Turning Setbacks into Resilience Fuel

I work on big, complex, ambitious programs and have to push a lot of parallel work streams forward for quite a while before I get to see the fruits of my efforts. This makes small setbacks seem amplified, since me and the team are pushing up a seemingly endless hill without the emotional boost and benefit of seeing the peak until the very end. And that makes it so much harder to remain excited, focused on productivity, and objective about where things stand. This post is about building muscles you need to reach the peak. What if there was a way to reframe setbacks so we could bring the team closer, and build resilience?

Let’s dig in. I remember when I was working on a project years ago that was 8 months away from launching, in the early stages, and in which a multitude of stakeholders had an opinion that was as varied as you can get. No surprise, these wide groups of people with their many, many opinions felt a huge stake and sense of ownership of the direction and shape of the program. The team decided to get everyone together and try to corral the many-headed beast. Let’s run through this case study so we can examine how to build those resilience muscles!

Face the setback or challenge. Early on we had a “brainstorming” session with the 12+ people (Why? Why did I do that?) and the end result was a muddled mess. People left frustrated and we had little direction. It was not a win. I repeat, not a win in the slightest. We knew it. Our stakeholders knew it. Me and the team left feeling pretty lousy. My first instinct was to go on the defensive. Those stakeholders were a hot mess! Don’t they know how cool our vision was? But I realized quickly denial wasn’t going to move us forward. So, I called a team meeting and we owned the setback, and then talked about what went wrong and why. Then we went individually to each of the stakeholders and did the same thing, getting an agreed upon plan to move forward, and ultimately rebuilding credibility over time as we learned from our mistake and got the boat righted. Face the setback. Name it. And then move forward.

Give yourself time to work through your feelings. I breezed through the reactions of the team in my description above, but in real life don’t gloss over it. People need time and space to work through the messiness of their feelings of disappointment, embarrassment, shame, anger, sadness.... you get the idea. Our team was so upset following the disastrous brainstorming session. I shared my own vulnerability of how I felt I let everyone down. Others shared they were embarrassed or frustrated. We put it on the table and owned it. Then we gave each other empathy and compassion. The best way to build resilience muscles is to do the hard work of owning and working through your feelings. Make space to talk and share and work through whatever reactions you may have. And once you’ve done the work, put a plan in place to start taking steps to move through the other side. Teams need structure to process feelings. It can actually make people closer when they open up and work through what’s bothering them. Especially when they know they are not alone in it.

Find the Lesson. It’s important to give time and space for people to process and work through their reactions to setbacks, but don’t wallow in it for too long. Be intentional about your transition into a takeaway and actionable steps. Our team quickly moved from our positions and feelings, to wanting to help and solve and move forward. So we began thinking through how we could have done it better, and then how we could adjust and fix it. And we included the stakeholders in the search for our lessons, so they too could move forward. That was a turning point for us because we talked though things and learned a ton. We became closer and smarter as a group. And moved past the wallowing into a sense of pride that we could still work towards something we believed in. Write down your lessons as they happen— keep a board for the team so they can see the muscles they’ve built in overcoming challenges. It’s powerful.

Change. Contractors have the famous line, you’re only as good as your last delivery. And that is so true in project work. Don’t talk about how to course correct without actually course correcting! Set your intention with yourself and the team to embrace the findings from your lesson and do things smarter, and differently. This seems super obvious, but too many times people come off a setback, only to go into autopilot where you shut down as you recover. Or worse, you go right back to where you started out of habit or comfort. The team wanted a mid-project checkpoint with our stakeholders, and our first instinct was to do another open discussion since we could get it banged out quickly. But we recognized that we ran into trouble with this the first time, and were clear with ourselves and our stakeholders that we would do it differently. We decided to change how we planned for the session, and even set expectations about the rules of the road in the session and what the expected outcome would be. We adapted and faced it with confidence and purpose. And the result was the checkpoint was a terrific discussion, full of productive insights and the team and stakeholders left energized and bought into the direction of the project.

The fact of the matter is that ambitious, complex work requires teams to struggle and overcome challenges again and again to deliver high impact work. This was not our only setback, and we became more adept in how quickly we could recover and adjust over time. Nothing will go smoothly or perfectly as you are innovating or doing something that has never been done before. Setbacks can be taxing drains and even showstoppers for your team, but they don’t need to be. Help your team work through disappointments and develop grit. Resilience is a muscle. You have to use it, train it, and keep pushing to stay strong.