About a year ago, the chief operating officer of a large public company that was going through a significant downsizing, scoffed at the concept of layoff survivor sickness.  Despite hard survey and interview data that showed employees were demoralized, depressed, and unwilling to take risks, he thought spending time and money to help get them back on track was unnecessary and a waste.

 Since then, the company has continued to downsize, profits have disappeared, and the remaining workforce is traumatized.  The chief operating officer has, himself, been laid off and his replacement is now asking for help.  If this organization had taken action a year ago their may have been a better prognosis for the patient.  There is a merger in the wind and that might help bail the firm out.  Unfortunately there are a couple of other remaining executives in this company who still feel helping heal the survivors is a waste of money.  So, even though the firm asked for help, I declined.  I prefer to work with optimistic firms where the top management is not in denial.  

 This is not an unusual situation.  I have found that there is a hierarchical denial phenomenon in many organizations.  Many concerned managers and HR executives have to work very hard to convince their top managers that there is a problem.  It is somewhat like “the bigger they are, the harder they fall,” because almost always when the top managers themselves are laid off, they receive a conceptual wake-up call and understand the problem for those who remain. 

 Much of my consulting practice these days involves finding ways to get the attention of top managers.  I have found the best way to do this is to show them the horrible effects on productivity and profits if they ignore the problem.

I recently talked to a member of a search committee who was disappointed that the person that was hired a year ago to lead a non-profit had not done enough to change the culture.  He was considering demoting the person and starting another search.

 I think his response is typical of our cultural expectations (the US is the most individualistic off all cultures).  We are too quick to praise or blame the individual and too slow to look to the group and the underlying system.

 Cultural change is a collective, not an individual responsibility.  The top person plays an important role but will fail unless the cultural change takes root within the system.

 In terms of Kotter’s model, the most important leadership role seems to be creating a sense of urgency and stimulating the development of a strong coalition of key influencers and missionaries for the new culture. 

 The next most important leadership activity involves removing obstacles.  Policies and structure are relatively easy compared to dealing with people who are sabotaging and blocking the cultural change.  It is ironic that organizations needing to change their culture to accommodate the post-layoff new psychological contract sometimes have to resort to firing people to facilitate the change.  In my experience, the most effective leaders have little patience with cultural saboteurs or blockers.

Bureaucracy bashing is an artifact of the post-layoff culture.  Managers, consultants, politicians, and taxpayers all have embraced the politically correct mantra that “bureaucracy must be stomped out!”  Unfortunately, the majority of those calling for an end to bureaucratic evil support and reinforce values that are central to the philosophy of bureaucracy.  We are deeply, often unconsciously, conditioned to connect with our organizations from a bureaucratic frame of reference. 

 As originally articulated by the German sociologist Max Weber, bureaucratic organizational systems were conceived as a way to instill merit and base promotions on performance rather than birthright or charisma. From it came the basic notion of separation of the office from the officer, which, in turn, led to such recognizable management staples as job descriptions, merit pay, succession planning, policies, procedures, and uniform “objective” administration and management processes. 

Many of our values concerning loyality, motivation, and commitment also have their roots in it.  Our notions of long-term employment and equating pay increases, promotion and perquisites to organizational loyalty rather than professional competence are grounded in classic bureaucratic assumptions. For those of us who spend our lives in organizations, the shift from a fixed, long-term bureaucratic connection with our organizations to one that is more fluid and flexible is gut wrenching.  In order to let go of the old, no-longer functional bureaucratic connection with our organizations, we need a new vision, something to hold on to.  The creation of this post-bureaucratic vision is no easy task.  As is the case with all fundamental changes in worldview, there are aspects that are guaranteed to hook our feelings, emotions, and deep-seated beliefs.   Consider your reaction to this vision of an organization operating outside the bureaucratic paradigm:   

 There are no job descriptions, no merit pay steps, no clear hierarchy or direct connection between responsibility and formal authority.  The focus is external – to the customer, the community, and to society – there is very little internal focus.  The learning organization is a literal concept: organizations are communities of learning and, thus, individual decision-making is subordinated to the wisdom of the collective.  Although some people may stay for long periods of time there is no long-term job security.  Employees are attracted to the organization because of the work and when the work is no longer a manifestation of their human spirit, they will leave.  Unlike bureaucracy, there is no separation of the office and the officer – the organization is shaped and tasks are assigned based on individual talents and not on filling a pre-defined role as in the bureaucratic job description.  Feelings and emotions are not controlled or suppressed but are encouraged and stimulated.

 The above description passes the emotional test of a paradigm shift and most of us get at least one of our hot buttons pushed when we consider such an organization.  That’s why bureaucracy is so hard to bury.  The organization of the new paradigm will be a human system, filled with all the messy, gooey, stuff of humanity. Difficult though it may be, we must learn to accept it and live with it.

The difference between those organizations that make it in the new millennium and those that don’t will be leaders with the ability to facilitate transitions:  their own, the organization’s and those of their fellow employees.  What follows are ten very specific and prescriptive activities that will facilitate the development of these essential skills.

• Get involved in the leadership of a volunteer organization.  Pick one that does not receive funding or support from your organization.  Helping manage a volunteer organization is a powerful feedback and developmental experience.  It removes you from your positional power base and allows you to assess your true impact. 
• Take evening courses or sign up for special programs that teach helping skills..  The macro-leadership competency of the future will be the ability to help yourself, your organization, and your employees facilitate change and transition  Management will is a helping profession and managers  need the same kind of helping skills as other professionals in the field. 
• Complete a professional 360-degree feedback instrument.  By professional, I mean that you should use an instrument that has a history, validity standards, and norms.  Have the results interpreted by someone trained in helping you understand what it means and dosen’t mean.  Some organizations have their own 360-degree instruments and others use instrument licensed and certified by external vendors.  There are also some excellent external organizations you can hire to administer such instruments. 
• Attend a professional leadership training program.  This type of training is different from a program on marketing, quality, or performance management.  It should focus on intra-personal insight, inter-personal skills, and the systems perspective necessary to develop a culture that leads to organizational learning.  There are some very good in-house programs and many excellent external offerings.
• Find a Truth Teller.  It is particularly important for top managers to cultivate and use truth tellers.  A truth teller is someone in the organization you can rely on to, as is said in baseball “call them they way they see them.”  Truth tellers provide unfiltered feedback. 
• Attend Laboratory Training.  These sessions used to be called T-groups. Yes, this is sensitivity training, and yes, it is “feely” – but it probably won’t be “touchy.”  The bottom line is that this kind of laboratory training is a very powerful way to get the depth of feedback that will lead to self-awareness. 
• Become familiar with future search technology.  There is a movement out there, using labels such as “future search,” and speaking of “getting the whole system in a room.”  These large system-change processes go for the jugular in stimulating the learning organization.  If you want to jump-start your understanding of learning in the colle3ctive, you need to get on the bandwagon; the technology is growing faster than it can be codified.
• Learn how to have a dialogue.  A dialogue is different from a discussion, an argument, a debate, or a business meeting.  The dialogue process is very important in developing learning organizations and is central to collective learning.  There are seminars and workshops.  You can also find some consultants who can teach you and your organization dialogue skills.
• Get active in your professional association.  Don’t just attend the national meeting – become a worker, serve on committees, pass out the literature, do time in the information booth, set up the chairs!  The higher up you are, the more the value of the grunt work.  It forces you to see an organizational system from a different perspective and helps you rethink your own skills and assumptions as to what constitutes value-added.
• Set up an intensive personal feedback project.  One option involves retaining an external consultant to nearly overwhelm you with feedback from a wide range of data points.  This is a very powerful process.  You can’t escape valid data, and a skilled consultant will help you understand it and do something about it.

The BP oil leak mess provides a relevant metaphor for leading organizations through troubled times.  The message is simple: blaming is not leadership – it is an escape from true leadership.

The US government, in response to political pressure, is blaming BP and spending more time grandstanding than trying to help get to the root of the problem.  BP is blaming its vendors and other oil companies are now blaming BP.  The state government is blaming the federal government and local municipalities are blaming the state.  Democrats are blaming Republicans and vice versa. 

In the meantime, the oil continues to gush and gush and too few people are focused on the root cause – first finding a way to stop the bleeding, and then to solve the underlying systems issue of minimizing the dangers of deep sea drilling.

True leadership involves ignoring the escape into blaming and having the courage to help people focus on the basic root cause. 

In an era of layoffs, cutbacks, and economic downturn, blaming corporate “greed,” lack of government regulation, or the concept of free-market capitalism does not deal with the basic, root cause issue.  That issue is the need to embrace the fact that we live in an interdependent global economic environment and that the paradigm in regard to long term, stable, employment security has irrevocably changed.

The lesson that came out of the total quality movement is operant: blame the system, not the individual.  True leaders do that.

Here are four very powerful guidelines for coaching organizational leaders in troubled times.  I’ve written about them in other contexts, but I think it is appropriate that I summarize them here:

 Help is defined by the helpee not the helper.  I learned this deceptively simple phrase from the late Pat Williams, founder of the Pepperdine MSOD program and, over the years, have increasingly come to appreciate it’s relevance to a coaching relationship.  When a client is caught up in a crisis of purpose, competence, and self-esteem; facts, figures, models, 360 degree feedback reports, and flow charts don’t help – in fact they get in the way.  The currency of the realm is feelings and emotions, not facts and figures.  Logical analysis and rational planning may help the coach feel competent, but they will only make the coachee feel worse.  Anyone who has had an argument with a significant other and attempted to defuse their emotional issues by logical analysis to prove that they “shouldn’t feel that way” will understand that you don’t solve a “heart” problem (emotions and feelings) by a “head” (data and logic) process.  In a coaching relationship, the more a client’s “heart” issues are responded to by the coach’s “head” solutions, the wider the empathy gap. What is necessary before helping the client move forward are the basic skills of empathetic listening, reflecting feelings and emotions, and the ability to form an authentic, non-judgmental, helping relationship.  I deal primarily with top managers, and I’m, including their family, frequently the only one they feel can open up to.  In these unsettling times, we can often be of more service to our clients by simply giving them empathy rather than our “scientific” tools.

Don’t be compulsive about boundaries.   I once worked with a bright but inexperienced coach who lost a valuable client by, when in a very teachable moment, disengaging and indicating the client needed to talk to a licensed clinical psychologist.  Business coaches should not practice therapy, most are not licensed or trained, and that is not our business purpose.  If we are doing our job correctly, we are, however, engaged in a client centered helping relationship and that is, in itself, therapeutic.  We don’t have to be licensed clinicians to be good listeners, reflect feelings and emotions, and help our clients articulate debilitating feelings.  It is essential to know and adhere to our limits but it is also important that we don’t let artificial boundaries limit our abilities to help our clients.  Another Pat Williams saying is “to meet your clients where they are, not where you want them to be.”  In a time of business discontinuity we need to have the skills to meet them in the messy and unpredictable world of uncertainty and personal doubt.

Don’t be a solution in search of a problem.  Most business coaches have a favorite technique or approach.  Whether it be a diagnostic tool, an analytical process, or a structured behavioral rehearsal process, we all have preferred mental models that guide us.  Unfortunately, I have found that, despite diagnostic evidence to the contrary, too many coaches seem locked into a single technique.  I recently followed a coach into a textile manufacturing company.  My client was the vice president of manufacturing and was facing a massive downsizing triggered by a strategic decision to move operations to China.  What he needed was help in dealing with the layoff survivors and teaching his managers to facilitate venting sessions and formulate a positive vision for the remaining work force.  What his original displaced coach kept pushing was a 360 degree feedback process.  No doubt 360 degree feedback would, at some point, be useful for this vice president, but given the current environment, it would at best be a distraction.  In order to be relevant to our clients, we need the discipline to engage in a diagnostic process and the skills to have a contingent repertoire of coaching interventions.

Make the client an individual, not an organization.  Almost always helping the individual client helps the organization in the long term.  However, in the short term, as when the best solution for the client is to help them leave the organization, the connection is not so clear.  I have very few iron clad rules but one that has been of great help is to always contract with the person.  I don’t turn down assignments if my fee comes out of a “corporate” account but I strongly prefer it come from the budget of the individual client and, if not, I make my costs very visible.  In a time of restructuring, mergers, downsizing, and financial crisis, most executive clients are examining their life and career goals.  It is not possible to engage in an authentic helping relationship if the coach has divided loyalties between the organization and the individual client.          

Organizational leadership is much more complex, gut wrenching, and emotionally draining during times of economic decline than in boom times.  I’ve written several books and numerous articles on leading organizations in ways that will help them survive the trauma of downsizing, rekindle morale, and rebuild and productivity.  If I were to shift gears and write about how not to do it, here are three leadership behaviors that contribute to layoff survivor sickness.

Leaders Who Don’t Walk Their Talk.  In times of economic turmoil, reduced revenue, and cost cutting, leaders are under an intense spotlight. Their behavior is scrutinized by their employees who are particularly sensitive to gaps between what they say and what they do.   When employees are asked to do more with less, and cut or eliminate projects they value and have spent their careers advocating, it does not give them a warm fuzzy feeling to learn that their leaders are spending money on attending conventions or giving themselves large bonuses. In times of crisis, leaders need to exhibit an image of restraint and self-sacrifice.        

Leaders who Under Lead and Over Manage.   Many top managers are guilty of managing without a license..  They are way too involved in the nuts and bolts and are, thus, disempowering those employees who are paid to manage and putting their own priorities in the wrong place.  The role of senior leaders is to set direction, formulate strategy, inspire excellence, and hold managerial employees accountable.  It is not their role to do line item budgeting and become personally involved in operational decisions. In periods of economic decline a key top leadership role is to assure that there is a strategy for re-recruiting a demoralized work force.  Many top managers do not perform this vital function.

Leaders who Collude to Perpetuate a Dysfunctional Team.  A bickering, fragmented, non-aligned top management team is toxic to organizational recovery and individual initiative.  When times are tough and people are asked to stretch to do more with less, seeing a leadership team embroiled in their own power struggles and turf issues pours cold water over any spark of risk taking and extinguishes creativity.  Too many organizations have top managers who are engaged in secrecy,  back-room deal making, and using a crisis to get even with past rivals. The unfortunate result is a self-serving group of non-aligned individuals, not a leadership team that is of any value to the recovery and productivity of their employees.

What does it take to be an effective leader in today’s world?  It involves something significantly more fundamental than mere technique or skills. In the final analysis, it is much more difficult. What is required is the courage to face our fear, anger, and anxiety, move beyond them, and help make things better. Here are four dimensions of the necessary leadership courage for today’s world:

• The courage to resist cynicism. In our current environment, it is easy to succumb to anger, blaming, and cynicism. Effective leaders are able to face their frustrations and anxieties, still maintain a positive perspective, and work to find answers. The worse leaders are those who allow their cynicism and anger to affect their followers. They not only don’t help make things better, but pass on their own anger and cynicism to those they are attempting to lead. 
• The courage to help others. The old adage is profound and simple: If you feel bad about yourself, find someone who feels worse, help him, you will feel better and he gets helped! In times of stress and confusion, leaders who make a difference have the grit to deal with their own issues, put them aside, and make themselves available to others. A person who is struggling with fear and an uncertain future doesn’t need a leader who is too caught up in her own issues to focus on others’ problems. She needs someone who has had the courage to face her problems and has the focus to be present for others.
• The courage to engage.  One response to the problems we face today is to hunker down in the trenches, avoid risk, and hope things improve. Given the magnitude of the problems going on around us it is easy to understand why many leaders end up just going through the motions, limping through each day, not being of much use to themselves or to those they are attempting to lead.  Courageous leaders get up in the morning and choose to engage. They feel the fear and anxiety and choose to make a difference anyway. They don’t add to the problems. They choose to help solve them.
• The courage to look in the mirror. Courageous leaders are made, not born. They have the ability to learn from their mistakes and from feedback. If they discover themselves becoming cynical, blaming, and withdrawing from optimistic engagement, they have the fortitude to change. Lots of people get feedback, but not everyone has the ability to hear it and the courage to take action. Leaders who make a difference have the ability to look in the mirror and the bravery to do something about what they see.

    There is no magic formula for developing courage. It comes down to a matter of choice. Those who have the courage to help make things better make a conscious decision not let their frustrations and fears disable them. They choose to rebuild, not accept defeat. The bravery of the leaders we desperately need to help us through these uncertain times is not found in flashy speeches, but is discovered in their steady, quiet, and unrelenting efforts to make things better. These are the kind of people we need to rebuild our organizations, our nation, and our world.

Courage is not a trait that is found in most performance appraisal forms or taught in executive development programs.  I’ve found that courage is, however, a key ingredient in what it takes for leaders to make a difference, turn around downsized organizations, and re-recruit layoff survivors.  There seem to be two types of courage that are key,

 The first type of courage is the courage to resist cynicism.  It’s easy to get down and, sometimes fun, to engage in dark humor or slam the organization.  What leaders don’t realize is that no one likes a cynical boss and, although they may laugh at leaders’ cynical jokes and comments, followers don’t respect cynical bosses.

 The second type of courage is the courage to engage.  Again, it is easy to drop out, go through the motions, and not fully engage your human spirit and energy.  The most effective leaders I know have the courage to get up in the morning, realistically assess the challenges in front of them, feel the pain, and move beyond it and try to make a difference.

 In order to heal the wounds of layoffs and revitalize downsized organizations leaders need to find a way to muster up the courage to resist cynicism and truly engage the issues in the workplace.  If they don’t they will just be going through the motions and not be of value to themselves or their organizations.

Leaders that make a difference in today’s rapidly shifting environment will need a new set of skills that, most of the time, are not found in traditional leadership development or executive education programs.  Leaders need to take personal responsibility to develop these skills.  Here are ten practical things you can do to help yourself:

Get involved in the leadership of a volunteer organization.  Pick one that does not receive funding or support from your organization.  Helping manage a volunteer organization is a powerful feedback and developmental experience.  It removes you from your positional power base and allows you to assess your true impact.  It is very different when people don’t have to listen to you or tell you what you want to hear.  Many volunteer organizations are fractionated, political, and made up of conflicting special interest groups, yet they have to accomplish something.  What better way to learn how to manage singles interests into the collective good.

Take evening courses or sign up for special programs that teach helping skills…  The macro-leadership competency of the future will be the ability to help yourself, your organization, and your employees facilitate change and transition.  The so called soft-skills are really the hard-skills, and certainly the relevant skills!  Management will become a helping profession and managers will need the same kind of helping skills as other professionals in the field.  The bad news, at least for the validity of their curricula, is that these kinds of offerings are not often found in business schools.  The good news is that they can be found in other schools and departments such as psychology, sociology, counseling, organization development, and educational psychology.  There are also one-time seminars and special programs put on by universities and consulting organizations.

Complete a professional 360-degree feedback instrument.  By professional, I mean that you should use an instrument that has a history, validity standards, and norms.  Have the results interpreted by someone trained in helping you understand what it means and doesn’t mean.  Some organizations have their own 360-degree instruments and others use instrument licensed and certified by external vendors.  There are also some excellent external organizations you can hire to administer such instruments. 

Attend a professional leadership training program.  This type of training is different from a program on marketing, quality, or performance management.  It should focus on intra-personal insight, inter-personal skills, and the systems perspective necessary to develop a culture that leads to organizational learning.  There are some very good in-house programs and many excellent external offerings.

Find a Truth Teller.  It is particularly important for top managers to cultivate and use truth tellers.  A truth teller is someone in the organization you can rely on to, as is said in baseball “call them they way they see them.”  Truth tellers provide unfiltered feedback.  They have three characteristics: they are tuned in to what is going on at all levels of the organization; they are secure and have no personal ax to grind; and you trust them.

Attend Laboratory Training.  These sessions used to be called T-groups. Yes, this is sensitivity training, and yes, it is “feely” – but it probably won’t be “touchy.”  The bottom line is that this kind of laboratory training is a very powerful way to get the depth of feedback that will lead to self-awareness.  It is important to assure yourself that the facilitators are professional and the organization sponsoring the session has a track record with organizational managers.

Become familiar with the evolving future search technology.  There is a whole new movement out there, using labels such as “future search,” and speaking of “getting the whole system in a room.”  These large system-change processes go for the jugular in stimulating the learning organization.  If you want to jump-start your understanding of learning in the collective, you need to get on the bandwagon; the technology is growing faster than it can be codified.

Learn how to have a dialogue.  A dialogue is different from a discussion, an argument, a debate, or a business meeting.  The dialogue process is very important in developing learning organizations and is central to collective learning.  There are seminars and workshops.  You can also find some consultants who can teach you and your organization dialogue skills.

Get active in your professional association.  Don’t just attend the national meeting – become a worker, serve on committees, pass out the literature, do time in the information booth, set up the chairs!  The higher up you are, the more the value of the grunt work.  It forces you to see an organizational system from a different perspective and helps you rethink your own skills and assumptions as to what constitutes value-added.

Set up an intensive personal feedback project.  One option involves retaining an external consultant to nearly overwhelm you with feedback from a wide range of data points.  This is a very powerful process.  You can’t escape valid data, and a skilled consultant will help you understand it and do something about it.