Be a realistic cheerleader
With negative economic news seemingly at the top of every news broadcast and on the front page of every newspaper business section, you might feel like you’re swimming upstream in the fight to salvage your employees’ collective morale.
Swimming against the current might not always represent the best course of action.
You need to instill in your employees a belief that they and the company will endure, that times will get better and the revenue streams will pick up speed at some point. But you can’t overcompensate for bad news by attempting to slant your employees’ perception of reality.
Clark says you need to accentuate the positive whenever possible, but you also need to give your employees the straight scoop when the news isn’t as good, otherwise you’ll lose credibility and the stability of your culture will suffer.
“Part of a leader’s job is to be something of a cheerleader but not to the point of being unrealistic,” Clark says. “You need to cheerlead by conveying that you will continue to do the right things and this will all pass at some point. I tell my people that if we all co
ntinue to do the right things, we’ll be in a position to take advantage of things when the economic tide does turn.”
Remaining positive while conveying a realistic outlook requires a balancing act, especially when you and your team have to clean up after a mistake or perform a course correction.
“The key to the balancing act is that, on a macro basis, you say that your company is still doing well, that we’re still profitable or whatever positive points you have that you can accentuate. But if you have to say something that is negative, do it in a way that conveys disappointment without destroying confidence.”
Acknowledge mistakes and shortcomings without deflating the people involved even more than they already are. Instead of harping on what went wrong, use negative incidents as teachable moments and opportunities to reinforce a team-first mentality.
“If somebody missed their numbers or quotas or whatever or if there is bad news somewhere else along the line, a lot of times people will beat themselves up worse than you or I could beat them up,” Clark says. “For you to sit there and tell them they missed their numbers this month, that’s really not the right way to manage in good times or bad times. However, in bad times, it’s particularly important to create a dialogue during which you can find some solutions to correct the problem, whatever it might be.
“That doesn’t mean that you can just tell someone, ‘You did a bad job, but that’s OK,’ and pat them on the back. In a situation where a person already recognizes that they haven’t accomplished what they were supposed to accomplish and there is already negativity in their thought process, you need to acknowledge the problem, then work together with the people involved to correct it. Look at what you need to do moving forward. Don’t look back at what you’ve already done.”
