Summary
Leading a team during the pandemic may seem impossible given it’s likely the most stressful time of your team’s lives. Recently, I lead our team through a design sprint where we explored improving unemployment benefit access in the middle of the pandemic, which required us to shift how we work. In this talk, I’ll share how we reimagined collaboration, communication, and processes to reduce the stress load while maintaining forward momentum. Together as leaders, we’ll explore how to ethically lead our teams while keeping their resiliency in mind and bring these learnings into the post COVID work life.
Key Insights
-
•
Resilience is not static; it requires ongoing effort and adaptation.
-
•
Checking in with team members about their emotional and mental state helps build trust and communication.
-
•
Setting clear expectations for communication methods reduces stress and improves collaboration.
-
•
Creating rituals, like daily and weekly reflections, fosters a culture of transparency and vulnerability.
-
•
Recognizing the need for personal boundaries is crucial in ensuring team members feel comfortable sharing their experiences.
Notable Quotes
"I care about my team's resilience, and I'm here to share some strategies and tactics that work well for us."
"Resilience is about maintaining self needs and effectiveness at moments of change, tough demands, and adversity."
"Our mental, physical, and emotional bandwidth is like a battery that fluctuates between being fully charged and completely depleted."
"Resilience is a practice that needs to be sustained over time to keep us steady."
"We need to normalize video off for our meetings when people need a break from being on camera all day."
"Creating space for us to name the things we were experiencing allows us to unload some emotional weight."
"I learned that being in the red for one person was crying and for another, it was complete silence."
"It's our capacity to be robust under conditions of enormous stress and change that will keep us resilient."
"As leaders, we need to cultivate our own resilience so that we can nurture our teams."
"Every once in a while, it's okay to turn your video off."
More Videos
"What do you want your AI to do? What do you want their background to be?"
Noz UrbinaRapid AI-powered UX (RAUX): A framework for empowering human designers
May 1, 2025
"This is a lesson in a different kind of improvisation than what I usually do."
Jim KalbachJazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
June 4, 2019
"Can you sit down with the people that you work with?"
Holly ColeUnderstanding Experiences: When you have to do more than work
November 8, 2018
"With UXPin, you can build full interfaces that you can properly usability test without assumptions."
Jack BeharHow to Build Prototypes that Behave like an End-Product
December 6, 2022
"Our sponsors put a lot of effort into the sessions so that they can be as high quality as possible for you."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
October 3, 2023
"Focus on destination rather than just vehicle; what are we trying to achieve with AI?"
Erika FlowersAI-Readiness: Preparing NASA for a Data-Driven, Agile Future
June 10, 2025
"Every student has unique strengths that should be recognized and nurtured."
Kristin SkinnerFive Years of DesignOps
September 29, 2021
"We never played together before. We never rehearsed."
Jim KalbachJazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
November 6, 2017
"The future solutions will come from harnessing creativity at scale."
Surya VankaUnleashing Swarm Creativity to Solve Enterprise Challenges
June 10, 2021
