When a team has endured repeated change, stability becomes more than just a goal. It becomes the test of leadership. After multiple restructures, layoffs, and leader transitions, people often arrive cautiously. The high performers carry heavier loads. Newcomers wonder what kind of team they have joined. Beneath the surface is the real question: will this be another short chapter, or the start of something steadier?
Resilience in this setting is not about individual grit. It is about how people relate to one another, how they interact with each other, and how they bring their best to the work. What matters most is not reassurance but the visible practices that help a group breathe again.
This guide offers a practical path forward. It introduces the four resilience behaviours that allow teams to bend without breaking. It explores how social identity can turn disruption into a shared story of “us.” It shows how strengths-based teaming transforms deficit thinking into recognition of gifts. Finally, it sets out a sixty-day sequence of actions that a leader can use to demonstrate consistency.
The aim is not to provide a script. It is to offer choices that leaders can adapt to their context, so stability is built conversation by conversation, practice by practice, and day by day.
The four qualities of resilient teams
When teams face repeated disruption, resilience becomes less about individual toughness and more about how people behave together. After multiple leadership changes, layoffs, or shifting roles, it is common for people to feel depleted and uncertain. In such moments, the path forward is not more heroic endurance by a few individuals but a set of practices the whole team can share.
Ferrazzi, Hanson, and Goforth (2021) identify four qualities that help teams endure uncertainty: candour, resourcefulness, compassion, and humility. These are not personality traits reserved for the lucky few. They are choices that any team can practise if the climate makes them safe.
Candour is the act of naming what we are really thinking, even when it is uncomfortable. Resourcefulness is the creativity to find a way forward when the familiar routes are blocked. Compassion lives in everyday gestures such as noticing when a colleague is overloaded or offering a word of support. Humility is the willingness to admit, “I do not know. What do you see?” and invite others into the solution.
Alliger, Cerasoli, Tannenbaum, and Vessey (2015) describe resilience as an emergent property built on both adaptability in tasks and robustness in relationships. Candour and humility strengthen learning. Compassion and resourcefulness deepen connection. Together, these qualities act as a safety net. When disruption comes, the team bends rather than breaks.
Leadership as invitation
The role of a leader in a disrupted team is not to embody all four qualities perfectly but to create the conditions where the group practises them together.
1. Create space for candour: Candour needs a regular home. One leader began every meeting with a round where each person shared one truth the team needed to hear. At first the contributions were cautious. Over time, candour became part of the fabric of the team.
Questions that help:
• “What truth have we been avoiding that would help us move forward?”
• “What concern is on your mind that we should name before we start?”
• “What is one thing we need to stop pretending about in this project?”
2. Reframe constraints as shared puzzles: Baker and Nelson (2005) showed that innovation often emerges from scarcity. Leaders can invite resourcefulness by shifting the framing from burden to puzzle. Instead of asking who will take on the extra work, they ask how the group might succeed with what it already has.
Questions that help:
• “If we had to achieve this with half the resources, what would we try?”
• “What small step could move us forward without waiting for perfect conditions?”
• “Where have we solved a challenge like this before, and what did we learn?”
3. Make compassion part of the agenda: Dutton, Frost, Worline, Lilius, and Kanov (2002) found that compassion protects against burnout and builds loyalty. Leaders who make care part of the conversation reduce the risk that people silently collapse under pressure.
Questions that help:
• “Who is carrying the heaviest load right now?”
• “What kind of support would make this week more manageable for you?”
• “When did you last feel that someone here had your back?”
4. Model humility openly: Owens and Hekman (2012) showed that leader humility strengthens team learning. Admitting doubt or asking for help signals that contribution is valued more than certainty.
Questions that help:
• “What do you see here that I may be missing?”
• “What assumption of mine should we challenge?”
• “If you were in my role, what would you do differently?”
Ways of working
Candour Round (10 minutes, every team meeting): make honesty routine so risks and concerns surface early.
At the start of a meeting, each person offers one sentence: “One truth we need on the table today.” There is no debate. At the close, the leader asks, “Of what we named, what must we act on this week to make work more workable?” In one-to-ones, ask: “What is something you have hesitated to tell me?”
Resourcefulness Sprint (25 minutes, ad hoc): build the muscle of inventiveness without slipping into overload.
Present a live constraint. For example: “We have three weeks and half the usual resources. How might we still deliver with quality?” Small groups spend eight minutes generating ideas, eight minutes narrowing to three options, and eight minutes deciding which to test. Celebrate ingenuity, not sacrifice.
Compassion Check-in (5 minutes, weekly): legitimise care as part of team life, not a private matter.
Each person shares their current energy level using green, amber, or red. When someone signals amber or red, ask, “What support would help you this week?” The group offers small adjustments such as shifting a task or adjusting a deadline.
Humility Modelling (ongoing): normalise uncertainty and invite contribution.
Leaders can begin meetings with questions such as, “What do you see that I may be missing?” or “What assumption of ours needs to be challenged?” In one-to-ones, the leader might start by naming a limitation or doubt of their own. This turns uncertainty into a shared resource rather than a private weakness.
Resilience Retrospective (45 minutes, monthly or after disruption): help the team process change together and carry forward learning.
On a board, draw three columns labelled What tested us, What helped us, and What we carry forward. Ask the team to populate each with sticky notes or comments. Discuss patterns, highlight strengths, and choose one or two practices to keep alive. This shifts the narrative from “we survived disruption” to “we created resilience together.”
Reflection questions
1. What risk of honesty am I willing to take that could shift our team toward candour?
2. When have we been most resourceful together, and what conditions allowed it?
3. How can I show compassion in a way that strengthens my colleagues rather than rescues them?
4. Where might my own defensiveness get in the way of humility?
Social identity and shared purpose
When teams experience instability, one of the greatest risks is fragmentation. People begin to think of themselves as individuals defending their own workload rather than as members of a group with a shared future. Social Identity Theory explains why this matters. Tajfel and Turner (1979) showed that people draw a significant part of their self-concept from the groups to which they belong. When identification with a team is strong, setbacks feel shared and manageable. When identification is weak, setbacks are interpreted personally, which often leads to mistrust and withdrawal.
Van Knippenberg and Van Schie (2000) found that team identification is strongly correlated with cooperation and commitment, even under pressure. Haslam, Reicher, and Platow (2011) argued that effective leaders succeed not by exerting authority but by creating and advancing a shared sense of “us.” For a team disrupted by repeated change, the leader’s task is not only to manage tasks but to host conversations that restore a credible and hopeful sense of belonging.
Leadership as invitation
1. Co-create a unifying story: Pratt (2000) found that identity deepens when personal stories are linked to collective meaning. Leaders can convene conversations that turn disruption into a story of resilience rather than decline.
Questions that help:
• “If we told the story of our team so far, what headline would capture it?”
• “What are the moments when we kept going, even when conditions were tough?”
• “How do we want to be described by others six months from now?”
2. Use symbols and rituals of belonging: Ashforth and Mael (1989) showed that rituals and shared symbols reinforce identity. Leaders can introduce small but consistent practices that say, “You are part of this.”
Questions that help:
• “What is one small ritual we could create to welcome new members well?”
• “How might we acknowledge colleagues when they move on?”
• “What words or images capture the best of who we are together?”
3. Connect goals to personal meaning: Haslam, O’Brien, Jetten, Vormedal, and Penna (2005) found that people are more committed when team goals align with their own values. Leaders can make this explicit by linking the work to what matters personally to each member.
Questions that help:
• “Which part of our current work feels most meaningful to you?”
• “How does this project connect with what you most enjoy contributing?”
• “What would make our goals matter more deeply to you?”
4. Reinforce identity through inclusive language: Steffens, Haslam, and Reicher (2014) found that leaders who use inclusive pronouns such as “we” and “our” build legitimacy and strengthen collective identification. Language shapes belonging.
Questions that help:
• “When I speak about our work, do you hear enough ‘we’ and not too much ‘I’?”
• “How do we want to refer to ourselves when we speak to others?”
• “What phrases or language make you feel most connected to this team?”
Ways of working
Team Timeline (60 minutes, after major change or quarterly): make the team’s shared journey visible and honour resilience.
Draw a horizontal line from the team’s formation to the present. Mark milestones such as leadership changes, new hires, and major projects. Invite members to add their personal highs above the line and lows below. Step back and look together at the picture that emerges.
Prompts you could use:
• “Which moments shaped us most deeply?”
• “Where did we feel most united?”
• “What patterns do we see in how we responded to change?”
Collective Identity Map (45 minutes, when re-setting direction): surface the values and aspirations that define the team.
Place the team’s name in the centre of a page or whiteboard. Branch outward with prompts such as “What defines us?” “What do we value?” “How do we want to be known?” Each member contributes words, drawings, or symbols. Cluster the themes and give them names.
Prompts you could use:
• “What do we want others to say about us when we are not in the room?”
• “What values have we actually lived in the past month?”
• “What would we like to be known for in the future?”
Future Headlines (45 minutes, team workshop): give shape to a shared aspiration for the team’s future.
In small groups, invite people to design a front page of a newspaper six months in the future, with a headline and story about the team’s success. Groups share their headlines, and common themes are drawn out to shape a vision statement.
Prompts you could use:
• “If our team made the news for something positive, what would the headline be?”
• “What story would you want others to tell about us?”
• “What success would make you feel proudest?”
Artifacts of Survival (30 minutes, after turbulence): recognise resilience by sharing personal symbols of endurance.
Invite members to bring or draw an object that represents how they personally endured the disruption. Each person shares their artifact and the story behind it. As these stories are told, the team begins to see its resilience in concrete, lived form.
Prompts you could use:
• “What symbol best represents how you made it through the last period of change?”
• “What small act or resource kept you going?”
• “How does this artifact connect to the strength of our team?”
Reflection questions
1. If our team story were drawn on a wall, what patterns would dominate: resilience, loss, creativity, or survival?
2. What shared symbols or rituals could best capture who we are becoming together?
3. How can I connect each person’s contribution more clearly to the values and goals of the team?
4. What language choices of mine could strengthen the sense of “us” in our daily work?
Strength-based teaming: building on gifts
When teams are unsettled by disruption, it is common for leaders to fall into deficit thinking. They ask what is missing, who is underperforming, and where the gaps are. This focus on problems is understandable, but it can quietly erode morale. Positive psychology offers another path. Clifton and Buckingham (2001) showed that people grow most when they spend more time using their natural talents. Cooperrider and Whitney (2005), through Appreciative Inquiry, demonstrated that focusing on what gives life to organisations generates more sustainable change than focusing only on deficiencies.
Strength-based teaming applies these insights at the group level. Instead of treating members as interchangeable, the team is seen as a mosaic of different gifts. Stairs, Galpin, Page, and Linley (2006) found that aligning strengths with roles increases both productivity and well-being. In such teams, resilience does not come only from output but from the experience of being valued for one’s unique contribution.
Leadership as invitation
1. Surface and name strengths openly: Strengths are often hidden or assumed. Leaders can create settings where people tell stories of their best contributions, and peers reflect back the gifts they notice. Over time this makes the language of strengths natural.
Questions that help:
• “When have you felt most alive in this team?”
• “What do others here rely on you for, even if it is not written in your job description?”
• “What contribution are you proud of that others may not know about?”
2. Align tasks with natural contributions: People feel trusted and motivated when their responsibilities match what they do best. Leaders can make this explicit by linking task assignment to observed strengths.
Questions that help:
• “Who has shown this skill before, and how might we build on it?”
• “Which part of this project is best suited to your natural strengths?”
• “How does this task connect with what you most enjoy doing?”
3. Rotate roles intentionally: High performers are often leaned on heavily, which risks both overload and resentment. Leaders can protect against dependency by rotating responsibilities and giving others the chance to grow.
Questions that help:
• “Which task have you always wanted to try, even if it feels new?”
• “Who could step into this responsibility if we offered the right support?”
• “What role might stretch you in a way that feels positive?”
4. Celebrate contribution as much as outcomes: When recognition includes hidden or relational contributions, the culture broadens. Resilience becomes something all can offer, not just those with visible deliverables.
Questions that help:
• “Whose quiet contribution made our work easier this week?”
• “What gift did someone offer that deserves more recognition?”
• “How can we celebrate contributions that are not measured on a dashboard?”
Ways of working
Gift and Contribution Round (40 minutes, team setting): shift identity from roles to strengths by naming gifts out loud.
In pairs or trios, each person tells a story of when they felt most alive in the team. Listeners reflect back the gift they heard. In plenary, capture these gifts on a board or canvas. Over time this becomes a visible strengths map for the team.
Prompts you could use:
• “What moment in this team made you feel proudest?”
• “What strengths were you drawing on in that moment?”
• “What gifts do you see in each other that may go unspoken?”
Appreciative Interviews (30 minutes, pairs): deepen recognition of strengths through peer discovery.
Team members interview one another for ten minutes each, with prompts such as, “When have you felt most proud of your work here?” The interviewer then introduces their partner to the group through the strengths they discovered. People often believe their gifts more readily when spoken by others.
Prompts you could use:
• “What was your best moment in this role so far?”
• “What do you most enjoy contributing?”
• “What qualities of yours show up under pressure?”
Contribution Matrix (45 minutes, team workshop): rebalance workload and make invisible contributions visible.
Draw a grid with team members on one side and recurring tasks on the other. Each person marks tasks where they feel strong, where they want to learn, and where they feel drained. Review the grid together and agree on redistributions that reduce overload and increase learning opportunities.
Prompts you could use:
• “Which responsibilities leave you energised, and which leave you drained?”
• “Where are we at risk of over-relying on the same people?”
• “Which tasks could be shared or rotated more fairly?”
Future Best-Self Mapping (45 minutes, individual then group): link personal aspiration with collective identity.
Each member imagines themselves six months from now, operating at their best in the team. They draw or describe what that looks like. Small groups share their maps, and the images are placed on a wall as a “future selves” gallery. Leaders can return to these maps later and ask, “How close are we to what we imagined?”
Prompts you could use:
• “What does your best self look like in this team six months from now?”
• “What strengths will you be known for by then?”
• “What impact will you be making that excites you most?”
Peer Recognition Ritual (10 minutes, weekly): normalise recognition across the team rather than only from the leader.
At the close of a weekly meeting, each person names one contribution they noticed from another. Recognition should be specific and strength-focused. Over time, contributions that were once invisible become valued.
Prompts you could use:
• “What contribution from a colleague helped you most this week?”
• “Who showed a strength that deserves recognition?”
• “What did someone do that lifted the team in a quiet way?”
Reflection questions
1. When do I most see this team operating from gifts rather than gaps?
2. Who may be carrying contributions that remain invisible and unacknowledged?
3. How could our next project be structured so that roles align more closely with strengths?
4. What practice could I introduce that would make strengths part of our everyday rhythm?
Sixty days to steadiness
For a team that has lived through repeated disruption, steadiness does not come from promises. It comes from a visible sequence of actions. What follows is a potential path forward, paced in four blocks of fifteen days. Each phase builds on the last. The aim is to show consistency, rebalance fairness, and create the beginnings of a shared identity.
Days 1–15: Listen and welcome
• One-to-ones with every team member. Use the same three questions: What gives you energy here? What drains you? What would make the next fifteen days workable? Consistency signals fairness.
• Hopes and concerns session. In a short team meeting, ask each person to name one hope and one concern for this new chapter. Record and display them. This shows that voices are being taken seriously.
• Welcome Circle for the new hire. Each person shares one thing they value about the team and one gift they believe it brings. The new colleague adds what they hope to contribute. This ritual accelerates belonging.
Days 16–30: Build a shared picture
• Team Health Check. Ask members to rate how the team is doing on four dimensions: clarity of goals, fairness of workload, trust, and collective energy. Discuss the patterns and agree on one or two immediate priorities. This creates a shared picture of reality.
• Short rituals of candour and care. At the start of meetings, continue with a one-line truth round and colour check-in. Keep these short, consistent, and visible. They create safety without taking over the agenda.
• Leader reflection back. Summarise what you have heard and name the adjustments you are making. This proves listening is not just symbolic.
Days 31–45: Rebalance and clarify
• Contribution Matrix. Create a grid of tasks and people. Each member marks where they feel strong, drained, or want to grow. Use the results to move at least one heavy task away from high performers and to give the new hire a scoped piece of work that matters.
• Pairing Practice. Assign the new hire to work alongside a high performer on one meaningful project. This accelerates learning and integration.
• Performance reset conversation. With the inconsistent contributor, agree on three outcomes and three behaviours for the next thirty days. Write it down and review weekly. Pair accountability with support by asking, “What resources would help you succeed?”
• Peer recognition ritual. At the end of team meetings, invite each person to name one contribution they noticed from another. This spreads recognition and keeps morale from resting only on outcomes.
Days 46–60: Strengthen identity and set rhythms
• Collective Identity Map. Ask members to map answers to prompts such as “What defines us?” and “How do we want to be known?” From this, co-create a one-paragraph team promise. Display it visibly.
• Future Team Vision. Invite the group to imagine the team six months ahead at its best. Have them draw or describe what that looks like. Place these visions in a shared space and revisit them at key points.
• Light operating rhythm. Publish a rhythm of weekly stand-ups for coordination, a monthly learning hour for reflection, and quarterly retrospectives for adaptation. These small structures reassure the team that they can rely on a consistent frame even when conditions change.
Conclusion
In disrupted teams, steadiness is not declared. It is demonstrated. Members will decide whether to trust by watching what happens, not by listening to promises.
Resilience grows when candour is given a place, when constraints are reframed as puzzles to solve together, when compassion is part of the agenda, and when humility is modelled in leadership. It deepens when people share a story of “us” that they can believe in, and when strengths are made visible and aligned with the work.
The practices outlined here give a team more than hope. They provide evidence that belonging and contribution are possible even after disruption. Over time, this evidence matters more than reassurance.
The promise of resilience is not that change will stop, but that the group can bend without breaking, and keep moving in ways that affirm connection, value, and shared possibility.
Reflection questions for leaders
1. What consistent action of mine will most convince this team that I am and we are here to stay?
2. How am I making space for both accountability and care in equal measure?
3. In what ways am I helping the group move from a story of disruption to a story of us?
Do you have any tips or advice? What has worked for you?
Do you have any recommended resources to explore?
Thanks for reading!
References
Alliger, G.M., Cerasoli, C.P., Tannenbaum, S.I. and Vessey, W.B. (2015) ‘Team resilience: How teams flourish under pressure’, Organizational Dynamics, 44(3), pp. 176–184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2015.05.003
Ashforth, B.E. and Mael, F. (1989) ‘Social identity theory and the organization’, Academy of Management Review, 14(1), pp. 20–39. https://doi.org/10.2307/258189
Baker, T. and Nelson, R.E. (2005) ‘Creating something from nothing: Resource construction through entrepreneurial bricolage’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 50(3), pp. 329–366. https://doi.org/10.2189/asqu.2005.50.3.329
Block, P. (2024) The Leader as Convener. Cincinnati: Designed Learning.
Bruner, J. (1991) ‘The narrative construction of reality’, Critical Inquiry, 18(1), pp. 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1086/448619
Buckingham, M. and Clifton, D.O. (2001) Now, Discover Your Strengths. New York: Free Press.
Cooperrider, D.L. and Whitney, D. (2005) Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Dutton, J.E., Frost, P.J., Worline, M.C., Lilius, J.M. and Kanov, J.M. (2002) ‘Leading in times of trauma’, Harvard Business Review, 80(1), pp. 54–61.
Ferrazzi, K., Hanson, M. and Goforth, R. (2021) ‘Building a resilient team’, Harvard Business Review, 99(2), pp. 64–73.
Haslam, S.A., O’Brien, A., Jetten, J., Vormedal, K. and Penna, S. (2005) ‘Taking the strain: Social identity, social support, and the experience of stress’, British Journal of Social Psychology, 44(3), pp. 355–370. https://doi.org/10.1348/014466605X37468
Haslam, S.A., Reicher, S.D. and Platow, M.J. (2011) The New Psychology of Leadership: Identity, Influence and Power. Hove: Psychology Press.
Owens, B.P. and Hekman, D.R. (2012) ‘Modeling how to grow: An inductive examination of humble leader behaviors, contingencies, and outcomes’, Academy of Management Journal, 55(4), pp. 787–818. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2010.0441
Pratt, M.G. (2000) ‘The good, the bad, and the ambivalent: Managing identification among Amway distributors’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 45(3), pp. 456–493. https://doi.org/10.2307/2667106
Stairs, M., Galpin, M., Page, N. and Linley, A. (2006) ‘Retention on a knife edge: The role of employee engagement in talent management’, Selection & Development Review, 22(5), pp. 19–23.
Steffens, N.K., Haslam, S.A. and Reicher, S.D. (2014) ‘Up close and personal: Evidence that shared social identity is a basis for the “special” relationship that binds followers to leaders’, The Leadership Quarterly, 25(2), pp. 296–313. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.08.008
Tajfel, H. and Turner, J.C. (1979) ‘An integrative theory of intergroup conflict’, in Austin, W.G. and Worchel, S. (eds.) The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, pp. 33–47.
van Knippenberg, D. and van Schie, E.C.M. (2000) ‘Foci and correlates of organizational identification’, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 73(2), pp. 137–147. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317900166949
Weick, K.E. (1995) Sensemaking in Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Leave A Comment