Resilience is built on relationships. When people from different backgrounds work together, weaving a network of trust, they have something to fall back on when things change in unexpected ways. Collaborative processes that share perspectives and observations help communities see their challenges more clearly, more holistically. Each exchange adds insight and strengthens shared understanding. Over time, these threads form the fabric of social capital that underpins adaptive capacity.
Connection also builds familiarity and familiarity builds trust. Look for language shifts, towards ‘we’ and ‘us’ and away from ‘them’. People are more willing to experiment and support each other when there is trust, so work hard to build and maintain it. We also know trust can be lost quickly, and it’s a long way back once it’s lost. In this way, resilience becomes a shared journey. Each relationship and conversation becomes part of the whole network’s intelligence.
Wider networks and collaboration brings diversity into play. Diversity of perspectives and world views, diversity of knowledge, skills and lived experience. Solutions that emerge through the interplay of many perspectives are more likely to go the distance, to drive the change needed.
A strong network is also an early-warning system. Signals of change are noticed sooner by stronger networks, the signals feeding to whoever and whereever they are needed
Something to chew on:
Who could you invite into conversations to broaden your view and strengthen collective awareness?
Resilience Bites offers weekly insights from the Australian Resilience Centre, drawn from decades of work alongside communities across Australia and internationally. Each Bite explores an aspect of resilience and closes with a reflective question to chew on.
Across the series we'll explore themes that shape resilience in practice, including place, patterns, networks, leadership, learning, feedbacks, thresholds and the deeper work of change.
This series is for people working in communities, landscapes, systems and change. It will help you learn explore resilience concepts, apply them in practice and build our collective capacity to create resilient futures.
To learn more about the Australian Resilience Centre and explore our work and services, please visit https://www.ausresilience.com.au/
To read published Bites, please visit https://resiliencebites.ausresilience.com.au/
