Unbreakable: Building and Leading Resilient Teams

Top 5 leadership book - Forbes (2024)
#1 team leadership book - Forbes (2023)

An essential guide for managers and leaders on building resilient teams in turbulent times.
As a result of global economic changes, new technologies, and increased competition, business environments are becoming increasingly turbulent and unpredictable, requiring new forms of resilient work teams.
Due in part to the increasing complexity of business environments, more and more organizations worldwide are using teams of employees to respond to adversity. Whether it be new product development teams; business crisis response teams in companies; front line response teams such as fire, emergency medical technicians, or emergency room teams; research and development teams; or pharmaceutical development teams, employees can no longer rely on their own knowledge, skills, and abilities to get their work done. Rather, employees have to work collaboratively with one another and combine their expertise to achieve the synergy and breakthrough thinking that is necessary to be successful at completing complex tasks in today's dynamic environments.
Today more than ever before, work teams must demonstrate resilience. In the face of volatile, complex, and ambiguous business environments, all teams inevitably suffer setbacks. Bradley L. Kirkman and Adam C. Stoverink provide in their new book the hands-on practical tips for building and leading resilient teams equipped to bounce back from those challenges. They highlight four team resources that are essential to any resilient team, including: team confidence, teamwork roadmaps, capacity to improvise, and psychological safety. These four resources are brought to life through compelling stories of teams that performed well in the face of adversity―and a few that didn't. They also provide leaders with step-by-step guidance for how to grow these resources in their own teams, whether they're in-person, remote, or hybrid. This book delivers all the tools necessary to build and lead resilient teams that are virtually unbreakable.

Bradley L. Kirkman is the General (Ret.) H. Hugh Shelton Distinguished Professor of Leadership in the Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University. He is the author of 3D Team Leadership: A New Approach for Complex Teams (2017, SUP), and his work has appeared in journals such as the Academy of Management Review, the Academy of Management Journal, and Harvard Business Review. Adam C. Stoverink is the Director of Walton MBA Programs and an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Arkansas Walton College of Business. His work is published in a variety of journals, including Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, and in outlets such as Forbes and Harvard Business Review.