Resilient Teams Resilient Leadership
The complex world we live in presents us with the option to change and adapt rapidly or become obsolete and unwanted. Managers know how exhausting this can be. Leaders often feel that they have to ask so much of their people. You have a choice to make change and challenge energizing or energy draining………..
- How do you maintain resilience in the face of rapid change?
- What key factors make change exciting?
- What personal skills can you practice and use each day to convert challenge into an energizing food for the body and soul?
- What team skills can be obtained and practiced to give teams the determination they need in their projects and objectives?
What does a “Water Bear” have to do with Resilience?
The image here is called a Tardigrade or water bear. They have been taken into space by NASA because they can survive extreme environmental conditions. Why would NASA care? It is a long shot but perhaps they possess an adaptation that can be used by NASA to help austronauts survive under the harsh conditions of space. As a metaphor for resilience, the Water Bear has it all. From Wikipedia we learn…..
- Temperature – tardigrades can survive being heated for a few minutes to 151 °C (424 K)or being chilled for days at -200 °C (73 K),or for a few minutes at -272 °.
- Pressure – they can withstand the extremely low pressure of a vacum and also very high pressures, more than 1,200 times atmosheric pressure. Tardigrades can survive the vacuum of open space and solar radiation combined for at least 10 days. Some species can also withstand pressure of 6,000 atmospheres, which is nearly six times the pressure of water in the deepest ocean trench.
- Dehydration – tardigrades have been shown to survive nearly 10 years in a dry state.[17] When encountered by extremely low temperatures, their body composition goes from 85% water to only 3%. As water expands upon freezing, dehydration ensures the tardigrades do not get ripped apart by the freezing ice (as waterless tissues cannot freeze).[18]
- Radiation – tardigrades can withstand median lethal doses of 5,000 Gy (of gamma-rays) and 6,200 Gy (of heavy ions) in hydrated animals (5 to 10 Gy could be fatal to a human).[19] The only explanation thus far for this ability is that their lowered water state provides fewer reactants for the ionizing radiation.[citation needed]
- Environmental toxins – tardigrades can undergo chemobiosis—a cryptobiotic response to high levels of environmental toxins. However, these laboratory results have yet to be verified.[20][21]
- Outer space – In September 2007, tardigrades were taken into low Earth orbit on the FOTON-M3 mission and for 10 days were exposed to the vacuum of space. After being rehydrated back on Earth, over 68% of the subjects protected from high-energy UV radiation survived and many of these produced viable embryos, and a handful had survived full exposure to solar radiation.[16][22] In May 2011, tardigrades were sent into space along with other extremophiles on STS-134, the final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour.[23][24][25] In November 2011, they were among the organisms sent by the US-based Planetary Society on the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission to Phobos.