Agata Perepeczko
Mrs Agata Perepeczko is a Business Psychologist and a coach. Her experience is a combination of clinical psychology and business psychology. She was educated in Poland and London. She is currently undertaking the Professional Doctorate at Birkbeck University, where she is focusing on building and maintaining resilience among workforces.
Agata uses her unique combination of skills and knowledge to support her clients as part of her work for Resilient WorkForce LTD. Agata is a Member of the British Psychological Society, CIPD, Association of Business Psychology and EMCC, and is President of The Society of Business Psychology Middle East (SoBPME). Agata has designed and delivered training programs in leadership development, mental health at work, strategic thinking, crisis management, diversity and inclusion, soft skills across Europe and North America. Agata has been a resilience expert, supporting clients with building and maintaining resilience levels across their workforce. Agata has experience of working across sectors, including UK Government, Healthcare, financial sector, media industry as well as humanitarian and NGO organizations. Agata has also worked as a psychologist for individuals experiencing high levels of stress and low level of motivation and engagement. Agata has co-created a tool which helped her clients assess their resilience levels. The tool was widely used as a part of the assessment of workers deployed abroad for missions and assignments. Agata has been an executive coach and worked with individuals and teams across sectors, enabling them to unlock their potential, create vision and strategy, as well as improve their performance and team’s morale.
Team’s resilience and psychological safety: the role of leadership during change.
This session will introduce participants to the concept of Team Resilience.
Having worked with the concept of resilience for almost a decade and a half, I have investigated resilience on three levels: Resilient Individual; Resilient Team; Resilient Organisation.
This session will focus on the factors enabling a team’s resilience, and the role of leadership behaviours during times of change.
Processes and factors building individual resilience are different from those building a resilient team. Research suggests that in fact a group of resilient individuals might not build a resilient team if those individuals are inwardly focused on their own resilience and neglect to participate in team building resilience. Furthermore, I found that the behaviours of the leaders within the organisation had a significant impact on creating a psychologically safe working environment.
I have been working with the concept of resilience for the last 14 years. Whilst working as a Psychologist within the humanitarian sector in London, my initial focus was on individual resilience and the levels of resilience those who were deployed to hostile working environments, such as war and disaster zones, would require.
As I worked with these individuals, I began to notice that despite higher levels of resilience among employees, their teams found themselves in crisis mode, and were unable to move forward, which in the context of an emergency or war setting, had potentially devastating consequences.
As I turned my interest to leadership and team dynamics, in the context of building and maintaining team’s resilience, I noticed that processes and principles of building effective, efficient and resilient teams are similar, despite the industry my clients would come from.
Hartwig et al has proposed that “Team Resilience generally refers to processes of managing pressure effectively across the team as a whole”. He also suggested that it is a potential asset for “the work team to maintain performance in the face of adverse events”.
During the session we will explore the answers to the following questions:
What factors contribute towards building a resilient team?
What is the role of leaders in building or enabling team resilience?
What is the role of organisational culture (especially psychological safety) in enabling team resilience ?
What is the role of the individual in building team resilience?
Content Overview: The session will begin with an introduction to the concept of resilience, highlighting its importance in team dynamics. We will discuss the differences between individual and team resilience and how individual resilience does not automatically translate into a resilient team. Insights from research will be shared, emphasizing the need for collaborative efforts in resilience-building.
A significant focus will be placed on psychological safety as a critical mediator in creating team resilience. Participants will learn about the behaviours leaders can adopt to create a psychologically safe environment, enabling open communication, trust, and support among team members.
Conclusion: By the end of this session, participants will have a deeper understanding of the interplay between leadership, team dynamics, and organisational culture in promoting team resilience. They will leave equipped with practical strategies to enhance their teams' resilience, ultimately leading to improved performance in challenging situations. Join us for an engaging discussion that will empower you to be a catalyst for resilience in your teams!
Reference:
Angelique Hartwig et al(2020) : Workplace team resilience: A systematic review and conceptual development. Organizational Psychology Review 2020, Vol. 10(3-4) 169–200