The Resilient Purpose-Driven Team: 5 Steps to Keep Your Mission Strong When It's Hard
Natural beauty, courtesy of the expansive and resilient Canyonlands National Park, Moab, UT.
Tamara Staton
Founder, Lighter Side of Climate
Many thanks to Tamara Staton, our most recent speaker at our Happy Hour for Good event and a friend of the BCFG community.
It’s Tuesday morning. Monday is behind you, but the rest of the week still looms ahead, teetering on a to-do list that is longer than you’d like. Emails to reply to, meetings to schedule, social media posts to publish. The weight on your shoulders feels heavy, as a purpose-driven leader who carries the burden of responsibility to improve a world that clearly needs a lot. It’s hard to hold it all. But you’re committed to your mission and driven by your passion - so while it’s a lot, it’s not too much.
Not yet, anyway.
This is where resilience comes in.
Meaning of Resilience
The Bounce Back project defines resilience as “the ability to adapt to, recover from, or grow stronger following significant adversity, setbacks, or challenges.” This is what we need as values-driven leaders, right? An ability to stay strong and steady over time, with capacity to bounce forward. As much as we may attempt to reduce the challenges, there’s no way to eradicate them completely. Our best source of success comes from increasing our capacity to respond with intention - for ourselves and our teams.
Resilience is Good Business Strategy
Research consistently shows that resilience isn't just good for people — it's good for business. Resilient employees handle workplace stress better and develop stronger protective factors against burnout. They report greater job satisfaction, deeper organizational commitment, and stronger workplace relationships. And employers see the returns: increased productivity, lower absenteeism, and reduced turnover. When 83% of U.S. workers report feeling work-related stress, building resilience isn't a nice-to-have — it's a business strategy.
How to Build Resilience
There are many ways to build resilience. It’s really just a matter of figuring out what regulates your nervous system - and to do that again and again and again. But it can help to have a framework for creating that regulation, especially in those moments when stress and overwhelm are high.
Over the years, I’ve developed a 5-step framework that has helped many people navigate challenging moments and amplify their impact:
Notice
Accept
Connect
Practice
Rest
When we take these steps, we can help ourselves breathe easier (with ‘Not Any CPR’)😉.
The Physiology of Resilience
Taking these steps helps us stay in our window of tolerance, a concept coined by Dr. Daniel Siegel that describes our ability to function effectively, manage stress and respond to our surroundings without becoming overwhelmed. When we’re in our window, it’s easier to connect to others, and to feel calm, curious, compassionate, and creative. Building resilience also allows us to widen our window, which creates more tolerance for more people, things, and situations so that we’re less likely to get kicked into a fight, flight or freeze response. It’s challenging, ineffective and inefficient to run a business or provide leadership from a nervous system that has been triggered to protect us from danger.
Back at your desk, your to-do list looms large. You dive into your top task and are making good progress when your phone buzzes. It’s the accountant calling to tell you that the budget isn’t balanced, and you’re going to need to cut way back on spending. After hanging up, you try to get back to it - but you can’t. You’re completely distracted by what you just learned and your nervous system has essentially been hijacked.
You could try to push through - do your best to ignore the call and put your shoulder to the grindstone.
Or, you could try a little NACPR.
Notice
Notice what is happening in and around you, specifically focusing on thoughts, feelings and sensations. In this case, you may have noticed yourself thinking that there’s no way you can cut back anymore. Or perhaps you found yourself thinking that your accountant made a mistake. Maybe you notice that you’re feeling somewhat angry, irritable, overwhelmed. Potentially scared that things aren’t going to work out. You might feel a tightness in your chest or shoulders, or pressure behind your eyes or temples.
Accept
Maybe you then start to notice yourself thinking that you shouldn’t be annoyed with your accountant. Or that you shouldn’t have these thoughts, emotions or sensations because they’re holding you back from what you really need to do. This is where acceptancecomes in: accept that you are as you are, and things are as they are, at least for now. You had a reaction that caused various experiences. Your budget is what it is. Accepting that doesn’t mean you have to like it or give up on change. Allowing authenticity is the first step to freeing yourself to make improvements.
Connect
At this point, maybe you’ve got it. You know what your system needs and you can grab some tools from your metaphorical toolbox and get yourself back to calm, clear and creative. But maybe, this is the time when it would help to connect: to consider what you need, and what others need, and take actions to support those needs. Text a friend. Call your confidant. Recognize that some support and connection might actually feel nice. Maybe you don’t directly ask for help - that can be hard for a lot of us. Maybe all you need is to know that you’ll be with people soon - so you make a date. As social beings, with nervous systems designed to connect, we benefit from being with and around others with regulated systems.
Practice
Now that you’ve gotten the help you need, or put systems in place to help you feel supported in the future, you can now lean into practice: doing what helps you breathe with ease and access your lighter side, regularly. It could be as simple as taking a really deep breath, with a longer exhale, which signals to your parasympathetic nervous system that you can finally relax. Or maybe you step outside for some fresh air, or even just look at a few photos of nature, relying on the power of nature and soft fascination to calm your system. Leaning into what you love - with your whole body - can often help you move back into your window when you’ve been bumped out, and widen your window over time.
Rest
And now that you’ve taken some time (even just a moment!) to practice, you might be feeling less upset by the budget call. You’re ready to dive back in, consider where you could save, and tackle the rest of your to-dos. As you start to shift your attention, you might notice that you’re feeling pretty wiped. Some rest would feel really nice right now: allowing yourself the time and space to relax and do nothing. As eager as you are to dive back in, you remember our bodies’ need for physical, mental and psychological rest. And that when we incorporate rest into our day, we can actually be more productive. So, maybe you decide to go on a walk without listening to your favorite podcast. And ten minutes into the walk, you’re hit with an idea that could actually balance your budget.
Resilience isn’t about having it all together. It’s about navigating the messy moments in a way that leaves us responsible for ourselves and our actions, without passing our stress on to the people and environment around us. Resilience helps us be the best version of ourselves, and enjoy our lives in a way that ripples outward: to our teams, our communities, to our triple bottom line. And that’s worth showing up for - on a Tuesday, and every other day of the week.
Ready to go deeper? Join us for an upcoming workshop or schedule a free 30-minute consultation to discover how you and your team can deepen your resilience and amplify your impact.
Tamara Staton is the founder of Lighter Side of Climate and an Integral Master Coach™ helping purpose-driven leaders lift the weight of stress and responsibility through joy and resilience so they can amplify their impact and enjoy the journey. Learn more at lightersideofclimate.com.