Building resilient teams
Lesson plan overview
This ESL worksheet focuses on building resilient teams and explores the qualities, behaviours, and leadership strategies that help teams overcome setbacks, adapt to change, and perform under pressure. It is most suitable for B2 level learners and is ideal for lessons on business English, leadership, teamwork, communication, and workplace culture. Students build essential vocabulary related to resilience, collaboration, feedback, adaptability, and team performance. Other lessons you might like are “Teamwork“, and “Prasal verbs: teamwork“
Speaking: Lead-in and Discussion
The lesson begins with a discussion about students’ own experiences of working in effective and ineffective teams. Learners then compare sports teams and business teams, exploring similarities and differences in leadership, decision-making, handling pressure, teamwork, preparation, and measuring success. Learners discuss well-known sports teams that have overcome adversity or struggled under pressure. They describe successful comebacks, analyse the importance of mental strength and leadership, and consider what makes teams resilient in difficult situations.
Vocabulary: Teamwork and Resilience
Students learn and practise key collocations related to teamwork and resilience, including recover from a setback, overcome challenges, adapt to change, foster a culture of learning, strengthen relationships, empower team members, and withstand pressure. They complete controlled practice activities before using the vocabulary in speaking tasks.
Listening: Building Resilient Teams
Students watch the video “Empowering your staff: How to build resilient teams“ and complete gap-fill and note-taking activities. The listening explores effective leadership, communication and feedback, teamwork, adaptability, learning from failure, and creating a strong team culture. Students then discuss the speaker’s ideas and reflect on how they apply to their own workplaces.
Speaking: Build Your Perfect Team
In the final communicative task, students analyse six fictional candidates with different personalities, strengths, and weaknesses before selecting the best three teammates for a challenging long-term project. They justify their choices, discuss potential team dynamics and conflicts, and reflect on the importance of balance, complementary skills, and diversity within a team.
For more speaking practice, you can use the printable conversation cards.
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Teacher’s lesson plan
Student’s worksheet
Student’s interactive PDF
Conversation cards PDF
Pre-class activities
All video-based ESL lesson plans include online pre-class activities, which are FREE and can be completed without registration. Perfect for teachers who wish to embrace the blended learning approach. By providing students with resources and engagement opportunities before the actual class session, educators can foster active participation, enhance comprehension, and optimise in-class discussions.
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In-class activities
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Additional resources
Each video-based lesson plan includes links to additional resources (videos and articles), which are FREE can be found online (in the pre-class activities page. These links aim to extend the learning experience, enabling students to connect classroom knowledge with real-world applications.
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Teacher’s lesson plan
Student’s worksheet
Student’s interactive PDF
Conversation cards PDF
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