The secret to sustainable team performance

There is value in using crisis situations to practice the recovery process; crises often uncover gaps. However, there are less stressful ways to build this muscle outside of waiting for the next crisis. While we're not concerned the mission will crumble under adverse conditions, we should understand what builds, drives and sustains a resilient team.

Teams who have already developed the capability to learn, adapt and move forward together are fortifying their resilience muscles outside of crisis mode. In other words, resilient performance is the outcome of a team that has become exceptionally good at learning together long before pressure arrives.

That perspective is increasingly supported by organizational research. Rus and colleagues found that leader coaching behaviors strengthen team performance by creating psychological safety that encourages teams to engage in collective learning behaviors. Psychological safety creates optimal conditions for learning individually and together as a team. Learning strengthens the team's ability to shift and adapt in the midst of unfavorable conditions. Adaptability is what we often recognize as resilience when circumstances become undeniably difficult. Rather than teaching what resilience looks like in practice, leaders may have greater success developing their team's collective learning capability.

Here are a few principles I’d encourage you to embrace:

Principle One: Take time to reflect

One of the most practical ways leaders strengthen collective learning capability is by making reflection a routine part of everyday operations rather than something reserved for annual planning or post-crisis reviews. Teams that regularly examine successes, setbacks and unexpected outcomes become better at recognizing patterns, challenging assumptions and improving future decisions. They stop viewing mistakes as interruptions to performance and begin seeing them as valuable sources of information.

Every peak season, our contact center intentionally pauses to debrief. We ask what challenged us, what exceeded expectations and what we want to carry into the next cycle. Managers openly discuss decisions they would make differently. Team members contribute perspectives leadership may not have considered. Together, we identify opportunities to improve the next iteration. Something changes when those conversations become part of the culture. People begin looking for lessons instead of simply hoping to survive another busy season. That capability is available long before the next challenge arrives.

Principle Two: Be vulnerable

Teams can’t learn together if people feel they must always appear confident or already have the right answer. Learning depends on an environment where questions are welcomed, uncertainty can be acknowledged and differing perspectives are viewed as contributions rather than challenges. Psychological safety creates the conditions that make this kind of learning possible.

We experienced this during a rare system outage that interrupted normal operations. Rather than viewing downtime as lost productivity, we encouraged the team to explore how our systems worked, revisit procedures and ask questions that often get pushed aside during busy days. The outage became an opportunity to strengthen our collective understanding. When another outage occurred later, the response felt noticeably different. People were calmer, more curious and quicker to work together because they had already practiced learning through uncertainty.

Principle Three: Share what you’ve learned

Leaders model the way. How leaders respond to unexpected outcomes teaches staff how they can learn and improve. Leaders who openly examine their own decisions, adjust their thinking and demonstrate curiosity give others permission to do the same. Learning becomes something leaders model rather than something they merely encourage.

When our performance measures showed challenges with documentation and average handle time, our leadership team chose to simplify our focus instead of adding more expectations. We openly discussed what the data was telling us, adjusted our approach together and allowed the team to watch us learn in real time. That experience reinforced that accountability and learning can coexist. Healthy cultures make room for both because improvement really depends on both.

Resilience becomes less of a leadership objective and more of an organizational outcome. Teams that consistently learn together become better at adapting together. Teams that adapt together preserve trust, maintain perspective and continue moving the work forward when circumstances change.

Your Turn

As you think about your own team, where is most of your leadership energy invested? Are you primarily preparing people to recover after difficult moment, or are you intentionally developing your team's capability to learn together before those moments arrive? The answer may reveal more about your team's future resilience than any crisis plan ever could.