Course Highlights
This virtual course on building team resilience will:
- Identify the conditions that promote or hinder resilience at both the individual and team level.
- Explain how thoughts, emotions, and behaviors interconnect and influence each other in a continuous loop.
- Introduce the RISE framework for recognizing adversity, reframing interpretation, selecting strategies, and understanding the resulting effects.
- Provide tools for determining when to focus on changing circumstances versus adapting reactions to what cannot be changed.
- Guide the group through the “I have, I am, I can” framework applied at the team level as “We have, we are, we can.”
- Introduce fourteen cognitive distortions and a structured six-step process for reframing narratives.
- Prepare participants for high-stress situations and reinforce the practice of reflecting on successes alongside setbacks.
Program Overview
Resilience is not the ability to avoid difficulty. It is the capacity to recognize adversity clearly, interpret it without distortion, select a response that is actually useful, and sustain the effort required to move through it. For teams, that capacity is both individual and collective, and developing it requires more than a positive attitude.
This virtual session examines resilience from the inside out. The course opens by mapping the conditions that build and erode resilience at both the personal and team level, then turns to the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms that determine how people actually respond when pressure arrives. The RISE framework gives participants a structured tool for working through adversity rather than simply absorbing it. The cognitive distortions module names the irrational thought patterns that make hard situations feel worse than they are, and the rewriting exercise gives participants a practical method for replacing those patterns with something more accurate and more useful. The session closes with the team version of the “I have, I am, I can” resilience framework and a set of tools for preparing for difficult situations before they arrive.
The following outline highlights the course’s main learning points. For virtual delivery, the structure and timing are intentionally set to support discussion and practice. We can adjust emphasis or drop select elements based on your business priorities. Upon request, we can preview the participant materials with you prior to the session(s).
Program Objectives
At this program’s conclusion, participants should be able to:
- Identify the conditions that promote or hinder resilience at the individual and team level.
- Explain the connection between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
- Apply the RISE framework for reframing events, selecting strategies, and understanding behavioral and emotional outcomes.
- Determine whether a situation can be changed or whether the more effective response is managing the emotional reaction to it.
- Use the “I have, I am, I can” structure — and its team equivalent — to identify supports, strengths, and available actions.
- Recognize fourteen common cognitive distortions.
- Apply a six-step narrative reframing process to replace distorted thinking with more accurate and useful alternatives.
- Prepare for stressful situations before they occur.
- Reflect on successes as well as on challenges.
Program Modules
A Few Fundamentals: Conditions That Promote or Hinder Resilience
The session opens by grounding the group in a working definition of resilience and a parallel framework for the growth mindset that underlies it. Two side-by-side models examine the conditions that build resilience — including strong social support, effective coping strategies, optimism, self-efficacy, and emotional intelligence — alongside the conditions that erode it, including isolation, fixed mindset patterns, chronic stress, poor problem-solving skills, and pessimism. The same analysis then applies at the team level, examining what team dynamics build collective resilience and what patterns quietly undermine it. Individual and group reflection questions give participants the opportunity to honestly assess where they and their team currently stand before the session moves into the tools for change.
Take Three: Thoughts, Emotions, and Behaviors
Resilience does not operate in isolation from how people think and feel. This part of the course examines the continuous loop connecting thoughts, emotions, and behaviors — three elements that influence each other in ways that can either sustain or undermine productive responses to adversity. The group will work through a workplace example in which a piece of critical feedback produces a negative interpretation, which generates discouraging emotions, which drives avoidance behavior, which reinforces the original distorted thought. Participants will trace the loop in both directions and identify where an intervention would have the most impact, establishing the conceptual foundation for the RISE framework that follows.
A New Path: Reprogramming Thinking with RISE
The RISE framework gives participants a four-step structure for navigating adversity rather than simply reacting to it. Recognition is the step of clearly acknowledging the situation without minimizing or catastrophizing it. Interpretation examines how the situation is being perceived and what choices exist within that perception. Strategy identifies the specific actions available based on the chosen interpretation. Emotional and Behavioral Effects traces the outcomes of those strategies, including how they shape what the person feels and does next. A worked example walks through the full model using a project funding loss scenario. Participants will then apply RISE to six realistic scenarios involving job rejection, public mistakes, critical feedback, poor decisions, slipping performance, and missed promotions, with particular attention to the reframing step and the range of interpretations available in each situation.
Finding Focus: Changing Circumstances or Changing Reactions to Them
Not every difficult situation can or should be approached the same way, and this module introduces a framework for making that distinction. Task-focused responses are appropriate when aspects of a situation are genuinely within a person’s control and direct action will produce a useful result. Emotion-focused responses are more effective when the situation is fixed and the more productive work is managing the internal reaction to it. A third category addresses situations where emotional distress is so elevated that it prevents the person from seeing that change is actually possible — requiring emotional regulation as a prerequisite to practical problem-solving. The group will work through examples in each category and discuss how to recognize which approach a situation actually calls for rather than defaulting to whichever feels most natural.
I Have, I Am, and I Can: We Have, We Are, We Can
Edith Grotberg’s resilience framework from the International Resilience Project organizes the building blocks of resilience into three interconnected categories. I Have examines external support — the people, relationships, and resources available when situations become difficult. I Am addresses internal strengths — self-respect, personal values, and the qualities that guide behavior when circumstances are hard. I Can covers practical capabilities — the social and problem-solving skills that allow a person to navigate challenges, communicate effectively, and persist through setbacks. Participants will map their own resources across all three categories, and the exercise then scales to the team level with a parallel set of “We have, we are, we can” reflection questions. The group will discuss what the team’s collective resilience assets look like and where the gaps are most likely to show up under pressure.
Prepare and Reflect: Getting Ready and Celebrating
The closing module addresses the two moments most teams overlook: the time before a difficult situation arrives and the time immediately after it passes. Preparing for a stressful situation — by reviewing the cognitive distortions most likely to surface, recalling past success, and committing to a response strategy in advance — is one of the most effective tools available for managing performance under pressure. Reflecting on a difficult situation after it passes — acknowledging what went well, identifying what to carry forward, and naming the strength demonstrated rather than only the outcome achieved — is what converts experience into durable resilience rather than just another hard period. Participants will practice both, leaving with specific language for preparation and reflection they can apply before and after the next high-pressure situation the team faces.
Target Audience
This training is designed for groups that want to:
- Strengthen the team’s ability to handle stress, navigate adversity, and adapt to changing circumstances.
- Build a shared cognitive toolkit for recognizing and reframing the distorted thinking patterns that make difficult situations harder than they need to be.
- Develop proactive habits for preparing for challenges and reflecting on progress rather than only on setbacks.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who should attend this virtual resilience course?
The session is designed for intact teams navigating significant pressure, organizational change, or sustained demand. It works equally well for teams that want to build resilience proactively and for those already in the middle of a difficult period. When the full team attends together, the shared language and group reflection work tend to surface dynamics that most team conversations never reach.
Does the course address resilience at the team level or only individually?
Both, and they are treated as connected rather than separate. The opening module examines the conditions that build and erode resilience at both levels in parallel. The “I have, I am, I can” module includes a full team version. The group reflection questions throughout the session give teams the opportunity to examine their own dynamics honestly.
Is this course appropriate for teams going through significant change?
Yes, and it is particularly well suited to that context. The framework for distinguishing between what can be changed and what requires an adjusted response is especially useful during change, when the instinct to take action on everything produces exhaustion and the instinct to simply accept everything produces stagnation. The RISE framework and cognitive distortions module address the thinking patterns that change tends to activate most reliably.
How much of the session involves individual reflection versus group discussion?
Both run throughout. The RISE scenario work, the cognitive distortions rewrite exercise, and the “I have, I am, I can” mapping are individual. The conditions frameworks, the reframing discussion, and the team resilience reflection questions involve the full group. Participants need space to examine their own patterns, and they benefit from hearing how others navigate the same pressures.
Can the session be customized for our team’s situation?
Yes. Before the session, we gather information about the specific pressures the group is facing, the nature of the work, and any organizational context that would make the scenarios and examples more relevant. We adjust the emphasis accordingly. Teams navigating active change will spend more time on the task-versus-emotion response framework. Teams dealing with performance pressure may go deeper on cognitive distortions and the narrative reframing exercise.