Tools for Teams
Three things you can do to make your organization more resilient. 1) Identify where your team is on the stress continuum. 2) Develop strategies to maintain a “Ready to Respond” state. 3) Pre-game how your organization will respond to traumatic events.
1. Assess Your Team’s Stress
Where is your team on the Stress Continuum? Does your team easily move from being Ready to Respond to Reacting and back again? Can you recognize some of these traits in your teammates? Where on the Stress Continuum does your team function it’s best?
2. Develop strategies to maintain a “Ready to Respond” state.
How does your Team recharge it’s battery? What small (or big) changes can your organization make to help keep everyone in the “Green”? What brings the team together, develops connection and re-energizes the focus?
3. Pre-game how your organization will respond to traumatic events.
No one wants to think about what happens when things go sidewise, like a workplace fatality. It’s dark and it’s hard. As First Responders, we witness people’s worst day and we do everything we can to make it a little less awful. But what do we do, as a team, when it’s our organization’s “worst day”? Who will you call for support? Where will you bring everyone together? Where will you get the food to feed everyone? Will team members need transportation, a place to stay? Do they have someone to go home to? Who will be available to follow up, and check in on teammates over the following days, weeks and months?
