A rudderless leadership must just top the list of reasons employee attitudes plummet, especially when storms of change erupt. This can include changes in ownership, such as a recent merger or acquisition, changes in strategic direction or changes in marketplace competition.
The truth is, what feels like a disaster-in-progress often is an opportunity for a leader to shine. To prevent your team from sliding into a slump or to empower an already downtrodden group into a highly productive state, you must be intentional in your behavior.
Here are 10 actions leaders can start employing today to shore up for the next storm, or to address a difficult situation you may already be facing:
1. Maintain high, but achievable expectations.
Propelling your team forward during periods of transformation or disruption is important; however, equally important is articulating specific, and even formidable, goals for your members. You must also ensure the goals are attainable in order to cultivate a sense of achievement, and momentum.
2. Keep your team focused on the right things.
When times are tough, focus can be a particular challenge. Stamping out fires or addressing urgent stakeholder demands can distract focus. A strong leader knows how to continually monitor, communicate with and coach their team to ensure the right things, in the right order, are addressed. They also know how to plot and inspire a new course when the priority winds shift.
3. Listen to your team members, with a friendly demeanor, to understand the problems they face, and support them wholeheartedly.
In the throes of change, a little more work and a lot less talk may seem the keys to success. However, when an employee is feeling frayed and exhausted, and pulled from all directions, it can be rehabilitating and strengthening for them to vent and release.
Moreover, inviting them into your space to share enables opportunity to support and guide. Employees feel more loyal and enthusiastic, and a sense of hope if you are welcoming and ready to serve their needs. The reverberating results of your responses will not only ease the employee's burden but will also increase overall productivity, a win-win-win for them, you and your company.
4. Weed out the team members who are not a fit, who refuse to commit and/or who add negativity and pessimism to the mix.
While this may seem like a no-brainer, bad-egg employees often get overlooked during crises. Maybe you feel that there is no time to replace an under performing or disruptive personality, but at what cost to overall morale and productivity? By nipping negativity in the bud, you can restore the vitality of the rest of your department. This melds neatly with point number 2--by keeping the team harmonious and un-distracted by the noise of negativity, you keep them focused on the right things.
5. Create a sense of accomplishment amid a seemingly impossible situation.
Founded on your confident, caring leadership, a closely-knit, calmer team is enabled to act on opportunities for achievement. You bridge problems, such as lack of tools or team inexperience, with innovation, empowering your employees to take risks and create solutions. This helps diffuse the clouds and storms swirling about the enterprise. Not only do you and your company gain from this empowerment, but your employees also earn a new found sense of accomplishment and growth.
6. Call an all-hands meeting, especially valuable if you have silo-ed and/or widely dispersed teams.
This meeting is not a one-track endeavor intended only to drive a corporate result. By understanding the value your individual team members can reap from this engagement, you bring them together with an intention to create bonds that will carry them even further in their careers.
7. Ensure your employees feel they work with you and not for you.
Even though you are decisive and ably make adjustments and directives, as a good leader is called to do, your style is not to dictate or demand. Instead, you provide the framework, communicate the end goal and spend the rest of the time serving your employees' needs, providing support and the uncluttered highway to drive ahead.
8. Communicate company goals and expectations.
Even though you may feel conflicted about the direction the company is driving, don't use this as an excuse to appear uncertain and unclear about goals and expectations. Acknowledge that you understand things right now seem ambiguous and a bit at odds with past goals. Then, imbue the team with your longer-term vision for an ultimate positive goal. Weave in specific and actionable steps, timelines and milestones so your staff can gain immediate traction and join you on this journey.
9. Avoid micromanaging.
You are always available to answer questions and will reach out when you see someone struggling to develop or implement an idea. You make it clear that employees can reach out to you anytime for clarifications and guidance. However, you steer clear of micromanaging, by trusting your employees to deliver on goals in their own unique way.
10. Always encourage your team members to learn new concepts and continue learning.
Continuous learning is stimulating and propels employees forward in their careers, while also contributing to company goals for innovation, disruption and marketplace advantage. The bottom line is that investing emotionally or financially in your employees' growth is vital to organizational stability and expansion.
