How to Build Resiliency That Gets Change Across the Finish Line

Resiliency is what carries teams through the messy middle of change when routines are disrupted and the work feels harder than before. This article explains the three buckets you need to fill to build resiliency to make change stick.

Written by Lyndon Friesen, who leads our Professional Development arm of Outback Team Building, called Ignitor. Over the past 10 years, Lyndon and his skilled team of Facilitators have led over 800 different learning and development events for over 500 different organizations across North America.

The 3 Buckets That Build Resiliency to Empower Successful Change

In my experience, resiliency grows when leaders consistently fill three buckets. When all three are addressed, people have the clarity and energy to keep going when the work is hard.

1. Make the Case for Why the Change is Imperative

If a change feels optional, it will always be overshadowed by the urgent. Your people already have more work than hours. They need to understand why this is mission-critical now and what happens if it doesn’t happen.

Leaders often say, “I’ve told them three times.” 

But if the “why” isn’t landing, the problem isn’t repetition. It’s that the “why” hasn’t been made imperative enough. 

It’s essential for you to understand that people don’t have time for non-imperative change.

You can frame the imperative in terms of opportunity or risk, and the hard truth is this: weaker leaders lean on fear, while stronger ones point to opportunity. It’s all about how you frame things. 

Here’s a good way to think about it.

Imagine falling overboard at sea. The boat, once your place of safety, is now gone.

But there’s good news: you can still see land on the horizon. If there’s one thing you know for sure, it’s that land is your new place of safety. Once you get there, you’ll have food, water, shelter, and security. 

You have a target, so you swim. It won’t necessarily be easy, but you know where you’re going, and why you need to get there. 

This is imperative, fueled by opportunity. 

Now, picture this. You’ve fallen overboard, but there’s no land in sight. You know you can’t tread water forever, and to make matters worse, you know nightfall is in three hours, and that’s when sharks feed. 

There’s no two ways about it: you need to find land and get there fast, or you’ll be in dire trouble. 

The problem is that you don’t know where it is, let alone how to get there.

So, you doggypaddle in the dark, filled with a sense of dread, aimlessly swimming and hoping for the best. 

That’s imperative, fueled by risk.

This is a drastic, dramatic example, but there’s a point to the story:

When you communicate the imperative, frame it as an opportunity, and provide a clear pathway toward it, you necessitate action but make it a positive.

To ensure your message resonates when communicating the imperative:

• Name what’s at stake in plain terms, defining the opportunity that stands to be gained through change
• Be specific about timing, explaining why this is the moment to act
• Repeat it on a consistent cadence in town halls, team meetings, and one-to-ones

But, before you start spreading the word, there’s a caveat to communicating the imperative effectively. 

I’ll get to that shortly.

2. Articulate future success so people can see it

Urgency gets people moving. Hope keeps them going. If the imperative is the push, a vivid picture of success is the pull. 

As a leader, your job is to make the end state so clear that people can visualize themselves in it.

I often point to a story about Formula 1 star Fernando Alonzo. 

Before he won his first race, he would visualize, in great detail, what victory would be like: 

• The sweat running down his face
• The click of the buckle as he unfastened the harness
• Feeling exhausted but still standing on top of the car
• Turning his head to the left and seeing fifty people in his pit crew behind the fence
• Jumping off the car and running toward them
• Jumping into their arms
• Being on stage and spraying champagne at the media, at his team, at whoever finished second and third
• What it would feel like to touch the trophy and win the trophy
• The team photo with the trophy there, fifty people around him, and he is sitting in front, right in the middle of his pit crew

That is a full-color end state. Not “win the race and increase points,” but a visceral picture his head and heart could believe.

Leaders need to do the same for their teams. 

“Higher revenue” is not a visceral picture, but “a faster close cycle with fewer handoffs so customers start seeing value sooner and your queue is clear by late afternoon” might be. 

Here’s where that aforementioned caveat comes into play, though. 

There’s no one-size-fits-all formula for how you communicate the imperative and paint your vivid picture of success. After all, a line operator, a salesperson, and a finance lead will hear the stakes through different realities. 

Put it in their language.

Each of your teams and employees should understand why we need the change—not just why leadership wants the change.

When people can say (and believe), “We need it” in their own words, ownership emerges and resiliency follows.

3. Celebrate along the way to sustain energy

Resiliency fades when effort dissipates into nothing, and effort can evaporate when it goes unrecognized. 

During change, progress rarely arrives as a single leap. It shows up as a string of small wins that point to the larger outcome. 

Leaders who notice and celebrate those wins keep people engaged through the grind.

Celebration doesn’t always mean a party (although it certainly can). Often it’s personal and specific:

• A short note that names the behavior and the impact
• A quick shout-out in stand-up with a one-sentence link back to the end state
• A brief update that shows the metric you committed to beginning to bend in the right direction

It’s an acknowledgement of what we said success would look like on the way to our goal and how individual efforts have helped us reach that milestone—a small proof that the intended, articulated success is showing up. 

Those signals tell people their hard work is producing visible movement and keep them invested. 

If you want to celebrate small wins to fuel resiliency, aim to:

• Make recognition timely and precise, naming the action and why it mattered
• Connect the dots to the finish line, showing how this win advances us closer to the end state
• Spread credit widely so that different teams and people see their role in the story
• Mark thresholds so that when you hit a milestone, you can pause to acknowledge it, then reset focus on the next step

Celebration isn’t fluff. It’s the energy refill that keeps people pressing forward when the novelty of the change has worn off and the hard work remains.

Bring the buckets together and tailor them to your people

If there’s one universal truth in change leadership, it’s that these buckets work together:

• The imperative gets people moving
• The vivid picture of success gives them a direction that makes the effort worthwhile
• Celebration supplies the energy to sustain the journey

If you have a hole in one bucket, resiliency leaks away until nothing is left: 

• Overstate the imperative without a clear finish line, and you create anxiety instead of momentum
• Define success, but never link it to wins along the way, and motivation sags
• Celebrate frequently without reminding people why the change is critical, and progress drifts

And with all that being said, here’s the secret sauce:

Resiliency is co-created. 

Leaders create the conditions that allow it to grow, and employees bring it to life. When everyone’s on the same page, teams develop the capacity to handle both expected and unexpected pressure. 

That’s the promised land—where change isn’t just endured. It’s moved across the finish line, like Fernando Alonzo claiming his first podium. 

If you want help building and filling these buckets, Ignitor programs like Professional Development programs, like Positive Team Dynamics, Clear Communication, and Emotional Intelligence, give managers the tools to lead through the messy middle with clarity and consistency. That’s where resiliency shows up, and that’s where change is won.

Learn to lead through change more effectively.

Get in touch with our Employee Engagement Consultants today to learn how you can use empower a stronger, more confident team that can successfully execute organizational change.

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