Managing Challenge, Change and Crisis

Table of Contents

• Welcome back!

• Managing Challenge, Change and Crisis

  • Communication, Transparency and Internal Predictab …

  • Midlevel Managers

  • Helping Remaining Teammates to Handle the Extra Wo …

• 1% Solutions

• Things I’m Reading

• New Workshop on May 29th

Welcome back!

I did not make it to the ASU+GSV AIR show due to my ongoing hamstring issue (honestly, at this point, I feel like I need to name said hamstring and develop a whole persona for it). That being said, I am starting to see some progress on my leg (yay!) Besides feeling human, this also means I think I can now resume planning for my upcoming trip to Stockholm and Amsterdam, and finding the right outfit to wear to the Taylor Swift concert in Sweden. Yes, you read that correctly. No, I have zero shame in writing it either.

Managing Challenge, Change and Crisis

Originally this edition was going to focus solely on managing the aftermath of layoffs. A friend, whose org is grappling with this hard core, suggested it be my next focus, as the ramifications of not handling the post-layoff aftermath usually leads to more attritions and instability. And while there is a need for this topic, I found that what I was writing was applicable to handling most challenges or crisis, whether that be layoff, hiring freeze, growth or increased volume of work. So it may be helpful to read the below through that lens.

Often senior leaders are (understandably) so busy coming up with a layoff plan that they neglect to create internal communication strategy, feedback channels and cascading communication to follow (or if they do, it is rushed and often not developed with a comms and HR professional). And I get how stressful it can be for many senior leaders who do want to do right by their people. But besides thinking of your people as people who are also stressed, you also need to think of your teammates as a key lever to get through whatever you are getting through. And like any key lever of strategy, you need to be gathering data and addressing those findings. This means establishing processes for bidirectional communication and finding ways to address that feedback.

Communication, Transparency and Internal Predictability

Anxiety is automatically heightened during change, and your plan to get your organization through this needs to attend to this. Communication coupled with giving people direction will help to alleviate this. You may not know everything but you’ll need to communicate what you do know and what you are trying to figure out.

For things that are uncertain, articulate what values you are trying to uphold or what you’re priorities will be. For example, when the pandemic hit, different school systems handled the uncertainty of the budget in different ways. Mine did a pay freeze. The reason? We were prioritizing ensuring that everyone who currently worked for us continued to do so, and we wanted to mitigate a need for a layoff. Was the decision a popular one? Well no one wants to hear their pay is frozen. But it was understood and (most) people could get behind the rationale.

There is another way to approach transparency in crisis. I have worked with a few organizations in transition either because of layoffs or growth. Junior level folks wanted more transparency, which I think is really a proxy for a feeling of security when so much is shifting. If I know more, I can prepare more. Senior leaders often work to share information but with the rate of change, keeping everyone abreast of everything would itself be a full time role (as would keeping up with that incoming information). So, controversial opinion: I’m not sure it’s transparency folks are after as much as internal predictability.

Rebecca Holmes writes about this in her book Survive, Reset, Thrive. In this overview, she describes internal predictability as folks being able to say yes to the following questions:

1. I know what we are trying to achieve and why it matters.

2. I know where critical decisions take place.

3. I can rely on others to do what they say they will do.

4. When I do adapt, within the boundaries of strategy, it is recognized and rewarded.

Leaders should continuously be gathering data on whether their teammates know the answers to the above, and course correcting as needed. A few places to gather and communicate this information

• Town Hall or All Hands

• 5 minute team surveys (you’ll know the right rhythm, but biweekly may be a good place to start).

• Specifically adding these questions to all agendas- and ensuring data is flowing up from middle level managers to senior level leaders (more on this below)

Having strong feedback loops where you assess and address teammates’ questions and concerns will go a long way to alleviate anxiety so that folks can feel safe enough to do the work ahead.

Midlevel Managers

Midlevel managers play a unique role here because they will inevitably be closer both to what people are saying and the strategy behind some of the big decisions. Senior leaders would be wise to explicitly leverage midlevel managers to

• better understand people’s fears, concerns and lack of clarity so they can address issues quickly

• cascade key communication so that people not only understand the org’s direction and focus but also their place in the work.

To these ends, you need to have a mechanism where senior leaders are checking in with midlevel managers on the team’s experience and provide necessary talking points when shifts in strategy, policy or work are made.

I’d ensure mid-level managers are also checking in on people as people and a teammates. While the discontent and stress may be universally felt, each person’s individual relationship with work and the org is different. If you can understand what is stressing someone out, you are more likely to find the right support or solution (remember: solution may not be completely solve for but mitigate).

Helping Remaining Teammates to Handle the Extra Work

During a time of crisis or post-layoff, people are going to have extra work at a time where they are also handling the increased cognitive load of stress and uncertainty. This is often a recipe for burnout. Because you are a good person and are responsible for supporting folks n doing the work needed to get through whatever you are going through, one of the most important roles any manager has is to keep their teams feeling steady. No, that does not mean toxic positivity or telling everyone things will be fine. Sure, you can say things will be fine (eventually) but you also need to address the challenges directly with your team and develop a plan of action.

While hard, the steps available to you don’t need to be complicated. I personally love Adam Grant’s very practical advice for managing burnout:

• Can you reprioritize people’s work or shift workload? If you can’t shift the tasks on someone’s plate, can you shift the level of expectation? What are things that can be operationalized? What just needs to be good enough? What can we get a C+ on?

• If that isn’t possible (and sometimes it isn’t), can you give them some level of choice?

• How can you provide the necessary support? If people do need to do extra work, how can you provide the necessary support particularly when the additional work is new for them or outside of their usual experience. Burnout sometimes comes from not feeling successful rather than simply the extra work. Providing a space to ask questions, offering templates or exemplars or even providing or connecting folks with trainings or coaching can all lighten the cognitive load.

How do you know which step is right? Talk to your people. The three questions that I’d add to every manager’s check ins and every leader’s skip-levels:

• How are you as a person?

• What’s getting in the way of you being successful?

• What are ways I can make it easier for you to do your job?

To my point earlier, while there may be universal challenges or questions, often most people want to know what work they need to do, how they need to do it and what success looks like. The more you can support people in that, the less anxiety they’ll feel about the macro-level changes. And to do that well, midlevel managers needs to be equipped to do so—and then they need to be heard.

(For more on my musings on navigating post-layoffs, you can listen to a podcast episode I did with Stephanie Lemek. If you don’t follow her on LinkedIn, you absolutely should. She is my go-to person when it comes to building a trauma-informed workplace).

1% Solutions

• Support wellness by amplifying your EAP (and any other benefits!)- If you’ve spent time securing benefits for your teammates, be sure they know what exists! And given this week’s topic, I’d focus on the EAP which can offer mental health and wellness benefits. You can look at this article to help you think through next steps.

• Using AI to generate feedback- AI can save time if you know how to leverage it. One way that I am seeing a use case is in generating feedback when you are not sure what to say to someone. I’ve tested a few prompts such as “How do I talk to someone about being more collaborative?” or “What do I say to someone who has still not improved in their work?'“ The answers are surprisingly clear and kind. Also if you are thinking of terminating someone please also reach out to HR.

• Onboarding newly promoted internal staff- The biggest mistake I’ve seen (and have faced) is promoting someone to their next role without any level of onboarding. Besides working together to set clear metrics and goals, it is also worth talking about how their ways of working may need to shift. One simple way to start this conversation is for the newly promoted manager to evaluate themselves based on the evaluation framework, competencies or JD of the new role, and have their manager do the same. This will start a conversation about strengths to leverage, areas of weakness to strengthen, or gaps of knowledge to be filled. (For more here, you can check out Friday’s 1% Leadership Solutions newsletter).

Things I’m Reading

• Gen Z and Feedback- If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a second, you know how frustrated I feel about how we speak about Gen Z here (more here) While this Washington Post article is clear and helpful, this type of feedback should be given to everyone. I’d strongly encourage leaders of managers to share this article.

• How People are using Generative AI- I have been playing with AI to think through a variety of use cases (as you can tell from my 1% solutions) This article outlines different use cases- helpful if you want to leverage AI but are not sure where to start.

• Setting the How in Performance Management this blog from McKinsey focuses on the need to define key behaviors and skills spelled out in order to support performance reviews in operationalizing your culture. (BTWs, I am currently doing this now and created a simple version for client last month, so I have lots of thoughts and lessons learned here if you want to reach out)

New Workshop on May 29th

I deeply believe our mid-level leaders make or break any strategy, policy or initiative, and so investing in their leadership is one of the most significant investments you can make. I’m hosting a training on May 29th specifically for midlevel managers in NYC on Leading Cross Functional Change. Space is limited, so just respond to this email directly if you or a teammate are interested. Cost is $325 before 5/2, and $400 after, and covers the training and a 30-minute post-training coaching session.

If you are interested in me leading this workshop for an internal cohort of midlevel managers, you can just respond to this email directly to start a conversation.