The researchers found that there were three main behavioural patterns that were observed in resilient teams. Let’s summarise them down below. It was observed that each resilient team were able to:
Minimize
Teams that were resilient were more likely to expect challenges and plan contingencies if those challenges were to escalate. They can pinpoint prior challenges that have affected their team and be able to uncover ones that could potentially arise (e.g., a change in workload). Research shows that in effective cases, leaders can discuss “what if” scenarios and plan accordingly.
Manage
Challenging situations cannot always be avoided or be well prepared for. Managing the initial outbreak of the situation is crucial. Teams can assess the situation, honestly, and accurately. They are also able to supply backup and help one another in those situations, while effectively sacrificing their own time. To manage situations well, resilient teams will also proactively seek guidance from resources that are available to them (e.g., their leaders or other teams); importantly, teams will be able to support active networks and communication channels when guidance and support are critically needed.
Mend
The final stage of a challenging and stressful situation is to be able to learn from that experience. Often researchers talk about this ‘adaptive capacity’ to transcend adversity, be able to takeaway key insights with all its attendant stresses and to emerge stronger than before.Teams should be able to adapt to the circumstance and be able to recover promptly. Teams will be able to re-establish themselves and be able to get out of panic mode, usually with the leader’s help in communicating certainties.
Why does this matter for organizations?
From mergers and acquisitions to corporate emergencies and project setbacks, the presence of disturbances in the business world is ubiquitous. In times of ongoing change, followed by periods of economic recession, employees at all levels are bound to face intensified pressures at work. As a result of these adverse events, there is potential to impair not only an employee's performance but also able to contribute to higher levels of stress and physical strain for them. In a highly collaborative environment like an organisation, it is not only important for the individual to overcome these adverse events and challenges, but for teams to do so collectively. Having the ability to understand how resilient teams behave, perhaps organisations can find way to increase the resilience of the team and not only the individual. Further research examined the main factors affecting a team’s resilience, which were summed down to a team’s collective identity, organisational resources and leadership behaviour.
References
Alliger, G. M., Cerasoli, C. P., Tannenbaum, S. I., & Vessey, W. B. (2015). Team resilience: How teams flourish under pressure. Organizational Dynamics.