Just as individuals have personal characteristics such as enthusiasm, confidence, flexibility and resilience so do teams. Whilst being a good team player and a willingness to work together is clearly an essential characteristic of an effective team, the real strength of a team is measured in its resilience. Just as in individuals the ability to bounce back after a major set back, to remain motivated and positive is key to future success. So how do you develop collective resilience?

Alex Ferguson use to get his teams to overcome challenges and succeed despite their struggles by developing an us verse the rest of the world mentality. Some managers publicly accept responsibility for their team’s failings, not only taking the pressure off individuals but rallying the team behind the manager, determined to prove the critics wrong.

Resilient teams keep things in perspective, they remain positive and they retain their self believe, they do this because their manager keeps faith in them. “ If the boss thinks we can do it then we can do it”.

The significance of the manager in developing resilience is certainly backed up by my own experience. As a member of a radical/innovative team that suffered numerous setbacks due to being out of step with the rest of the organisation I recognised that it was the team manager’s faith in the team members and the shared belief in what we were trying to do that made us able to bounce back after each disappointment.

On a bigger scale as part of a senior management team that was determinedly struggling to get out of special measures every time we thought we were getting close to the meeting the necessary criteria the goal posts seemed to move. We kept going, stayed positive, reminded our selves of the progress we had made, we never doubted ourselves largely because of the leadership of the Executive Director. Teams like individuals can develop their bounce back ability to better cope with the struggles ahead.