October 9, 2008

Susan de la Vergne

No doubt about it, this has been a dark few weeks in the news. The economic landscape of our country is changing before our very eyes.

I won’t re-cap the events. You know them. Lehman Brothers, AIG, the Dow below 10,000—no, wait, I said I wouldn’t re-cap them. No need for that, when we have live updates of the particulars coming at us every minute.

But the live updates trigger more questions than they answer. Certainly, the one question everyone is asking is “What does it mean to me?”

“What does it mean to my investments? To my 401k? To my accounts at Merrill Lynch or Lehman Brothers? To the company I work for? To my job? To the future?”

First the mortgage implosion, now this! What’s next?

It’s likely employees in your company are actively worried. You see signs of it all around you: People checking the internet constantly to see how the Dow and the S&P are doing, people chatting in the break room, the parking lot, the cafeteria.

“My uncle worked for Lehman for 10 years, and bang, he’s out of a job.”

“I’ve lost a huge chunk of our college fund in the last couple of weeks, and my son is ready to head off to school next year!”

“Anyone can be next! No one is safe.”

You realize it’s impeding progress where you work, hitting individual productivity, taking down the collective morale. But what can you do? You don’t have the answers. You’re not a fortune teller or a nationally recognized economist.

You Have Two Options

You could ignore what people are saying and worrying about. Do nothing. After all, you have nothing to offer, no answers, no special view into the future. We’re all in the same boat, and you’re as worried as everyone else. So let’s just keep watching the news and hope this passes quickly.

That’s one approach.

Or you could do something with more leadership character to it: You could talk with colleagues, acknowledge their concerns and help them try to focus in the midst of these disturbing events.

Talking Points

You don’t have to have The Answer. Your employees or colleagues don’t expect you to, and you certainly shouldn’t pretend to. No one knows how this is all going to turn out. Your message is that you share their concerns. You appreciate that they’re worried, it’s realistic, who wouldn’t be, we’re all in this together.

Then you move on to helping them cope. Here are some recommended talking points:

1. What are we known for in this country? Optimism. Not unrealistic, rose-colored-glasses optimism, but continuing on toward success, rather than cowering under the fear of failure. The message: Be encouraged. We are a people who rebound.

2. What are we known for? We work hard. There’s something in us that rallies to a challenge. If there’s something that needs re-building, who better to do it than someone who’s not afraid to work hard?

3. Something else we’re known for in this country: Creativity. Discovering solutions, cures, remedies to the most difficult problems.

4. It’s easy to be preoccupied with the barrage of messages coming from the media, to hang on every fluctuation in the stock indices. But don’t. You can’t nudge the Dow up by watching it. It will do what it’s going to do.

Then you weave into this presentation the particular goals and good progress going on at your company now and urge your employees to apply their best selves to the work at hand,

Caveats

Authenticity is key to delivering a message like this. If you don’t really care about whether your employees ride this out emotionally, you won’t be able to convince them you do.

Resist the urge to try to answer any “what’s going to happen” questions. Even if by some miracle you were right, whatever you offer as a possible outcome is going to scare someone even worse than they already are for now. Sticking with “I don’t know” is safe and honest.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from politicians, it’s that putting a positive spin on a negative story usually falls flat. If you decide to deliver this kind of encouragement, be realistic and appropriately serious, and know that in some measure you are helping others to move forward.