Introduction

Every day we are confronted with pressures. They come in different sizes, and not all of these are bad—some pressures, called challenge pressures, push one to get moving whilst the other ones, known as hindrance pressures, may lead to a flight or freeze responses (Webster et al., 2010). Challenge pressures include workload, extra responsibility, controlled time pressure, job scope, tight deadlines and working to goals that one sees as meaningful. Hindrance pressures are much harder to deal with, ranging from role ambiguity, poor work relationships, job insecurity, lack of control, unrealistic goals to unrealistic deadlines. The modern COVID-19/post-COVID-19 work environment has added additional pressure and stressors on employees ranging from frequent organisational changes, increased competition and fast-changing technologies, which increase the unpredictability of the future and add to personal pressures and interpersonal conflicts. In addition, many employees experience survivor syndrome (Van Dick et al., 2016), whereby the remaining employees, after a restructuring, may be left feeling anxious as to whether and when they will be the next to go.

Workplace resilience can be described as a relative resistance to these daily pressures, as well as present and future adverse events or conditions. In other words, resilience is a sustained competence exhibited by individuals who experience challenging conditions. Those who have this capacity are more active and socially responsive, and adapt successfully to the experience of the ups and downs of organisational life.

Many employees are able to deal with stressors individually, however, the accumulation of multiple stressors as well as the extended duration of exposure could lead to a detrimental impact on the psychological, physical wellbeing of the employees, as well as their effectiveness and functioning at work (McLarnon & Rothstein, 2013; Vanhove et al., 2016). Therefore, developing resilience at the workplace is essential for the good of the employees and the good of the business. This is where positive psychology coaching (PPC) for resilience may be beneficial.

This chapter will offer a brief synthesis of research into resilience, focusing on defining resilience, employee resilience and team resilience, highlighting some of the factors identified by research as contributing to developing a more resilient response to hindrance pressures. The theoretical part will introduce and review the evidence base of SPARK Resilience, an approach originally developed over 10 years ago and used around the globe as an individual and team coaching protocol in educational and business settings.

Theory, Basic Concepts and Key Developments

Defining Resilience

The concept of resilience was conceived about 40 years ago when researchers noticed that some people adapt well to life despite the presence of high-risk circumstances (such as losing parents young, for example). This indicated a positive divergence from the typical pathological models that assumed that early traumatic experiences would undoubtedly result in negative life consequences. However, little scientific research at the time was devoted to this phenomenon and the field of study was fairly small. It is only in the past 20 years that the investigation of resilience expanded considerably, and a recent review revealed that the usage of the term ‘resilience’ in the academic literature increased by eightfold in the last two decades (Boniwell & Tunariu, 2019).

Adding to the definition of resilience above, it can be described as a capacity to bounce back and to feel in control of the way we feel about and react in challenging circumstances (Tugade et al., 2004).

Resilience is a multi-faceted construct. It is both a capacity and an active process encompassing a person’s flexibility in response to changing situational demands, and the ability to bounce back from negative emotional experiences. We can distinguish three facets of resilience: recovery, resistance and reconfiguration (Lepore & Revenson, 2006).

  1. 1.

    Recovery is the facet of resilience which refers to the return to a normal, pre-stressor, level of functioning (health and psychosocial wellbeing).

  2. 2.

    Resistance as a facet of resilience is said to occur when a person displays minimum or no signs of disturbance (low distress, normal functioning) following a challenging event.

  3. 3.

    Reconfiguration is said to occur when a person returns to homeostasis in a different formation with key aspects about that individual changing as a result of their experience.

Research suggests that higher levels of self-reported resilience is associated with lower levels of psychological distress, anxiety and depression symptoms (Bitiska et al., 2013). The underlying explanation behind resilience is the appraisal theory and emotional regulation. The central idea of appraisal theory is that the way a person interprets an event determines the way they react to it, emotionally and behaviourally (Lazarus, 1999). Multiple variables have been shown to impact resilience, from flexible perception of a situation and affect regulation through to assertiveness and finding meaning in a challenging situation; these psychological mechanisms can be developed through a wide variety of techniques identified in the literature (Feder et al., 2010; Troy & Mauss, 2011; Joyce et al., 2018; Tabibnia & Radecki, 2018).

Employee Resilience

Employee resilience has been described as a cognitive and behavioural capability associated with responding, seeking and evaluating opportunities in work challenges (Kuntz et al., 2016).

Resilient employees have high expectations, meaning in life, goals, personal agency and inter-personal skills (Baker et al., 2021). There is solid evidence that resilience can be developed through structured training and workshops. The best example of that is the American army in which all personnel were resilience trained, enhancing their perceived resilience, mental health and adaptive behaviours (Seligman & Fowler, 2011; Feder et al., 2010; Harms et al., 2013).

Research has identified a number of factors that have a positive effect on employee resilience. These are appraising the situation as a challenge instead of threat (Cash & Gardner, 2011); self-regulation (McLarnon & Rothstein, 2013); positive affect (Cash & Gardner, 2011); self-efficacy (Rice & Liu, 2016); personal values and meaning (Smith, 2017); openness to learning within the organisational culture (Malik & Garg, 2020), relationship with line manager (Cooper et al., 2019) and social support more generally (Cooper et al., 2019). On the other hand, emotional exhaustion and bullying have a negative impact on resilience (Anasori et al., 2020).

Team Resilience

Work is increasingly structured in and around teams—groups of individuals within an organisation who share a clearly defined membership and are responsible for achieving shared goals. A team is defined as a group of interdependent persons who share the responsibility of a common outcome (Sundstrom et al., 1990). Modern day working environments expose their teams to a variety of stressors such as tight deadlines, frequently changing team structures, carrying out more tasks with less resources, coupled with potential high consequences for the team members in terms of financial or psychological impact (Alliger et al., 2015).

Team resilience can be defined as a “dynamic, psychosocial process which protects a group of individuals from the potential negative effect of stressors they collectively encounter. It comprises the processes whereby team members use their individual and collective resources positively to adapt when experiencing adversity” (Morgan et al., 2013, p. 45). Studies have found that resilient teams are more creative, productive and flexible during tough times (Sharma & Sharma, 2016). Simultaneously, team members display a higher level of wellbeing and higher readiness for future challenges (McEwen & Boyd, 2018).

Although team resilience is influenced by individual factors such as personal knowledge, skills, diversity and values, what differentiates it in comparison to individual resilience is the higher dependency on team social and process factors (Lewis, 2011), as well as organisational factors (Vera et al., 2017).

Stoverink et al. (2020) identify four antecedents of team resilience, notably a mental model of teamwork, capacity to improvise, psychological safety and team potency. The latter factor is akin to collective efficacy that has been found to be a key factor in team resilience as it displays the team members’ belief in their capability to face challenges (Lewis, 2011). Important also is members’ resourcefulness which enables them to know each other and build on their strengths in tough times (Carmeli et al., 2013). Social identity, or a merge of an individual identity into the collective by thinking, feeling and behaving in a common way that fosters the in-group membership has also been identified as a contributor to team resilience (Lewis, 2011). McEwen & Boyd have identified a number of similar factors, including perseverance and capability (i.e. continuously seeking feedback), otherwise termed team learning orientation by Sharma and Sharma (2016).

SPARK Resilience

Twelve years ago, the author of this chapter co-created a SPARK Resilience Programme (Boniwell & Ryan, 2009) that has subsequently been administered in educational and workplace settings through face-to-face and digital means, showing positive impact on resilience, self-esteem and depression outcomes, amongst others.

The original version of the SPARK Resilience Programme (RP) was a universal school-based resilience curriculum that builds on cognitive-behavioural therapy and positive psychology concepts. Pluess and Boniwell (2015) conducted a study on 363 11-year-old students in a secondary school sample in the UK that investigated whether the personality trait Sensory-Processing Sensitivity moderated the efficacy of the SPARK RP aimed at the prevention of depression. Given that the trait of high sensitivity refers to the contextual sensitivity (i.e. to both negative positive influences of one’s environmental conditions), middle to highly sensitive children showed a significant increase in self-esteem scores and a decrease in depression scores, with both effects sustained after a three-month follow-up. A further study explored the efficacy of SPARK on depression symptoms and resilience in a high-risk population of 438 11 to 13-year-old students in England (Pluess et al., 2017). The study found evidence for a decrease in depression symptoms directly after the intervention and at a 6 months follow-up, while resilience scores were significantly higher in the treatment cohort compared to the control cohort at post-treatment and follow-up assessments. Since then SPARK Resilience has been extensively implemented in the UK, France, Netherlands, Japan and Singapore. A recent study from Japan with 407 high school students has found that the programme was effective in enhancing students’ overall self-efficacy; and that highly sensitive students, who scored significantly lower in well-being than their counterparts at baseline, responded more positively to the intervention, and had a greater reduction in depression and promotion of self-esteem (Kibe et al., 2020).

Original research on SPARK RP in schools led to development of a variant aimed at employees called SPARK Resilience in The Workplace. This, more recent programme has been evolving in line with the latest research evidence and continued including most resilience-enhancing strategies identified in the organisational literature. This group based coaching intervention has been extensively implemented in the UK, France, Morocco, UAE, Singapore and Japan in many companies, including Chanel, Unilever, BNP. 97% of the people who have completed the programme report being very satisfied/satisfied with it (Boniwell et al., in preparation). SPARK Resilience in the Workplace can be used as a relatively simple individual coaching tool around the SPARK acronym (see next section), or following a complete step-by-step protocol of eight 1.5 h sessions (described in the subsequent section).

The programme has also been tested during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the beginning of the first COVID-19 lockdown in April 2020, it was delivered in an online format to French-speaking participants, mainly employed in different organisations, self-employed or on temporary unemployment. Data collected from the first intervention group with 84 participants showed that their resilience, positive emotions, meaning and work engagement grew, whilst stress perception and negative emotions decreased significantly in comparison with 96 participants in the waiting list control group (Boniwell et al., in preparation). Content analysis of the feedback on the programme and end-of-programme resilience stories collected from 151 participants reported benefits in terms of awareness of emotion-cognition interaction, knowledge and use of emotion regulation strategies, relationships improvement, solution-focus/behavioural intentions, growth after adversity and mental health/well-being. Participants shared: “Finding motivation and energy to carry out daily activities and those related to work” (solution focus/behavioural intentions) and “Practicing meditation around singing negative ruminations is a great discovery that I will reproduce in the future” (knowledge and use of emotion regulation strategies; Boniwell et al., in preparation).

Finally, given the demand for team resilience coaching since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the protocol for the SPARK Resilience for the Workplace was adapted to teams, integrating recent research on the factors contributing to team resilience (Carmeli et al., 2013; Lewis, 2011; Sharma & Sharma, 2016; McEwen & Boyd, 2018; Gucciardi et al., 2018; Stoverink et al., 2020). It will be described as the third method below and illustrated by a case study.

Practice: Methods, Techniques & Application

Individual Coaching with SPARK Resilience

Organised around the SPARK acronym, this tool explains how to break down responses to stressful situations into five components: Situation, Perception, Autopilot, Reaction and Knowledge (Fig. 12.1). The development of the SPARK model was informed by the original ABC model of Albert Ellis (1957), with S and P being equivalent to A and B, differentiating between consequences (A and R instead of C) and integrating a meta-cognitive perspective (K).

Fig. 12.1
A flow cycle of the flow between situation, perception, affect, reaction, and knowledge.

SPARK Resilience Model

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Everyday Situations, as a function of individual Perceptions, tend to trigger an emotion or Affect (i.e. automatic emotional responses). This leads to a subsequent behavioural Reactions and a certain learning or Knowledge gained from the experience. To enhance resilience in the same Situation, it is important to first view it as a collection of neutral facts, challenge one’s Perception of adverse situations, capture and modify one’s automatic Affective responses and control negative behavioural Reactions (for e.g., it is better to discuss a situation politely instead of shouting). This usually leads to an enhanced Knowledge, or understanding of the situation and one’s own role in it.

A coach invites the client to think of a recent setback or disappointment. It may be not getting a promotion they wanted, receiving an unexpectedly bad performance rating or having a well-prepared proposal rejected. The coach can use the following two steps using sample questions below to guide the client through the situation. Needless to say, the acronym can be made explicit, if desired, though it is not necessary.

  1. 1.

    SPARK it out

  • S—What happened?

  • P –What was your interpretation of this event? Be as specific as you can.

  • A—How did you feel?

  • R—What did you do?

  • K—What did you learn from this situation, if anything?

  1. 2.

    SPARK solutions

    Next, the coach invites the client to take a look at the same situation again, but this time, from a perspective of challenging themselves to deal with it more effectively. Once again, it can follow the steps suggested by the acronym to help the client SPARK some useful solutions.

  • S—Look at the situation again. If you strip out of all perceptions and interpretations, what are the bare and neutral facts?

  • P—How accurate was your perception really? What is an alternative way of viewing it? Can you switch the glass that is half empty to the one that is half full? What is the worst thing that could possibly happen? What is the best thing that could possibly happen? What is the most likely thing to happen?

  • A—What could you do to make yourself feel better at the time (or even now, if you are still not feeling very good). How could you take care of your own emotions?

  • R—What could you actually do differently? How could you resolve a problem you were faced with? If the stressful situation involved another person, how could you communicate with them better?

  • K—What did you learn about yourself and this situation?

Group Based Coaching with SPARK Resilience in the Workplace

Whilst the SPARK model can be used as a coaching tool in itself, its most important use is as an organising tool to help structure and remember resilience drivers. Each of these factors is then associated with specific techniques, enabling coachees to experiment with over 25 tools and practices issued from scientific sources (Feder et al., 2010; Troy & Mauss, 2011; Joyce et al., 2018; Tabibnia & Radecki, 2018; Cash & Gardner, 2011; McLarnon & Rothstein, 2013; Rice & Liu, 2016; Smith, 2017; Malik & Garg, 2020; Cooper et al., 2019).

The programme can be delivered face-to-face or on-line via video conferencing over eight 1.5–2 h sessions as an Individual or group coaching protocol. In the latter case it includes a combination of teaching, whole group interactions, questioning, using voice and chat functionalities, quizzes, small virtual group discussions, peer coaching, guided mindfulness exercises and non-obligatory homework. The protocol has been experimented with groups between 5 and 150 participants (in the latter case in a digital format using multiple breakdown groups).

The protocol starts with the introduction and peer coaching around the SPARK Resilience model, and then progresses onto resilience skills, organised around SPARK Solutions model (Fig. 12.2). Whilst no specific skills associated with S are introduced, the sessions are structures around exploring and practicing cognitive skills associated with P (termed perception flexibility for ease of remembering), affect regulation skills associated with A, behavioural skills associated with R (responsible reaction) and meta-cognitive skills associated with K (knowing why).

Fig. 12.2
A flow cycle of the flow between situations, perception flexibility, affect regulation, responsible reaction, and knowledge of why.

SPARK solutions

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With the first five sessions devoted to the exploration of the SPARK model and practicing a variety of tools and techniques identified in the literature, the final three sessions are devoted to helping coachees select personally relevant techniques to use under pressure (KRAP or inverted SPARK tool), develop preventing strategies, such as using more positive emotions and developing positive relationships via forgiveness, altruism and gratitude (Resilience muscles) and introducing team resilience factors contributing to work resilience over and above individual ones (Table 12.1).

Table 12.1 SPARK resilience in the workplace sessions and tools
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SPARK Resilience for Teams

When adversity strikes, be it COVID-19, a rapid move towards remote working or forced restructuring (or both), resilience of teams may also be put to test. For example, a shared negative Perception of a Stressful situation (e.g., “Many of our team members only pretend to be working at a distance”) will send collective Affect into a downfall activating the feelings of betrayal, disappointment, hatred, often leading to legally based (Re)actions and culminating in the negative evaluation of the overall performance (Knowledge).

The opposite, upward spiral, is just as possible. Given the applicability of the SPARK model to team situations, SPARK Resilience for Teams uses the same base to organise eight major factors highlighted by scientific literature (Carmeli et al., 2013; Lewis, 2011; Sharma & Sharma, 2016; McEwen & Boyd, 2018; Gucciardi et al., 2018; Stoverink et al., 2020) into easy to understand categories enabling a coach to structure a conversation with a team. Typically, this tool can be used within one coaching session of 1.5 h, as part of a complete SPARK protocol (see Table 12.1 above) or as a stand-alone coaching process, in which case it is likely to be longer.

The coaching process follows the SPARK acronym, and the eight factors contributing to team resilience (Fig. 12.3). It is recommended that the model and its components are made e explicit t, as it helps to structure the conversation. It is also suggested each factor is introduced, followed by questions related to it and finishing by exploring practical strategies that would help the team to enhance this factor, if necessary.

  1. 1.

    A common mental model (perception). To be ready for adversity, all team members must be on the same page about their roles, tasks, team composition and group norms. This is their mental model of teamwork, which helps them coordinate effectively, predict one another’s behaviour, and make decisions quickly and without hesitation. Ideally, these mental models have to be both accurate and shared in order to be effective.

    Sample questions:

    • To what extent does your team share a common mental model?

    • How would you evaluate your team’s level of agreement with regard to what everyone is supposed to do?

    • What common words or notions do you have that are specific to your team?

    Tools such as Team Canvas, a process that enables the team to clarify their roles, goals, values, proposes and common purpose (Ivanov & Voloshchuk, 2015) can be suggested here.

  2. 2.

    Positive outlook (perception). Being open-minded, optimistic, noticing opportunities helps teams adapt, improvise and develop new ideas, being able to adjust to changes in real time.

    Sample questions:

    • How does innovation happen in your team?

    • What actions can be taken to develop your team’s positive outlook?

    • What can you do to be even better in noticing opportunities?

    Practicing re-framing challenges as opportunities and introducing creativity techniques such as design thinking, brainstorming, and Lego Serious Play (Bab & Boniwell, 2016) can help develop a more positive outlook.

  3. 3.

    Affective safety (affect). Team resilience is enhanced when members share the belief that it is safe to take interpersonal risks in their team, such as offering unusual ideas without fear of being criticized or singled out by fellow team members. This enables a greater diversity of perspectives at a time when such diversity is needed.

    Sample questions:

    • How often do members of your team take affective risks, such as making propositions that are unlikely to be accepted?

    • How comfortable does it feel to share a difficult emotion with the members of your team?

    • What can you do to enhance psychological safety in your team?

    Affective safety can be developed, for example, by putting in place a ritual of positive introductions that enables the staff to present who they really are to others (Boniwell, 2020a). Also, sharing and accepting difficult emotions can remind the team that vulnerability is allowed and is a part of work life (Ford et al., 2017).

  4. 4.

    Sense of belonging (affect). Resilient teams observe a strong sense of belonging, collaboration and positive relationships (that may also span beyond work).

    Sample questions:

    • What are relationships in your team like?

    • Do some of the members of your team see each other outside of work?

    • What can you do to develop positive relationships in your team?

    To enhance a sense of belonging, it might be helpful to develop affective rituals, like “Apero Zoom” (sharing a drink and a snack from different locations in real time at the end of the workday), playful use of emoticons stickers/magnets, mindful moments before starting a meeting, between tasks, or during interactions with colleagues (Ozenc & Hagan, 2017).

  5. 5.

    Resourcefulness (reaction). An emerging demand for teams is the need to do more with less. Regardless of the industry, expectations of deliverables are often not balanced with resources—for example, the budget and staff provided. This demands that teams become better in harnessing team member strengths and optimising strength-task fit. It also requires regular discussion on what to prioritise and where to direct collective energy. In fast moving jobs where demands change frequently, reallocation of resources may be needed.

    Sample questions:

    • To what extent does your team know what strengths and resources it has?

    • Do you feel these are deployed optimally for a common goal?

    • What can you do to discover the strengths of your team members?

    Digital Strengths Cards such as Teamscope+ can be used to develop a team’s awareness of each other’s strengths (Boniwell, 2020b). Initially completed online by each team member, the debriefing can be held on-line or face-to-face allowing teams to optimise strength-task allocation as a consequence.

  6. 6.

    Perseverance (reaction). Whilst it is important to find the best way forward, it is equally important to simply keep going when things are tough and the way is full of obstacles. Having a solution focus and taking care to recuperate helps perseverance.

    Sample questions:

    • How do you keep going when it’s hard?

    • How do you respond to signs of overload in your team members?

    Implicit and explicit processes, such as lunchtime physical activity sessions, fruit availability or team level healthy eating challenges, can be put in place to help each other maintain sleeping, exercising and taking time to rest (Boniwell, 2020a).

  7. 7.

    Capability review (knowledge). Resilient teams have strong feedback rituals, seek feedback and improve their processes as a result.

    Sample questions:

    • How well does your team adapt to change?

    • What processes do you have for continuous improvement?

    • How do you discuss and learn from mistakes?

    The use of daily reviews, or exchanging feedback in a positive way between peers on incomplete pieces of work can be suggested. Challenging colleagues to approach ‘failures’ positively, by using practices such as “Failure CV” or “F... up nights” enables learning from mistakes, which occurs when shared mental models and psychological safety are already in place (Tjosvold et al., 2004).

  8. 8.

    Collective efficacy (knowledge). Beyond each individual having confidence in their ability to be successful, team members collectively believe that they can take effective action and achieve success together.

Fig. 12.3
A flow cycle of the flow between stressful situations, a common mental model and positive outlook, effective safety and sense of belonging, resourcefulness and perseverance, collective efficacy and capability review.

SPARK resilience for teams

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Sample questions:

  • How confident are you in each other?

  • What can you achieve as a team that you could never achieve individually?

  • How do you give positive feedback to one another?

Collective efficacy is often a consequence of successful goal achievement, but can be further developed by challenging training (think a team-level escape game), celebration of accomplishments at the end of each week and showing gratitude and appreciation to one another (Boniwell, 2020a).

Importantly, the objective of SPARK Resilience is not to cover all resilience levers in equal depth, but rather to use the model to explore the team’s strengths and points of development, in order to then centre the work on the levers in need of attention, as illustrated by the case study.

Case Study

The HR team of an international bank contacted the author to help their team overcome challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, such as having to shift the majority of the workforce onto work from home arrangements and supporting personnel at a distance. The HR team was feeling under pressure and asked for a time-limited (no more than 1 day in total) intervention focusing on resilience. Following discussions centred on the exploration of their needs and practical capabilities, SPARK Resilience for Teams was chosen as a method of intervention. It was delivered as a group coaching programme at a distance over four weekly 2-h long sessions and included also two instances of peer coaching integrated within the same time frame. The team consisted of eight individuals, six women and two men, all experienced HR practitioners working together for a number of years.

The first session introduced the SPARK Resilience Model and a peer coaching exercise to SPARK out a work-related challenge. These were received well. Next, the team was introduced to SPARK Resilience for Teams and spent the best part of the session exploring their resilience at the team level. The group was highly engaged and very open, suggesting high levels of positive outlook, affective safety and belonging amongst team members. Potential difficulties were identified around resourcefulness and perseverance in that the team self-declared to be composed of individuals that were “very alike”, with little differentiation between their strengths and subsequent task allocation and a common sense of fatigue that arose from keeping going outside of one’s flow zone without respecting bodily limits. It was therefore decided to explore these two factors further in order to potentially optimise workload allocation.

The second session was thus devoted to discovering the science of strengths and their positive impact on team relationships and performance, introducing the concept of strengths, strengths discovery questions and peer coaching around these, as well as a distinction between strengths, competences/learned behaviours, potentials and weaknesses. Peer coaching was the highlight of the session, with participants reporting the feeling of being seen for who they really are for the first times in their lives. To prepare for the third session, all participants had to individually complete the Digital Strengths Cards Teamscope+ exercise (Boniwell, 2020b) and allocate strengths cards into one of the four categories based on the results, energy and pleasure associated with their perceived use of each strength theme. They were further asked to reflect on what their five top strengths may be.

The third session included the presentation of each team member’s 5 main strengths to the team using the Strengths Gym exercise and offering one another positive feedback on their strengths. This was a very emotional exercise that also indirectly highlighted substantial differences in team members’ top strengths, contrary to the team’s belief in their similarity. The team was then introduced to their composite profile on Teamscope+ that visually communicated team’s strengths, competences and potentials at a team level. Although the relational and integrity categories were prominent, all strengths were present at a team level in at least two team members. This phenomenon was explored using coaching questions, with the team realising that one size does not fit all as far as task allocation is concerned, and they could optimise their efficiency and minimise tiredness by ensuring a better strength-task fit.

In preparation for the fourth session, the coach worked with the team leader on a practical example of a new project of developing, establishing and communicating a Work from Home policy that was broken into 14 discrete tasks as a result of this discussion. During the session itself, the coach first checked the agreement of the team members with regard to tasks identified before proceeding towards a team-level coaching to establish the most important strengths necessary for each task (e.g. negotiation with unions required, in group opinion, the presence of strategy, active listening and persuasion), and members volunteering for each of the tasks based on the presence of necessary strengths in their profile. The exercise was very fluent, and completed in under 1 h, leaving the time to revisit SPARK Resilience for Teams model to explore how participants felt regarding their team resourcefulness and perseverance. The team responded very positively, stating that they really appreciated the strengths-task allocation and will use this approach in the future, and that finding more enthusiasm about their tasks helps them with feeling more perseverant and resilient overall.

Conclusion

The science tells us that resilience can be developed, with evidence pinpointing to multiple resources that can be built through deliberate coaching, training and interventions. The chapter explored SPARK Resilience that benefits from a substantial evidence base associated with the science of resilience, but also from empirical testing under various conditions, including during the early stages of COVID-19. SPARK Resilience can be used as a brief coaching model, but also as a structured coaching approach aimed at working with individuals, groups of employees or even teams. This approach is flexible enough to grow and develop in line with new research and practice discoveries.

Discussion Points

  1. 1.

    What similarities and differences can be identified between drivers of resilience at work at an individual and team levels?

  2. 2.

    What is the difference between SPARK model and SPARK solutions?

  3. 3.

    How would you introduce SPARK Resilience for Teams to a team suffering from low psychological/affective security?

  4. 4.

    If you are aware of other levers of workplace resilience not accounted for in this chapter, how would you integrate these into the models above?