Help your program or team stay resourced

Resilience is the built competency that is key to how leaders and groups create the conditions for folks to keep participating with integrity and genuinely engaged.

We made it to midyear, it’s time to start planning for the second half, and I’m here to be your coconspirator in that. We’re all familiar with the traditional way that programs and organizations plan for what is ahead -- think the typical strategic or quarterly planning or start-of-the-academic-year retreat. Often including some teambuilding and then a long focus on goals, strategy, programming, and what needs to get done for the year ahead. These days, the messages come with mandates to innovate faster with fewer resources or get more students in seats and keep them there.

While there are parts in those messages and planning that still matter, they are by no means the top priorities for these upcoming months and years in these times of uncertainty and growing instability. I need you to know that grief is on the rise and it’s lurking under most conversations I have these days.

I talk to leaders and faculty across all types of institutions, geographical locations, and industries, and I will tell you that the conversations have changed. Radically. The elephant in the room now sounds more like: I don’t know how to help with this. I’m not actually trained for THIS.

What can help our people (staff, faculty, students) stay resourced enough to participate more fully in what comes next (when we don’t really know what’s next)?

That is the question I wish more groups would treat as strategic.

Because resilience is often misunderstood as an individual trait, as if some folks simply have more capacity to keep going through uncertainty, conflict, overwork, or change. Folks say, ‘so and so has grit’ (my least fave), or they’re just judged for some performativity of resilience, which kind of is vibing robot-ish, if I’m honest.

You don’t have to do group time this way. These times really call for bringing in more humanity and connection. If you are part of any group or organization, even if you’re not the official leader, director, or manager, hear me out.

In groups and organizations, resilience is shaped by the conditions folks are working inside (micro-culture) and how they are being coached (or not) by their leaders and managers (mentorship). These two pieces - culture and coaching - shape communication patterns, decision-making norms, boundaries, workload, trust, leadership behavior, and whether people have places to tell the truth before they are too depleted to participate. AND these two pieces are both trainable, shiftable, and co-created.

Ask yourself, what role are you playing (officially and unofficially) in your groups, program, or office that are shaping or responding to resilience?

Resilience is not asking yourself or others to be more flexible inside systems that keep draining them. Resilient leaders and colleagues support each other in building the skillsets for how to adapt and transform in response to the changing system. There’s a critical reciprocity there that’s missing in professional retreats and trainings right now.

Resilience is a built competency, not a workplace expectation. Less is just less. Less is never more, so let’s stop pretending it is.

This is the kind of work I support organizations with through standalone trainings and retreat facilitation. Training can help staff and leaders build shared language and practical tools around burnout, boundaries, communication, grief, transition, and organizational resilience. A retreat can offer a more spacious container for reflection, alignment, repair, and the deeper conversations that everyday urgency often pushes aside. Time to have the conversations that need having.

Both can be useful, depending on what your organization is carrying and what kind of space your people need.

This work is not about adding another inspirational session to the calendar. It is about making resilience part of how your organization plans, leads, communicates, and cares for the people doing the work.

If your group or organization is thinking about a training, staff development, or facilitated retreat space for late summer, fall, or the rest of the year, I’d be glad to talk through what kind of support would fit. You can schedule a free consultation here.