Lead with your heart
Kramer endured a couple of hours of being in a haze of shock and disbelief over what was happening.
“I wasn’t really concerned about me,” Kramer says. “It was more about everybody else, because of the economy. Particularly in St. Louis, there were a lot of layoffs and a lot of people looking for jobs. It was really, ‘How do I tell these guys?’ I’m going to let them down just as I was let down. That was just my first thought.”
But as reality began to set in, Kramer knew he couldn’t just curl up in a ball in his office and hope it would all go away. If he was going to get through this and help those employees keep their jobs, he was going to have to step up and be the leader they expected him to be.
Kramer gathered the eight people on his leadership team who he most strongly believed in and laid it all out there for them, complete with the emotions that had been building up inside.
“You don’t always have to be the stoic CEO,” Kramer says. “You have to be human. People want to see that you are just like them. Whether you’re talking to your leadership group or a wider range of employees, people know if you believe what you are saying. It wasn’t a matter of me saying, ‘Guys, here’s our plan and we can do it.’ They would know if I was just talking the talk.”
Kramer let his emotions come through in his words. But as tough as it was, he knew he had to move past those feelings and find a way to project some optimism that the company could get through this challenge. Kramer and his team also had to begin to formulate a plan of action to solve this problem.
“You are setting the tone,” Kramer says. “Of any time for me to not get into the doldrums, it was that time. Even though internally, I felt that way, it was important that I not be. You have no choice. What could I do? Sit and watch the Titanic go down? I was not going to do that.”
As he began to move past his raw emotions, he wanted to start thinking more logically about what he and his team could do to fix the problem.
“We wanted to put together a game plan, and the eight, I had huge confidence in them,” Kramer says. “Plus I had four attorneys and four financial consultants in terms of the bankruptcy side. So we had a team of basically 16 people to go at this.”
It was a good group of people that brought enough expertise to the table without being too unwieldy. The conversation turned to going public with what the company was facing.
The plan was to contact the Wall Street Journal, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Women’s Wear Daily and other media outlets and let them know what was going on with the company.
When the attorneys questioned one aspect of this plan to bring the situation out in the open, Kramer once again let loose with his emotions.
“They were very lethargic about it,” Kramer says. “I was like, ‘Listen, I’m fighting for a company here. You’re on your fifth bankruptcy case this month. This is just a normal day for you. This is not a normal day for me. This is not a normal day for my team. I’m fighting for the livelihood of [my] people. I’m fighting for a cause of what we’ve accomplished over the past 12 months in turning this company around. This is serious.’
“The attorney was like, ‘You know what, you’re right. Let’s try it.’ And in hindsight, that particular thing was one of the most important aspects of our approach.”
A little emotion and a little fire can be just what your team needs to summon the energy to fight through a crisis.
“We have to carry the flag,” Kramer says. “I’m not surprised by this, but I was so pleased to see my leadership team. They were like, ‘Where’s my armor and my sword? I’m ready to go.’
“You try to limit the moments of extreme passion for those moments that warrant it. It’s a touch-and-go thing. But effective leaders figure that out.”
This was clearly one of those moments.
