We’re all the heroes of our own story — until we’re not.
When unexpected setbacks and challenges disrupt the plans we make for ourselves — for example, getting passed for a promotion at work, which disrupts the goal of receiving a coveted title — we have few options. We can either succumb to these unplanned variables (“I’m never going to receive this promotion; it wasn’t meant for me”), or we can bounce back (“I will receive this promotion, it might just take some additional time”).
The latter response is marked by resilience and has often been thought of as an innate characteristic within ourselves — either you’re born with resilience or you’re not. But forthcoming research supported by the Innovation Resource Center for Human Resources shows that that’s not necessarily the case.
“Resilience is not purely an individual characteristic, but is also heavily enabled by strong relationships and networks,” researchers of the study wrote in a recent Harvard Business Review article. “We can nurture and build our resilience through a wide variety of interactions with people in our personal and professional lives. These interactions can help us to shift or push back on work demands and alter the magnitude of the challenge we’re facing.”
For Leo Chang, the VP of engineering at Human API — a platform that allows individuals to share their health data with companies that can use it to inform use cases in areas like life insurance, clinical research and more — the idea of resilience as a shared effort is on display.
Chang recently spoke with Built In SF to speak to how, as a leader, he models and builds resilience within his team. He described the tactics he uses daily to keep teammates encouraged and engaged, and how resilience, especially when it comes to problem solving, is important to getting things done as a team.
“Mistakes will happen,” Chang said. “They’re celebrated as an opportunity to learn.”
How do you, as a leader, model resilience for your team?
I emphasize trusting people’s judgment over processes. I aim to balance quick, confident decision-making with humility. I encourage each person to inhabit their own culture and style, while still maintaining clear accountability and alignment on the important things. Do we all understand what we’re doing and how it ties back to the bigger picture? And finally, I process things out loud with the team and am constantly asking everyone, especially myself, the “why” behind what we’re doing next.
Supporting all of this is building a culture of trust and support. It’s understood and expected that mistakes will happen. They’re celebrated as an opportunity to learn. Through tough conflicts and times of uncertainty, everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt. I model that in the way I share updates, talk about my peers and advocate for other teams as we work toward solutions.
I encourage each person to inhabit their own culture and style, while still maintaining clear accountability and alignment.”
What are some actions you take to keep your team engaged, happy and motivated to come to work every day?
A huge part of the morale and motivation for most engineers revolves around three related areas: growth, working with people who have excellent technical and collaborative character, and a culture of trust and transparency that emphasizes productive merit and thus minimizes corporate overhead and politics.
I try to be as present as possible so that everyone can see me regularly — hence, my open-door policy — and I pay attention to their technical work and support all kinds of problem-solving. This helps me greatly to work with the leaders in my group to promote the three areas I mentioned earlier with their teams. This includes many instances where individual contributors are leading without people management responsibilities via mentoring and organizing design efforts with stakeholders. We also encourage engineers to work on new-to-them technologies, either within or outside of their current team.
When people feel connected to and trust their colleagues, it’s easier for them to weather the challenges that come their way. What are some activities or rituals your team does to strengthen bonds and create the kind of team camaraderie that supports resilience?
Because I believe technical growth plays such an important role, I like to record and widely share the videos of technology knowledge sessions. This applies to widely-attended brown bag presentations as well as small group collaborative design, training, code review, troubleshooting and brainstorming sessions. Similarly, promoting regular information-sharing sessions with product managers has been invaluable. Not only is knowledge-hoarding completely stamped out, but knowledge-sharing and helping others solve problems are actively encouraged and acknowledged.
