The Surprising Power of Organizational Resilience

I'd like to open today's post with a quote from one of my favorite authors: Margaret Wheatley.  She says:

"In my own work I am always constantly and happily surprised by how impossible it is to extinguish the human spirit. People who had been given up for dead in their organizations, once conditions change and they feel welcomed back in, find new energy and become great innovators."

This quote represents a fundamental truth that I experience firsthand in my teambuilding work.  Inevitably teambuilding starts when someone is deeply concerned about the relationships within a team.  Often this begins as a series of problems.

"We don't communicate well."
"People simply don't care."
"People backstab each other"
"Everyone is afraid to speak up."

Like Meg Wheatley, I am also happily surprised by what I see in organizations.  Once people are put in a relatively safe space to talk, they tend to open up rather quickly and speak with great courage and compassion.  Employees who may have been "checked out" a few days ago suddenly speak up with new fervor about what matters to them.  Once people feel "welcomed back" so to speak, everything changes.  I've seen these transformations take six weeks or twenty minutes, but in all cases the result feels like a loosening of old bonds - a kind of freedom.

I tell you, dear readers, there are days when I honestly can't believe that I get paid to do this kind of work.  Walking into a room (and they are all different) full of strangers and seeing that lightbulb switch on when they realize that they are empowered to make things better - it just lights up my life.

I admire the everyday courage and kindness I see in organizations everywhere I go.  And while I tend to be an optimist when it comes to the human spirit, like Meg Wheatley, I find myself surprised over and over again.

It is a distinctly pleasant kind of surprise.  I don't mind it at all.