What can you do when all the news around you seems to be only bad news piled atop more bad news or when formerly cheery colleagues morph into a herd of braying Eeyores? Here are some ideas on how you and your workplace can help employees remain resilient, engaged and positive when you’re trying to keep afloat during turbulent times.
- Double down on being intentional about building a resilient, strong culture. Your culture is one of the few things you can control in difficult times, and it’s at times like these that your true culture will be revealed. A strong, trusting, supportive culture can make all the difference to how employees react to challenges, how well employees innovate and manage change, how cared for they feel and how quickly your business will bounce back after the downturn. In fact, studies repeatedly show that organizations with strong workplace cultures rebound much quicker during difficult times. So what does being intentional about your culture mean? It means every time you make a business decision you also ask the question: How will this decision help create and reflect the kind of culture we want to be known for? Are we putting people first and recognizing the impact that difficult times have on employees at a very personal, human level? And are you truly living up to your core values and treating your values as commitments – as lines in the sand – rather than merely vague slogans?
- Double down on being intentional about your attitude. There’s no getting around the fact that your individual attitude will play a major role when it comes to coping with stress and an onslaught of bad news. Your attitude will also affect your ability to generate creative solutions that will help you, your team, and your business survive. Which is not to say that you need to simply “turn that frown upside down” and walk around with rose-colored glasses all day. Research shows, in fact, that when people feel they have to suppress negative emotions it can backfire – sometimes leading to passive aggressive behaviors coming out. So employees need to be given permission to express their negative emotions – but in such a way that it doesn’t become harmful or part of their standard operating mode. Attitudes and emotions are highly contagious, and the last thing you want to see is your team feeding off each others negativity and spiraling downwards into a dark abyss of despair.
Here are a few things you can do to remind people of the importance of being intentional about their attitude during difficult times:
- Create a morning ritual that reminds you that you really do, despite challenging circumstances, have the power to choose your attitude and choose your reaction to events around you. It might be as simple as going around the room with your team and having everyone shout out how they are doing on a scale of 1-10. This serves as a reminder that everyone can choose their attitude, and it also identifies anyone who might be needing extra support.
- Create a “CAN CONTROL” vs. “CAN’T CONTROL” list, either for yourself or for your entire team where everyone adds reminders of what is beyond their control vs. what they can actually control.
- Add a “whine and cheese” section to your meeting agendas where you serve cheese and allow people to express their concerns and negative thoughts. And then to “bottle the whine” you create this rule: whining will only be allowed during the whine and cheese section of the meetings, once that session is over however, everyone must make a concerted effort to speak more positively.
- Debate yourself. When you hear those inner voices bringing you down, challenge them! Martin Seligman, the author of Learned Optimism and a leading expert on the psychology of optimism, suggests that pessimists can retrain their brains by countering assumptions. Pessimists, according to Seligman, tend to see challenges or obstacles as being permanent, pervasive, and personal. But Seligman has shown that people can, by counter-arguing these notions, remind themselves that even difficult setbacks are only temporary (not permanent), don’t negatively impact every aspect of your life (not pervasive), and are rarely, if ever, personal.
- Communicate, communicate some more, and then don’t forget to communicate. Rumors love a vacuum, so communication is critical during difficult times. Organizations need to commit to investing heavily in open, honest and frequent communication. Leaders need to make themselves even more accessible and approachable than ever before so that employees feel comfortable coming forward and expressing not only their fears and concerns, but also their positive ideas on how to deal with the challenges at hand. A few things you can do:
- Encourage more real conversations. Leaders should set aside dedicated “in-office hours” when employees know they’ll be available. Schedule regular coffee chats, and make sure, if you’re a leader, you are checking in one on one with employees on a regular basis.
- Hold daily team huddles. Daily team huddles where you team gathers for no more than 10 minutes, standing up, at a regular time each day, can help serve as a check in point for people.
Huddles will help employees feel more supported, dampen the likelihood of rumors spreading, and help ensure any issues are dealt with in a timely manner.
- Create a rumor mill section in your meetings. Make it safe and fun for people to bring up rumors by having anyone who has a rumor to bring forward begin by saying, “Word on the street is…”
- Create a Vegas Room. An energy company in Calgary, Alberta, created a Vegas room, decorated to look like a mini casino, where difficult and confidential conversations could take place. Why a Vegas-themed room? Because what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
- Send out regular updates even when there’s nothing to update. Employees need constant reassurance during challenging times that they aren’t being left out of the loop or they aren’t missing out on any important updates, so make sure you create a system to keep everyone informed and up to date on anything happening that might affect your workplace.
- Share good news more frequently. When all the news seems negative, it becomes even more important to find and share the good news. Create a weekly Good News e-bulletin, add a “Good News” section to your website, and add a “Good News” component to your meetings where people are encouraged to share positive news.
- Ask employees for their input, now more than ever. Asking employees for input helps them feel empowered during difficult times, and it sends the message that you value and respect their opinions and ideas.
- Up the fun factor at work. Humor is one of the most powerful tools during challenging times that can help people keep their spirits up and feel like they are working together on the same team. And although you want the humor to remain as positive as possible, recognize that during challenging times it’s natural and healthy for some black “gallows” humor to emerge and recognize that there’s a difference between laughing at tragedy vs. using humor to cope with a difficult situation. So in the face of layoffs of course you need to be sensitive about using humor in the presence of affected people, but at the same time, respect people’s need to blow off some steam and distance themselves from the stress through the occasional use of black humor.
A few ways to up the fun factor during challenging times:
- Create some rituals or tradition, such as an end of the week huddle that leaves people ending their week on a high note. Simple traditions, such as “Third Persons Thursdays” where people refer to themselves in the third person, are easy ways to help ensure everyone keeps a smile on their face.
- Add a humor section to your meetings and encourage everyone to share a funny work story or work related joke.
- During a particular difficult time, one manager left funny or inspiring messages on his employees’ voice mails every Sunday night, to help ensure they started the week on a high note.
There are dozens of ways to add more humor, fun, and humanity into any workplace. The key during challenging times is to focus on your culture like never before and to recognize that there are many people who will need extra support, encouragement, and a generous dose of compassion.
Michael Kerr is a Canadian Hall of Fame Speaker, highly in-demand international keynote speaker, and the creator of the Culture Leadership Online Academy. Michael is also the author of 8 books, including: The Humor Advantage: Why Some Businesses Are Laughing All the Way to the Bank; Hire, Inspire, and Fuel Their Fire; and The Jerk-Free Workplace: How You Can Take the Lead to Create a Happier, More Inspiring Workplace.
