Building a Resilient Team: Leadership Strategies to Overcome Obstacles

You're leading your team through a particularly demanding project. The stakes are high, the deadlines are tight, and unexpected challenges seem to pop up at every turn. 

You can feel the pressure mounting, and it feels like all eyes are on you. 

How do you navigate this storm and keep your team motivated and focused while overcoming obstacles in real-time?

There are four things I know to be true about obstacles:

• They are inevitable.

• They are unpredictable.

• Nobody wants them.

• Everybody benefits from them.

Those last two truths? They’re really the key to rising to the challenge and overcoming any obstacle. The funny thing is that nobody wants to face challenges, yet everybody benefits from them. The real magic is acknowledging and moving through “I did not ask for this” so that you can find your way to “I am going to figure out a way to grow through this.”

Here are three things you can do to help you overcome obstacles by leaning into your growth mindset and your human-centric leadership values: become a champion of challenges, redefine your relationship to failure, and radiate calm.

1. Become a Champion of Challenges

This first one might be the most challenging one of all, so we’re going to tackle it first. Because I’m going to invite you to go beyond simply accepting that challenges are inevitable. I want you to embrace challenges with such clarity and enthusiasm that you actually become a champion of challenges. By seeing challenges as opportunities, you unlock valuable lessons and insights that help you grow through adversity and succeed.

Recently, I worked with an organization where a new team of leaders had proposed major changes that would impact not only the organization itself but also its clients and the community at large.

While most people on the team recognized that these changes were necessary, they were also resistant to actually putting those changes into effect. The leadership team was struggling to understand the disconnect because they were genuinely committed to getting buy-in from their teams. They wanted their team to not just accept the changes but really feel good about embracing them.

Leaning into Win-or-Learn Leadership

Through our work together, I quickly spotted the underlying issue. It wasn’t the proposed changes that made people uncomfortable; it was the fear of what might happen if things didn’t go as planned.

The team needed to know their leaders didn’t see this as a “win or lose” situation—this was a “win or learn” opportunity. They needed to feel confident that, whatever happened, there’d be no finger-pointing; there’d be no failure. There would be challenges, and they would work through each challenge together. Each challenge would be a chance to evaluate their approach, think creatively, and make decisions based on what they’d learned. Once everyone understood that these changes were about growing forward, they felt much more comfortable embracing them.

Here's the message I took away:

🧠 Leaders who are champions for change also need to be champions of challenges and failure. 🧠

Mindset Defines Your Experience

Every challenge in your life has developed your character, helped you hone your skills, and shown you a new perspective. There is a lesson for you in every challenge, but the only way you can access that lesson is if you come through it in a clear-headed way. Overcoming obstacles builds not just your strength but your capacity to lead and thrive.

Challenges may be inevitable and unpredictable, but you have the power to choose how you experience them. You can approach them with a sense of curiosity, calm, or even gratitude, or you can choose to be miserable. But that choice is 100% within your control, and it will ultimately shape the imprint that challenge makes on your life.

If you look back on any challenge you’ve experienced and can’t find the lesson, I’m willing to bet it’s because your perspective was clouded by frustration, disappointment, and resentment—because the lesson was definitely there.

2. Redefine Your Relationship with Failure

If you’re in this space, I know that you are very likely a high achiever. I’m right there with you. I like to rise to the occasion. I like to push myself to see what I’m capable of. I love the feeling of putting in hard work and seeing it pay off.

Which means I also know that failure can be like kryptonite to people like us. We can spend all of our energy trying to outrun it, out-think it, and out-plan it. If there’s one thing that will lead high achievers to complete and utter burnout, it’s the never-ending fight against failure.

So please hear me when I tell you this:You can completely eliminate failure from your life.

What’s the magic formula and where can you buy it? I’ll give it to you for free, my friend! The trick is redefining your relationship to failure and reframing what the word “failure” means to you.

In order to fail, you have to be willing to give up. You have to be committed to ignoring the lessons. You have to decide that there is no path forward.

If you embrace a growth mindset and a continuous learning mindset, there is no such thing as failure. That’s not because things will suddenly be perfect. It’s because you will become oblivious to your “failures” because you’ll be so focused on what you can learn and how you can grow from that hard experience.

Here’s how you eliminate failure:

• Overcome the fear: We fear failure because we see it as final or defining. We worry that one mistake could ruin our reputation or that one setback can derail our entire career. If you look back at your career, you’ve probably faced many obstacles, and you’ve also been incredibly successful. Remind yourself that you’ve recovered from every single setback you’ve ever experienced, and you can and will do it again.

  
  

• Take action: Don't let fear of failure hold you back. Take calculated risks and learn from your experiences—the successes and the setbacks. Actively develop tools to help you find calm and equanimity in the midst of challenges. The reality is that you can never prepare enough to avoid every pitfall; what you can do is prepare yourself to navigate any situation with a sense of composure and confidence. Overcoming adversity requires action, not avoidance.

  
  

• Change your relationship with failure: When you view setbacks as opportunities, you're more likely to take risks, learn from your mistakes, and ultimately achieve your goals. You stop fearing failure when you start realizing that failure only exists when we throw in the towel completely, and that’s something you can fully control.

  
  

As a leader, you have the power to shape your organization’s culture around failure. By fostering a growth mindset and encouraging open communication, you can create a supportive environment where setbacks are seen as opportunities for learning and improvement.

3. Radiate Calm

Your response to challenges can have a profound impact on your team’s performance, growth, and mental health. As a 100% Human Leader, you can create a safe and supportive environment for your team to think creatively, work collaboratively, and exceed expectations.

That starts with the culture you create, and your actions are a real-time, real-life embodiment of your values. If you tell your team that you believe in growth, and then approach every setback from a place of panic and frustration, you are showing them how you truly feel. When you approach obstacles with clarity and confidence, you create a safe and supportive environment for your team, one where they have no doubt that you trust their abilities, you appreciate their initiative, and you are there to support them as you all problem-solve together.

The Power of Calmness

When faced with an obstacle, your immediate response will set the tone for your team. So, radiate calm. Staying grounded helps you think clearly and lead your team effectively. When you stay calm, your team is more likely to follow suit. By remaining composed, you send a message to your team that this is a challenge, not a catastrophe. You trust them, and together, you can create a positive outcome.

By staying calm and composed, you create a safe space for your team to think creatively and collaboratively, reinforcing the idea that challenges are opportunities for growth and learning, not simply fires to be put out.

Four Steps to Communicating from a Place of Calm

How can you communicate with your team from a place of composure, clarity, curiosity, compassion, and calm? Try these four steps.

1. Calm the body.

Stress and anxiety can cloud judgment and lead to impulsive or emotional communication. When you’re stepping into a challenging conversation, take an intentional pause to take a few deep breaths first. Even just a minute of focused breathing helps calm your parasympathetic nervous system, helping to bring your body and your brain out of fight-or-flight, which leads to more intentional, instead of reactive, responses.

2. Clear the mind.

Mental clutter and distractions can lead to unproductive conversations. Step away from everything else to have the conversation—close your laptop, put your phone in a drawer, set aside the open files on your desk. Stop everything you’re doing so that you can give this conversation your full attention. 

3. Engage curiosity.

Effective communication involves both delivering information and understanding the other person’s perspective. You are an expert in your field, but you don’t know everything. Use open-ended questions and statements rather than making declarations so that it’s clear you value their feedback and so you avoid immediately putting them on the defensive. For example, “Tell me more about…” or “What else should we consider?”

4. Lead with compassion.

Communication goes beyond conveying facts and instructions; it’s about connecting with another human and honoring the human aspect of the interaction. Always consider the person on the other side of the conversation. Allow for pauses that give them space to think and process. Admit your own gaps in knowledge or experience. And don’t always pressure yourself to respond in the moment, which can sometimes lead to reactive responses, especially when you feel stress or discomfort mounting. It’s okay to say, “You raised something really important that I need to consider more. I hope it’s okay for me to circle back to you about this when I’ve had a chance to think it through.”

By the way, these steps are part of my 100% Human Leadership program. If this seems like something that would be valuable for you, your team, or your organization, I would love to work with you! Send me a message, and let’s connect to make a positive impact.

Overcoming obstacles is a journey...

A journey that requires resilience, a growth mindset, and effective leadership. Remember, challenges are not to be feared; they are opportunities for growth and success.

So here’s my challenge for you...

This week, think about a really difficult situation you experienced at work. When you found yourself on the other side, what had you learned? How did it help you? What were some of the fruits of going through that challenge?

And then find a way to share that story with your people. It can be a quick email, part of your next team meeting, or even one-on-one with one of your team members who might be going through something similar.

That’s how you normalize challenges and failure with growth mindset leadership. That’s how you show your team that you know setbacks are always opportunities, and no failure has to be final. That’s how you show up for your team as a 100% Human leader who respects their growth.

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When you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help...

🌱 Learn how to train your brain with my course 👉🏽Stop & Shift: https://karen-allen.mykajabi.com/stop-and-shift

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