True resilience has never been about bouncing back. It is about moving forward together.

“I’m so proud of the turnaround and the performance the team has demonstrated in the last year. It feels more transparent and more positive. People are definitely giving each other grace and having open conversations when things come up… conflict resolution is definitely improved.” - Sylvia, Manager

Teams that thrive under change create space to innovate, connect, and act with intention. Here’s what I observed in my work with teams in a biotech company when we started last year:

We’ve been talking this month about unchecked behaviors from others (and sometimes ourselves) causing anxiety rises, rage simmers, and suddenly the whole group feels tighter, tenser, more guarded. I want to connect it all back to boundaries.

Boundaries are living practices of protection and connection.

Someone hurries into your office, or pulls you into theirs, or sideline chats online with you while the meeting is happening. That’s what I call the “meeting after the meeting” - aka backchanneling. It’s the unofficial space where disagreements, perceived slights, or confusion get hashed over and over. Yet not addressed where they matter most: in the room, during the meeting itself, or to the person actually involved.

It’s the surge of frustrations that started well before that moment. In organizational terms, backchanneling is often fueled by frustration that hasn’t been addressed in the right space.

Have your practices of observation this month left you feeling a bit raw and exposed because you’re starting to see patterns and dynamics more clearly? 

In those observations, you’ve likely felt massive frustration–yours, others', everybody's. Rage is everywhere these days, for many good reasons. And also some dangerous, unchecked ones.

Rage is complex. Have you let yourself feel its wisdom?

A year after participating in Resilient Teams, Mindy was still applying the tools in her day-to-day work and seeing the impact.

The company she worked for had undergone a major transition: two departments merged, leadership roles were in flux, and colleagues were frustrated. Some were openly talking about leaving, while others were resentful or disengaged. The energy in her meetings was tense. Generally, she felt focused on making the best of the situation, but she was struggling with how to navigate the negative contagion.

You walk into a regular meeting feeling fairly neutral. Or maybe you enter already feeling a little annoyed. Within minutes, your body tightens.

Your body is the first to register: one person sighs heavily, another crosses their arms, maybe there’s a slight eyeroll or smirk. There’s hustle energy churning. It’s got the vibe of more, faster, do it yesterday. If you just worked harder, rested faster, got more ticked off your list.

No one says outright that something’s wrong, but tension is thick.

The Sociologist Hat practice is a useful way to step back into observer mode in order to notice group dynamics without getting pulled into the drama. This matters for leaders and anyone really who is trying to function well within groups and teams, especially in times of great uncertainty.

That practice relates to the foundational layer of two of the six Resilient Teams components:

• Self and systems awareness → noticing negative bias and group contagion before it derails momentum (and then there are later components to develop the skills to rebuild once it’s been derailed)

• Emotional and cognitive regulation → shifting from reactivity to embodied leadership and grounded group behavior in the moment (later components of the program teach constructive feedback and communication for when things go off the rails, as they will.)

It’s an understatement to say that everything these days feels extra frenetic. That’s on top of the typical cycle that comes every October when the back-to-school energy has long faded into mid-semester/season tension, stress, and compounding deadlines.

No wonder then that increasingly, the most challenging part of work, family, and community life is showing up without being pulled into other folks' emotions, drama, and fear.

I needed a practice to create space between the reactivity of others and my own sensitivity as I was healing my own burnout and breakdowns but still working in the academy.

This summer, I experimented with stepping back from social media. I rarely posted beyond Substack and my continued focus on these weekly newsletters to you. I slowed down my pressures for public output. I engaged in what really nourishes connection, which meant some good community growth both in launching The Grove, as well as in my local city. I shifted that lost time and energy to creating more practices and resources to share with you.

We’re in that in-between season where we’re still carrying a little of summer’s energy and maybe some garden or farmer’s market abundance. And also already feeling the pull into autumn with those neighbors who already have halloween decorations up. Ultimately, though, I’m feeling how the days are shifting with earlier dusk, the calendar is filling with requests pushed off until after summer, and maybe you, too, have noticed how quickly old work habits creep back in.

Thresholds are invitations to be intentional and to slow.

Here we are, finally, at the final step in boundary prioritization: just doing the dang thing already. So.

What deserves your yes today?

I saved the Do Now step for last. You get to the “do” once you’ve deleted, delayed, and delegated. This is where the shift from overwhelm to clarity really happens if we’ve gone through the other steps already. We need to clear the noise. Otherwise, your doing is scattered, resentful, and overextended.

In the 4Ds of Prioritization—Delete, Delay, Delegate, Do—up next is  Delegate.

If Delete is saying “no” and Delay is “not yet,” then Delegate is: “This doesn’t have to be mine to do.”

One of my clients thought she was already good at delegating as she is a well-experienced department head until she started using the 4Ds. In the middle of a stressful accreditation cycle, she realized:

“Normally, I would have lost my mind trying to map competencies into our accreditation documents. But then I stopped and remembered: I have a whole committee for this. Instead of panicking, I handed it over. Each person took one page. It wasn’t mine to carry alone.”

Delegation is choosing not to collapse under the invisible weight of control.