Resilience; a new team-performance standard

By Aprais

Theres’s a lot of speculation around how team behaviour will change as a result of the Coronavirus experience.

One thing is clear, the ability for teams to respond to crises has come into sharper focus.

Let’s not confuse ‘managing in times of crisis’ with ‘crisis management’. The former is a set of behaviours whereas crisis management is a specific skill-set most commonly attributed to the Public Relations field.

Crises come in all shapes and sizes. From a ‘storm in a teacup’ local market supply chain event to a full-on, global distaster like the Covid-19 pandemic we are now battling. But the fundamental behaviours required of teams in times of crisis, are the same and marketers and agencies need to respond to them almost daily. So surely this is a crucial performance requirement of business teams?

Speed, agility, flexibilty, availabilty, responsiveness, initiative and challenge are just some of the many aspects required in times of crises. We’ve been mapping these and similar crises-related behaviours for the past 20 years of evaluating teams.

Collectively, we call this behaviour; ‘Resilience’.

According to Cambridge Dictionary, ‘Resilience’ is the quality of being able to return quickly to a previous good condition after problems. Pandemic or local supply chain failure, each demand similarly of the teams involved.

Resilient behaviour is not just limited to leadership. In the client-agency relationship, Resilience is needed across all aspects of business performance and at all levels;

• Briefing and Project Management
• Approval
• Leadership
• Partnering and Collaboration
• Research And Insight
• Financial Management
• Timing and Process Management

The Covid-19 crisis has accentuated the importance of ‘Resilience’ as a a new team-performance standard that deserves more attention from marketing and agency leadership going forward.

It will become increasingly important to measure, monitor and develop ‘Resilience’ behaviours to ensure team preparedness for future crises big and small.

About Aprais

Aprais is the global leader in maximising team and individual performance.

Over the past 20 years, Aprais has conducted over 21,000 evaluations of relationships between marketers and agencies globally. A purpose built evaluation platform has enabled Aprais to build a database that allows its clients to compare and manage team performance against robust benchmarks with near absolute statistical confidence.