The COVID-19 global pandemic was an unanticipated educational crisis (Reyes-Guerra et al., 2021) that forced international schools to close and leaders to contend with extreme volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) (Kaiser, 2020; Singhal, 2021). COVID-19 created opportunities to "re-focus, re-energize, and try new ideas" emerged (Chang-Bacon, 2021). Crisis recovery and team resilience emerge when leaders help their communities maintain and respond effectively to a crisis (Beauchamp et al., 2021). The COVID-19 crisis provided for an optimal qualitative phenomenological study of the experiences of international school heads enacting resilient teams. Using the theoretical lenses of sensemaking and work team resilience, a temporal interview sequence sought to uncover how international school heads worked with their leadership teams during the pandemic. Findings confirmed that international school heads overwhelmingly faced intense uncertainty and complexity during the COVID era yet were intent on taking actions to preserve their schools' reputations in line with their schools' core values. The results confirmed that capacity and models of teamwork can build shared commitment and synergy that can be surprising and surpass expectations. International school heads developed a sense of their leadership that, for each participant head was deeply personal and revealing. Not only did they enact a sense of proactive team resilience within others, they enacted within themselves means to mitigate and manage future crisis events. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]