Graham Peel | Leadership Coach and Talent/Operations Advisor, Endeavor Strategic | Helping founders/leaders/organizations scale their greatness.
I was recently asked for advice on how executives and managers can effectively provide leadership after their company downsized. Unfortunately, I have a lot of experience managing these situations from both a corporate and client perspective.
Early in my career, I was responsible for terminating a client’s contractors after their temporary assignments were completed. Then, during the Great Recession of 2008-2009, we witnessed internal layoffs where many people were laid off. In another role, I laid off three-quarters of my team and had to make decisions based strictly on revenue, costs, and business viability.
During a layoff, a company’s integrity and values become very clear, demonstrated by the company’s approach to these decisions, loyalty, integrity, consistency, goodwill, or lack thereof. Therefore, it is important to handle these situations with extreme caution. Your company brand and reputation, employee engagement, satisfaction, and productivity depend on it.
6 ways to demonstrate leadership after being fired
Taking a leadership role after a layoff is tough, but it can be a real opportunity to help your employees and your company recover. Beyond being a way to separate yourself from the market, it’s the right thing to do to take care of your employees, including those who are leaving. Use this time as a reset to move your company forward, changing the way you do things in some of the areas that led to this layoff in the first place, and creating a stronger team and business opportunity.
There are many talent-focused best practices that company leaders can try after a layoff. Managing emotions and the impact on your business requires an approach of listening, observing, and acting to understand internal emotions after a layoff and reduce the impact on the company as a whole. Here are some steps.
1. Perform a morale check
Conducting a post-mortem to gauge employee sentiment after a layoff can help you understand where your company is currently. Review termination activity, leadership performance, and lessons learned from experience to consider root causes. It’s important to discuss the biggest challenges with delivering news, running the post-layoff period, and other parts of the process. This is a good way to see how the entire team is doing, including leadership positions.
2. Allow employees to grieve
The time after a layoff is a time of regret and mourning, allowing room for empathy and space to process the human experience. Recognize the needs of people at all levels and consider what support you can provide. Some may think that the stronger the team, the better it will be able to handle this event, but I think the opposite is actually true. When team members feel strongly about each other and have a real connection, it hurts when people are fired. Consider offering counseling, extra time off, or other activities to help reduce stress.
3. Lead with character
After being laid off, it’s time to start working towards your future. This could be a move in a more positive direction or preparation for future layoffs, negative business updates, or bad market indicators. Therefore, leaders must be able to address difficult questions and honestly communicate hard truths while being kind and considerate. It is also important that people do not worry about every little thing. Taking a people-first approach is critical. Be as transparent as possible and share as much as you can from a legal and HR perspective. This gives you the opportunity to rebuild and regain trust throughout the layoff process.
4. Stand out
The worst thing not to do after being fired is to work remotely, in an office, or hide behind artificial walls. Prioritize being as visible as possible by improving availability, access, and communication. The higher the level, the more important this becomes. Visualization can help leaders build trust, provide reassurance, and uplift their teams after this stressful event.
To accomplish this, you can host roundtables, town halls, and skip-level meetings. Other strategies include open business hours and regular video and live call updates. Focus on honesty and candor to reduce stress. Don’t take the easy way out and avoid difficult conversations and tension.
5. Change your mindset
To drive change for the better and address the human side of the downsizing process, it’s important to focus on what you can control. Clear and consistent communication is essential, so work with your communications or PR team to manage the overall message. But don’t get me wrong. As a leader, this is your responsibility. You need to act on your message so that no one feels misunderstood.
6. Leverage your resources to move forward.
Finally, you need to plan for the future. Consider ways to close skills gaps and distribute your workload. Your plan should also include providing resources such as Q&A and quick reference guides to remaining employees, and having a senior leader available to address any concerns.
Being fired is never easy. Managing both real-life situations and people’s emotions is difficult. However, there are ways to reduce the impact on employees. Your success in leading this period and coaching other leaders to do the same will shape the future of your organization.
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