Performance and Resilience : Navigating the Paradoxical Injunction

Whether in management, politics or the family circle, resilience is increasingly presented as an obligation or a sesame: "be resilient". A bit like "trust me", "open up" or "love me", this kind of injunction is particularly counter-productive, because it is prescriptive and guilt-inducing.

How can we overcome this new paradoxical injunction?

The first step is to align the team with the concept of performance.

Performance: a multi-faceted concept

Everyone has their own definition of performance, depending on their personality. This definition will also depend on the environment, culture and management style in which the company operates. You can re-read Frederic Laloux's dynamic spiral and "reinventing organization" to convince yourself if need be.

Reading advice : re:Work - Guide: Understand team effectiveness (rework.withgoogle.com)

Once the diversity of perspectives is shared, team members will become aware that the definition of performance depends on the context and that it is important to align with the objective in each project. Furthermore, a short-term performance that neglects taking care of team members is destined to fail.

Therefore, the second step to overcome the resilience's paradoxical injunction will be to explore how, as a team, we can prepare ourselves to face challenges and uncertainties.

Resilience: a new performance criterion?

In an increasingly complex and uncertain world, it seems challenging to address the causes or consequences of crises. The escape route, therefore, lies in acting on the last thing that appears to be under our control: ourselves, specifically our way of perceiving things. Through resilience, a crisis can become an opportunity to step out of our comfort zone, to discover ourselves more profoundly, and to come closer to our purpose (be it happiness for some or normalcy for others). Fueled by a culture of individualism, positive thinking, and the need for standards and indicators, resilience has become an evaluation criterion in our organizations, often mixed indiscriminately with stress resistance, commitment, or authenticity.

·      "Do you maintain a smile even in adversity? 1 point!"

·      "Do you sacrifice a weekend to resolve an issue on the production line? 2 points!"

·      "Do you return to work two days after a serious car accident? 3 points!"

To explain resilience, I personally (like others) appreciate the metaphor of the Japanese art of Kintsugi, which involves repairing an object by highlighting its scars with gold, rather than the metaphor of a memory foam mattress that seemingly returns to its original state after your presence. Resilience is indeed a process of repair and transformation that must be accompanied and supported to move towards a new state where hardships and crises are not forgotten. However, as Laura Moaté emphasizes, this process is not accessible to everyone all the time. Not all crises automatically turn into opportunities solely through the willpower of isolated individuals.

Ingredients of resilience

More and more teams that I encounter or coach are suffering. Crises follow one another, and stress creates distance between individuals. People become entrenched in their personalities. Breaking free from this state requires concrete actions in the four dimensions of human beings:

 🌟 Spiritual: Rediscovering meaning, hope, and a sense of direction in life and reconnecting with that fierce desire to live that sometimes dates back to early childhood. In the corporate context, this can simply involve providing coherent and realistic goals.

🧠 Mental: Explaining and understanding the situation by analyzing it.

Rearranging the past allows us to survive the tragedy, even if it means resorting

to humor or derision. The purpose of this defense mechanism is to bring

coherence to the memory and make it bearable, enabling us to plan small

concrete steps forward.

😊 Emotional: Being able to articulate what is felt and recognizing the benefits

of relationships. The "resilience anchor" proposed by B. Cyrulnik is

an emotional foothold that can be relied upon to regain vitality. It involves

finding a sufficiently secure attachment, creating connections, and surrounding

oneself with people capable of showing empathy and affection.

💪 Physical: Accepting a state of weakness and engaging in movement to allow

fluids and energies to circulate. It is then possible to transform emotions

into artistic creations or other forms of societal engagement. Action is what

enables the experimentation of a new life and the transformation into a new

version of ourselves.

Following this team discussion exercise, participants will witness the advantages of combining efficiency with resilience. They will collectively determine specific actionable steps to take. The team will make a conscious decision to enhance their robustness and agility.

Resilience and Eco-Agility: Reconciling Performance and Resilience

If performance is at one end of the spectrum and resilience at the other, it is robustness that can bridge the two extremes, creating a continuum.

Paradoxically, robustness means being less susceptible to shocks. It entails sensitivity to others and the environment, as well as finding a sustainable rhythm to endure. Consider reading Olivier Hamant's "La 3ème voie du vivant" for further insights on this topic.

Robustness connects today's performance with tomorrow's resilience. To adapt to the ever-changing context, both within and outside the team, agility is a necessity. Beyond agile methodologies and structures, eco-agility involves aligning the team's functioning with the economic performance while respecting the team's ecology. A systemic approach is therefore crucial.

NB: The word "ecology" comes from the Greek "oikos," meaning "house," and "logos," meaning "science, study, discourse." It refers to the science of habitat and the relationships of organisms with their environment. The ecology of a team represents the interactions among team members and their professional environment (space, processes, culture, etc.).

To establish this eco-agility and create an open framework for continuous improvement, it is more effective and meaningful to replace the action plan with a compass. In doing so, we align with the analyses of François Dupuy and Alain Goudsmet, which I have adapted here to illustrate the evolution of managerial functions and their consequences. Note that management styles of the past have not disappeared but coexist with new ones in today's context.

The direction that agility takes will therefore depend on the corporate culture and the positioning of management, at the right level between performance and resilience.

Role-playing to improve team robustness

Teamersive began by identifying the following needs:

• Teams experience strong internal and external tensions: conflicts, crises, and uncertainties, and they are in urgent need of solutions.
• The sponsor of a team robustness improvement initiative requires tangible evidence and concrete numbers of improvement.
• Team members need secure experimental environments to enhance their skills.

To address these needs, we have combined the best of virtual reality (in a team setting), neurosciences, and information collection and analysis tools. We have developed an immersive team workshop. By experiencing this emotionally intense workshop and then visualizing behavioral analysis reports, teams gain awareness and identify areas for improvement. Moreover, participants are actively engaged and can rehearse crisis scenarios, allowing them to quickly observe individual and collective behaviors, improve their relationships, and establish new practices. This approach is particularly valuable prior to real-life situations such as a company's cyber-attack, facility fire, employee suicide, or urgent product recall.

We have developed this program in collaboration with UC Louvain, enabling us to contribute to the improvement of leadership and collaboration models. We also collaborate with Zerolatency, leading provider of "Free Roam" virtual reality technology. This technology allows participants to freely move within the virtual space without experiencing the discomfort often associated with virtual reality.

If you are interested in this approach developed by Teamersive or would like to experiment with your teams, please feel free to contact me.