I have worked in various companies, industries, roles, cities and organisational environments and what I have found time and again is a staggering disregard for employees value and intelligence. In other words employees don’t qualify as human beings once they are written up on the expense side of the balance sheet.
The simple fact of the matter is that, irrespective of legislation, there is a lot that a company can do to ensure that, if they really care, to show it.
Here are two simple but challenging things (which means you will probably say ‘we can’t do this’):
1) Be brutally honest no matter what
Don’t hold back – be vulnerable. Don’t pretend that you are fully in control and that you are omnipotent – you’re not! Show that you are bringing in experts if required or that all effort is being done in order to avoid lay-offs or pay cuts.
Make sure you reveal the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Get the shock over with, inform 100% and maintain trust. The biggest mistake is to hold back information and then relay this critical info at a later stage when it is too late and it causes panic. Which brings us to:
2) When trouble starts heading your way bring everyone together and ask them to help you think through it. It is truly that simple. Allow the people that have helped to build the organisation to collectively help solve the problems.
This way you will not only get to a solution faster but you will also skip past all the tricks and techniques for ‘buy-in’ (whatever that means).
We over-complicate things way too much. The simple solution is the preferable solution. And please, don’t confuse simple with easy. Showing vulnerability, being open and deepening relationships before the trouble starts is hard because you have to take your eye of the short-term directives and focus on what is truly important.
It means you have to master your emotions so that you create space to breathe and connect with other human beings.
It means you go from survival mode to truly living!