Many organizations forget that people in supervisory roles are also employees and not immune to survivor issues simply because they manage others.  “Physician, heal thyself,” is the rule and for those in leadership roles, the first priority is to deal with their own survivor issues. The next thing they need to do is help their employees.

 Leadership in a time of paradigm change is more of a helping relationship than of command and control management. Leaders in many organizations find themselves in a bind. The only way to deal with the emotional blockage that constitutes survivor sickness is to get employees to talk about their feelings, yet this necessary catharsis is seen by many organizations as disloyal or coddling employee complaining. 

 To be effective a boss needs to have the courage to take a risk.  In some organizations this has taken the form of group meetings that stimulate frank discussions of feelings and emotions.  Others have required supervisors to have one-on-one meetings with employees and listen to their feelings.  In my experience the most difficult activity is listening and not getting defensive.  In many situations, managers need to be trained in basic listening, empathy, and reflection skills.  This training has a dual effect:  it helps the boss to deal with his issues and equips her to help her employees. 

 Sponsoring special programs that help leaders develop the skills and perspectives to lead downsized organizations is a unique opportunity for both HR professionals and top managers.  Managers of all levels are employees too, and because of their key role in helping the organization recover, special attention needs to be paid to their own recovery from survivor sickness.

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.          

Gunnysacking is a term for storing up hurt feelings, anger, affronts, and unresolved conflicts, and, when the weight of the psychological gunnysack becomes too heavy to bear, unloading it, often to an inappropriate degree in an inappropriate context.  We all gunnysack to some extent but, most psychologically healthy people find ways to keep their bags relatively light.  Unfortunately, organizational leaders are not immune to gunnysacking. 

I have discovered that a surprising number operate for many years under the oppressive burden of a heavy bag and use a crisis mode of operation as an authorization to unleash long repressed feelings of anger and frustration by figuratively beating their fellow employees about the head with their overloaded gunnysacks.  In layoffs this takes the form of those in power “getting” both functions and people that frustrated them in the past but were protected by a more tolerant organizational culture.  A newly promoted general manager, for example, used the downsizing culture as a way to “get” some long term rivals in the marketing function. 

 Gunnysacking is unhealthy for both the leaders who practice it and for the prognosis of organizational survival.  Leaders who see it happening need to move quickly and stop it. They need to help those wielding those heavy bags find better ways to lighten them. If that won’t work, they need to carefully consider the costs in terms of productivity and morale, of retaining people who are more concerned with pursuing a personal vendetta than helping the organization recover.  If, in the heat of the battle for organizational survival, you are tempted to form a coalition to “get” a person or a function for the wrong reasons, resist it. It won’t help you, the person you are targeting, or, most importantly, the organization.  If you find yourself the victim of gunnysacking, don’t try to get even; that only compounds the problem.  Try to discover what past event lies unresolved in the other person’s bag and muster up the courage to directly confront the issue.  Gunnysacking is alive and well in today’s downsized organizations.  Effective leaders need to move rapidly to confront it and personally refuse to succumb to its temptations.

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.