Job Loss Emotions– Deal With Them Or They’ll Come Out Sideways

16 Aug

Stressed

There’s an excellent article in the New York Times about how to deal with the stresses that invariably will face someone when they are in a prolonged job search in these difficult economic times. Some of the advice I found most useful:

Periodically, you may need to “download” all your emotions — to write them down or discuss them with a trusted friend who won’t criticize or judge you, Dr. Molitor said. Then identify which things you can control and which you can’t. Throughout your search, make detailed lists of the things you have done and still need to do, she said.

If you keep your emotions bottled up, “you’re going to have stress symptoms later,” she said. These can include insomnia, panic attacks, and colds brought on by a weakened immune system, she said. (And these will make you perform all the worse during an interview.)

Mentally, stress can distort your perspective. “When we get stressed, the brain is sometimes ineffective at processing things rationally,” Dr. Molitor said. In short, things may not be nearly as bad as they appear, and you have more control over your situation than you think.

Years ago I received advice that stress will always come out– they question is only how– either in a way that you manage or “sideways”.

I’ve been in the job search and have felt these emotions as well– thankfully I had good help at hand.In my professional life have counseled hundreds of people through corporate-sponsored outplacement. I see too many people who keep stress bottled up, only to have it come out sideways at an unopportune time, like a job interview.

I told one particularly stressed out client I advised:

“Employers can sense that something isn’t right in an interview. They may not know what they’re sensing, but that uncomfortable feeling may make them pass on you.”

He took the mesage to heart and eventually got the job. To another client, who was both angry about being laid off and also depressed about the matter (anger and depression are, of course, quite related) I said:

Employers are kind of funny. They already have lots of angry and depressed people on staff. They don’t need one more.

He too heeded the advice and got about the difficult business of dealing with these difficult emotions. This is very serious stuff, and the advice in this article is a good place to start if you are without work and feel like your emotions are getting the best of you.

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Thank You, Mrs. Eunice Kennedy Shriver

15 Aug

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One of the great advocates for the disabled, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, died this week. Her accomplishments are detailed in a post from The Examiner.com— here are a few highlights:

Eunice Kennedy Shriver 

died on Tuesday leaving behind a legacy that rivals that of her famous politician brothers.Not only was she the visionary behind the Special Olympics, but her lifelong advocacy for the mentally disabled also laid the groundwork for the single most important children’s rights legislation in education: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Shriver’s passion for the disabled grew from her close relationship with her intellectually challenged older sister, Rosemary. After witnessing her sister’s sharp decline and placement into a mental heath facility following a lobotomy, Shriver was set on a course to change the lives of the disabled worldwide.

If it were not for her tireless efforts, many disabled would like still be holed away in institutions, with no education or opportunity to live in the community.

As the father of a special needs child, I am grateful for her leadership in raising the profile of individuals with disabilities and helping us learn that the disabled can make meaningful contributions to our world and live joyful lives.

We do have a long way to go, but it is hard to imagine how much further behind we would be without Mrs. Shriver.

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Is This Customer Service At Your Business???

14 Aug

Maybe your call center staff aren’t as engaged as you might hope…

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Chip Conley– Finding Your Calling

13 Aug

One of the outstanding employers we profile in our book Re-Engage! is Joie de Vivre Hotels. Here’s a recent interview of founder Chip Conley talking about how to help people find true and endearing meaning, a calling if you will, in their work. Worth a listen:

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A Leadership Lesson In Candy Bars

12 Aug

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Excellent interview in the New York Times of Gary E. McCullough, president and chief executive of the Career Education Corporation. The entire interview is worth a read. Here are two sections I found particularly instructive, the first on the value of senior leaders paying attention to the needs of staff and how even seemingly small gestures can make a big difference:

Q. What’s the most important leadership lesson you’ve learned?

A. The biggest one I learned, and I learned it early on in my tenure in the Army, is the importance of small gestures. As you become more senior, those small gestures and little things become sometimes more important than the grand ones. Little things like saying “please” and “thank you” — just the basic respect that people are due, or sending personal notes. I spend a lot of time sending personal notes.

I’ll never forget one of the interactions we had with my commanding general of the division in which I was a platoon leader. We were at Fort Bragg, N.C. We had miserable weather. It was February and not as warm as you would think it would be in North Carolina. It had been raining for about a week, and the commanding general came around to review some of the platoons in the field. He went to one of my vehicle drivers and he asked him what he thought of the exercise we were on. To which the young private said, “Sir, it stinks.” I saw my short career flash before my eyes at that point.

He asked why, and the private said: “There are people who think this is great weather for doing infantry operations. I personally think 75 and partly cloudy is better.”

And so the commanding general said, “What can I do to make it better for you?” And the private said, “Sir, I sure could use a Snickers bar.” So a couple days later we were still moving through some really lousy weather, and a box showed up for the private. And that box was filled with 38 Snickers bars, which is the number of people in my platoon. And there was a handwritten note from the commanding general of our division that said, “I can’t do anything about the weather, but I hope this makes your day a bit brighter, and please share these with your buddies.”

And on that day, at that time, we would’ve followed that general anywhere. It was a very small thing, and he didn’t need to do it, but it impressed upon me that small gestures are hugely important.

And a wonderful illustration of how staff judge your actions, your “comportment” as they used to say, and what you can do to develop deep and abiding relationships that will make a big difference in you people perceive you as a leader:

There was a woman named Rosemary who long ago retired from Procter & Gamble. Rosemary was a cafeteria worker, and at the time at P. & G., we actually had a cart that would come around at 7, 7:30 in the morning. They would ring a bell and you’d go get a cup of coffee and a doughnut or a bagel or something to start off your day.And Rosemary had an uncanny ability to discern who was going to make it and who wasn’t going to make it. And I remember, when I was probably almost a year into the organization, she told me I was going to be O.K. But she also told me some of my classmates who were with the company weren’t going to make it. And she was more accurate than the H.R. organization was.

When I talked to her, I said, “How’d you know?” She could tell just by the way they treated people. In her mind, everybody was going to drop the ball at some point, and then she said: “You know you’re going to drop the ball at some point, and I see that you’re good with people and people like you and you treat them right. They’re going to pick up the ball for you, and they’re going to run and they’re going to score a touchdown for you. But if they don’t like you, they’re going to let that ball lie there and you’re going to get in trouble.”

Again, I think it’s those intangible things. I had taken the time to get to know Rosemary and know that her husband’s name was Floyd and know the thing that they did in their off-time was bowling. So, it is all those little intangible things that you see, not when you’re sitting around a table in a conference room, but what you see in other ways.

Kudos to Mr. McCullough for being the kind of leader that seems in short supply these days– one who has willing followers.

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Is Your RIF Leaving Staff “Punch Drunk”?

11 Aug

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Yet another survey, this time from People Management, points to how badly most employers go about force reductions:

As half of UK businesses consider making redundancies within months, the damaging effect on morale has been highlighted by a CIPD survey of 3,000 employees. The YouGov survey found that 70 per cent of employees said redundancies had damaged morale, with 22 per cent so unhappy about how redundancies were being handled that they were looking to change jobs as soon as the labour market improved. Just over a quarter said they were less motivated as a result of redundancies.
Some 81 per cent believed senior managers needed to restore or improve trust in their leadership, as only a quarter said that they were consulted on important decisions. Just over half of employees said frequent and honest communications would have the greatest impact on improving trust. Public outrage at “rewards for failure” was also reflected in the survey, as 29 per cent said not rewarding failing senior managers was key to rebuilding trust.
Ben Willmott, CIPD senior adviser, public policy, said: “Survivors of redundancy programmes left ‘punch drunk’ by the process may not have the levels of motivation and commitment needed for their employers to capitalise on any recovery. Many disillusioned employees will vote with their feet and leave as soon as the labour market picks up.

Terribly sad, really. By leaving employees “sucker punched”, leaders risk losing those employees who survive the layoff. In the employee engagement surveys we’ve analyzed for our book Re-Engage!, we see many employees who are, to coin a phrase, “sullen and near mutinous.

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Open Communication???

9 Aug

It’s helpful to be able to share whatever is on your mind…

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Peter Drucker on Change Leadership

7 Aug

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From The Daily Drucker, by Peter Drucker and Joseph Maciarello:

One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it. In a period of upheavels, such as the one were living in, change is the norm. To be sure, it is painful and risky, and above all it requires a great deal of very hard work. But unless it is seen as the task of the organization to lead change, the organization will not survive. In a period of rapid structural change, the only ones who survive are the change leaders. A change leader sees change as an opportunity. A change leader looks for change, know how to find the right changes, and know how to make them effective both outside the organization and inside it. To make the future is highly risky. It is less risky, howeve, than not to try to make it. A goodly proportion of those attempting to will not succeed. But predictably, no one else will.

Questions to consider:

  • Are you change leader?
  • If not, what can you do to become one?
  • How can you get your manager/your organization to embrace needed changes?
  • What changes do you need to make in order to be more effective?

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This, This Is An Engaged Workforce!

6 Aug

One term that is tossed about in our world of employee engagement is “discretionary effort”, the notion that a more engaged employee will choose to take on extra duties or go the extra mile. I’ve often thought of it as “work employees choose to do even when nobody is looking”.

If this term seems unclear to you, take seven minutes from you day to watch the following video from Southwest Airlines. This IS discretionary effort! Importantly, the “link” between a more engaged workforce and more loyal customers is crystal clear– why can’t more folks see this?

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Don’t Forget About WHY Good Employees Leave

5 Aug

I’m pleased so see that my co-author, Leigh Branham, is still getting press about his book on employee retention. A recent citation was from HR.BLR.com shares the results of his extensive research into this area, which is still timely today:

Employees leave organizations for many reasons; oftentimes these reasons are unknown to their employers. Employers need to listen to employees’ needs and implement retention strategies to make employees feel valued and engaged in order to keep them. These retention methods can have a significant and positive impact on an organization’s turnover rate. Here we’ll take a look at some of these strategies.

According to strategic planning consultant Leigh Branham, SPHR, 88% of employees leave their jobs for reasons other than pay: However, 70% of managers think employees leave mainly for pay-related reasons. Branham says there are seven main reasons why employees leave a company:

  1. Employees feel the job or workplace is not what they expected.
  2. There is a mismatch between the job and person.
  3. There is too little coaching and feedback.
  4. There are too few growth and advancement opportunities.
  5. Employees feel devalued and unrecognized.
  6. Employees feel stress from overwork and have a work/life imbalance.
  7. There is a loss of trust and confidence in senior leaders.

The book, The Seven Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, is terrific. Worth looking at now– even in the midst of an economic crisis– because keeping our best is more important right now.

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