Every successful company has faced an unimaginable challenge or may have been under fire at one time or another. Whether it's a sudden market recall concerning a popular brand item on the shelves or a global crisis that is personally impacting the lives of your staff and their ability to continue to do a good job, it's important for leaders to demonstrate empathy and stay humble as they begin to gather the facts.
But don't shoulder the burden alone. Failure is an opportunity to strengthen your team as you build comradery while uncovering the root causes or issues, finding better solutions and working toward a common goal for future successes.
Below are 13 Forbes Human Resources Council members sharing what weathering a bad storm has taught them and how to encourage your team to keep moving in a positive direction.
Forbes Human Resources Council members share their wisdom.
Photos courtesy of individual members.1. Be Willing To Learn And Reflect
Stay above the line. Our ability to remain calm and open along with the ability to keep a learning and reflective frame of mind will ensure positive takeaways from the most impactful of crises, be it a pandemic, an unexpected founder or executive absence or a financial downturn. As good humans and good people leaders, one of the most important things that we can do is model resiliency and conscious leadership. - Bernadette Robertson, GLIDE Foundation
2. Communicate Effectively
The quality of your employee communications is critical. This is particularly the case in the content of the message and the channels your message is delivered in. Internal communication is a specific skill set that takes time to hone and align with each company's employee experience. If leveraged correctly during a crisis, it will help to decrease the pain and turnaround time. - Melissa Anzman, bettHR
3. Create A Safe Space To Fail
The mantra has been simple: "Make it safe to fail while providing the talent with all the tools they need to succeed." This approach has helped us face headwinds head-on in a collective manner, as we know we all will only come out stronger from such experiences and can count on each other for help. - Rohit Manucha, SIH AGH
4. Put Your People First
Lean into people-centric, empathetic leadership. When Russia invaded Ukraine, several of our colleagues and their families were in danger. To support our employees, we evacuated and worked to ensure they were safe and supported, personally and professionally. Finding compassionate, people-first solutions in the face of a crisis demonstrates the value leaders have for their employees and their willingness to create a more unified workforce. - Bjorn Reynolds, Safeguard Global
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5. Make Problem-Solving A Team Effort
Too often, management tries to solve the world's problems independently with no input from the working folks. Many perspectives of the varying roles and levels on the job are different and may lead to a viable solution to the crisis that management may not have considered. Employees will appreciate being part of the solution. - Gordon Pelosse, CompTIA, the Computing Technology Industry Association
6. Be Transparent and Frank
It's important for leaders not to sidestep the important issues just to maintain calm. This is especially true if a situation is obvious to everyone and needs to be addressed. During a crisis, you need to be honest by addressing any challenges head-on in order to build trust with your employees. Trust is hard to earn, but impossible to win back if lost. - Sarika Lamont, EverCommerce
7. Be Vulnerable
Remember that we don't know a lot more than we know. So, be open to new ideas of learning, lean on science, communicate briskly, leverage collective wisdom, be creative, fail fast and don't give up until the crisis is over. All these things come naturally to egoless and authentic leaders. Focus on building these traits in your leadership team during times of peace. - Sudhir Singh, Pro Orgs
8. Go Slow To Go Fast
In a crisis, we often scream about getting things done now but forget the most important part, which is our people. Bringing your employees along for the journey and ensuring you're putting them first when brainstorming or strategizing on a change plan to get through a crisis will save everybody time. - Sophia Nardelli, Bath Fitter
9. Turn Your Challenge Into An Opportunity
Turn challenges into opportunities by countering every serious negative action with a five times greater reaction. Here's an example: When Tylenol capsules were laced with poison in 1982, the company didn't allow its reputation for safety to be ruined, but instead launched a massive recall and invented the first triple-sealed, tamper-proof medication packaging that became the safety gold standard. - Julia Pollak, ZipRecruiter
10. Demonstrate Empathy
It's important to put people first. For our team, navigating through the pandemic required a previously untapped depth of empathy and understanding, but we knew that without healthy people (myself included) we couldn’t do anything. That took practice. We learned to ask for what we needed and celebrate wellness. Now our greatest strengths are our capacity for compassion and our ability to accept people as they are. - Ursula Mead, InHerSight
11. Bring In The Union
Bringing in union leaders sooner rather than later is more helpful. It's because they have a greater understanding of what their workforce is facing and what can be implemented to provide care and support. They can also assist with messaging and help their members understand the reasons behind difficult decisions. Work with union staff to improve the employees' experiences instead of working without them. - Brandy Marshall, Franklin Pierce School District
12. Be Ready To Pivot
The word “pivot” is overused but you need to be able to pivot in how you deliver your products and services to adjust to the current climate. For example, when businesses began to reopen during the early days of Covid, iHire reprioritized our marketing efforts to help companies rehire workers quickly. - Lisa Shuster, iHire
13. Stay True To Your Values
Companies need to stay true to their values. The behaviors, ethics and attitudes that made you successful in the first place will get your company and its people through the hard times. Yes, sometimes difficult business decisions need to be made, but having the willingness to walk away from work if it is in conflict with those values is what separates good employers from the great ones. - Russell Klosk, Accenture
