How to Build Resilient Teams During a Crisis
To build a strong and supportive team, organization, or community culture, every member must commit to it. Culture is defined as how people go about meeting their needs. The Commitment Continuum is a valuable framework that helps individuals understand how they can best contribute to meeting the needs of others in their organization or community. This framework consists of four stages: Accepting, Acquiring, Achieving, and Adapting.
Everyone on a team plays a pivotal role. Leaders must know how to encourage teams to meet their needs, navigate conflicts, and grow through challenges. Here is a brief example of how individual actions can drive an organization’s mission and contribute to overall success:
SAFETY: Team members should promote physical, psychological, and identity-related safety.
DIGNITY: Each part of a team, organization, or community commits to showing deep respect and appreciation of diversity for themselves and one another. This means being responsible for language and actions.
POWER: Each person helps the team or organization navigate challenges around ownership of tasks, resolving conflicts, and inviting one another into accountability.
BELONGING: Each person does their best to relate, accept, and connect with others in a healthy way. It also means understanding how the environment can help or hinder belonging.
MASTERY: Includes the intentional seeking out and welcoming of constructive mission-related feedback.
PURPOSE: Requires that all team members leverage their skills and knowledge to advance the mission.
Commitment Continuum: created by Chris Hooten, M.A. (they/them)
At the Accepting stage, individuals reflect on their own biases and experiences that may hinder them from fully meeting the needs of others. They identify, investigate, and interrupt the factors that prevent meeting core needs. Everyone on a team plays a pivotal role, and leaders must know how to encourage teams to meet their needs, navigate conflicts, and grow through challenges.
At the Acquiring stage, individuals continue to learn and grow in their understanding of the needs of others and how they can best contribute to meeting those needs. They work to build knowledge and understanding of core needs and community work.
The Achieving stage involves taking action to address the needs of the community and working towards creating lasting change. Individuals name, and shift conditions in communities to allow core needs to be met. Of particular importance is the observation that the arrows connecting the four parts of the Commitment Continuum are bidirectional to signify that movement can go in multiple directions.
Community members are encouraged to embody this commitment continuum, and they should receive support from community leaders who, in addition to leading, choose to maintain conditions that allow for our core needs to be met consistently.
At the Adapting stage, individuals view the conditions of their community with curiosity and reflect on how to honor core needs better. They are aware of the needs of others and understand how they can contribute to meeting those needs. By following these four stages, individuals can improve their effectiveness and help create a more positive and supportive environment.
The Commitment Continuum underscores that affirming core needs is a continuous and dynamic non-hierarchical process. There is no “end state,” and each person can and should work to build their knowledge and understanding, test out different methods or approaches, and adapt to better meet the needs of those they are in community with. If you are interested in learning more about the Commitment Continuum and core needs, I offer workshops, trainings, and keynotes that delve into these topics. Contact me for more information.