Vitamin C for Engineering Teams: Building Resiliency through Compassion
In our previous article, we covered the importance of Vitamin B in maintaining energy and health and how this can be compared to psychological safety for engineering teams. Today, we turn our attention to Vitamin C, an important micronutrient to build resilience in our body. Parallely, engineering leaders could use compassion to build resilience in teams, especially in unpleasant or challenging times, such as company layoffs or strategic shifts.
Vitamin C & Compassion to Build Resilience
Vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin (similar to Vitamin B) that must be consumed regularly since it isn’t stored in our bodies. Vitamin C helps with the healing process in our body and protects against harmful free radicals, being an antioxidant. Vitamin C is crucial for iron absorption and collagen production, lowering cancer risk, and regenerating Vitamin E. This vitamin is found in foods like bell peppers, black currants, citrus fruits, cruciferous vegetables, and strawberries; its adequate intake is 90 mg daily for men and 75 mg for women, and the Upper Limit is 2000 mg daily.Â
Vitamin C is crucial to building physical resilience.
Similarly to Vitamin C, compassion builds emotional and psychological resilience within teams. Compassion starts with empathy—understanding others’ feelings and putting oneself in their shoes.
True compassion, however, goes beyond empathy and involves taking action to support and alleviate others' difficulties.
As a leader, compassion is key to developing healthy and resilient teams and can be expressed in multiple ways.
Compassion Through Communication
Communication is the foundation of a leader's operation because a compassionate communicator helps create psychological safety in a team (more on psychological safety in the previous article). In challenging times, leaders must engage in transparent and empathetic communication. This means having private one-on-one conversations, actively listening to team members’ concerns, and providing context for difficult decisions. For instance, if a whole department is eliminated due to a strategic change, a compassionate leader will explain the reasons to the team, addressing their doubts and fears rather than avoiding tough conversations.
AMAs (Ask Me Anything) sessions are also excellent tools for leaders to incentivize open communication and show genuine concern for their team’s well-being, letting people ask any top-of-mind question.
For example, in one of my past experiences, I let go of a few people for business reasons. Huddling with the team through an AMA session was very helpful for people to express their emotions and clarify the business decision. Those decisions are hard, but leaders must focus on the people remaining on the team and provide compassion to them.
Compassion Through Giving Space and Time
Leaders can support their teams by giving them space and time to cope with tough situations. Encouraging breaks, organizing team-building activities, or dedicating time to innovate can help teams recharge and handle stress better.
For example, after a stressful period of time for the team, a leader might schedule a team onsite or allocate a Hackathon for a few days to let team members work on projects unrelated to the current OKRs. These activities not only boost morale but also foster a sense of innovation.
In fact, in one of my past experiences, one of my teams worked hard for 6 months on a project, and given a global change of strategy, the project was disbanded. Giving a day off to people and the remaining days of the week to work on a passion project was a refreshing way to have people handle this challenging situation.
Compassion Through Giving Direction
Leaders need to reinforce the mission and vision, especially during challenging times. For example, if part of a team gets laid off, a leader should disseminate the new directions and strategy.
In a past experience, when a team needed to work over multiple weekends to complete a project within a strict timeline, it was crucial to clearly explain to the team the necessity of meeting the deadline for the hard work. It was also important to highlight the impact of the work and how it connected with the overall company goals.
Another action that helped maintain motivation and increase team resilience was recognizing the most effective people (more on recognition in this previous article) and expressing gratitude during weekly meetings.
Just as Vitamin C is indispensable for physical resilience, compassion is vital for team resilience.Â
Engineering leaders can build resilient teams in the face of adversity by practicing compassionate communication, giving space and time, and providing clear direction.