I was cleaning out some files when I came across this Haiku by John C. Johnson of Minneapolis.  It’s very powerful and extremely relevant to today’s downsized organizational world.  I particularly like the third stanza.                                                

Rejected from my own dreams by characters that look like me.

Like the parrot in my aviary, I wasn’t strategic enough.

I wasn’t warned of the health hazards of security.                                                

So your approving nods didn’t mean I was on the high talent list?

I missed the memo that said the game I learned had been changed.

I deferred my life to the promise of pension and heated parking.

So now I go, but you friend, avoid the coffee break to say goodbye.

If I were to distill what I have learned about dealing with layoff survivors into five cogent tips here they are:

Brush up on helping Skills – Lighten up on Controlling Behavior.  Don’t be afraid of feelings and emotions; they are the currency of the realm for helping survivors move back to productivity.  Telling survivors to “suck it up” and that they are lucky to have kept their job is the wrong strategy.   Managers who have been most successful in helping survivors overcome the trauma of layoffs have formed helping relationships with their employees. The best bosses are almost always described as empathetic listeners, coaches, straight communicators, and helpers.

Re-recruit the survivors.  The overwhelming consensus of downsizing research is that layoffs do not achieve their “going in” productivity goals.  Survivors of most organizations are angry, depressed, anxious and fearful.  They are not able or willing to take risks or focus on increasing client service.  Managers need to move beyond layoff administration and planning into formulating strategies for layoff recovery. This involves re-recruiting demoralized employees and working to help them overcome debilitating survivor emotions.  

Facilitate venting.  Without the healthy externalization of layoff induced anger, fear, and anxiety, employees will remain crippled by layoff survivor sickness.  In fact, research shows their symptoms will get worse. It is essential that managers lead the way in establishing organizationally sanctioned processes that facilitate the venting of repressed feelings and emotions. 

Communicate with truth and authenticity.  It is a myth that, in troubled times, managerial communication needs to be clear, planned, objective, and structured.  It is a fallacy that expressing uncertainly, ambiguity, or dealing in feelings and emotions is not useful. Surviving employees are attempting to deal with a toxic brew of productivity hindering emotions and need to feel authorized to talk about them. Employees would much rather have managers tell them that they don’t know something as opposed to having them not say anything or make something up.    

Attract employees by nutritious work. The best strategy for organizational survival in the new reality will be to attract employees because of the work. The most talented employees will have options; they will choose their employers because they want to be there, not because they have to be there.  Successful organizations will help employees self-motivate by finding nutritious work and an inner sense of purpose rather than relying on contrived external motivational techniques.

I had a client who hated his job.  It wasn’t a short term thing; he hated his job for a number of years.  The primary reason he stayed was that he felt “trapped” by the health care benefit.  He had a history of heart problems and his son was disabled and needed extra medical care.  He was a very talented person and could have helped a number of organizations.  He also had an itch to go out on his own.  Alas, he stayed with his hated job until at age 55 he was laid off.  Now he has the worst of both worlds.  He does not have a job and the related health insurance, and he has missed the window for following his dream.

 The reason a person stays with a company or won’t take the risk to follow his heart into a more fulfilling career should not be health insurance. 

 Regardless of your politics, working within a system that allows talent to be wasted or sub-optimized because of a health insurance issue is not in the best interest of any of us.

In 1997 Mary Lynn Pulley wrote Losing your job – Reclaiming your Soul: Stories of Resilience Renewal, and Hope (Jossey-Bass, 1997).  It was a beautifully written and inspiring book that helped layoff victims re-frame job loss into a wake-up call that could help them rebound into work that was psychologically nutritious and provide deeper personal meaning.  It is as relevant today as it was when she wrote it.

 Mary Lynn passed away in January and her brother Jeff and two friends from The Center for Creative Leadership, Joan Gurvis and Marcia Horowitz are completing her work on an updated and revised second edition.  The second edition will be self-published and will be coming out this spring.  I’ll provide specific information as to how to buy it in a future blog. 

 In the meantime, if you can’t wait, you could buy the first edition and also update the information by purchasing the second edition when it comes out.  It is a very important book and provides reinforcement and specific examples that help give hope and strategies to overcome the toxic effects of organizational codependence that I describe in Healing the Wounds.

If the employees of shutting down organizations are like other layoff survivors  – and I think they are – they are dealing with some pretty productivity-hindering emotions such as anger, fear, and anxiety.  They may not express these feelings directly but they are there and taking a toll on their self-esteem, productivity and ability to focus on customer service.  So the first tip is to find ways to get them to externalize these debilitating emotions.  Things like facilitated venting sessions, one-on-one sessions with the boss, small group planning sessions really help and the boss does not have to be a shrink to facilitate them.  She or he may need some coaching or actual help from a qualified outsider.  These kinds of sessions really work and bosses are always surprised at the power of these kinds of sessions.

 Another process that I have seen work well in these kinds of situations is an honest, down and dirty, visioning session.  Visions don’t have to be grandiose or even overly positive.  The vision may be to simply keep the shop open for a few months.  The power of engaging employees in articulating a shared vision of the future is that it allows them to participate and gives them a sense of control. Participation and control are exceptionally important in times of crisis.

 A third “tip” is honest straight talk one-on-one with each employee.  Straight talk involves clarity on what the boss knows and what the boss does not know.  If it is clear that the person will eventually loose his or her job, they need to know this.  There is no evidence that prior notice results in sabotage and unproductive behavior. There is strong evidence that prior notice gives the employee control and most are appreciative of knowing and actually work hard. 

 In closings, future shutdowns, or when the prognosis for survival is unclear, I have found moving toward a contractual relationship with severance pay, performance standards, and the period of advance notice of possible termination clearly spelled out works exceptionally well.   

 pecial effort hast to be made to re-recruit and retain key players.  The best employees, those with options, will leave first unless they are handled very carefully.  Mechanisms such as retention bonuses, telling them that they will be the last to go if worse comes to worse, and involving them in planning and decision making work well.   

 Continual communication by the boss is essential.  This means being visible, managing by walking around, directly sharing what the boss knows and what the boss does not know, and any future plans.  Communication also means listening, being empathetic, and engaging in a helping, not a controlling relationships with employees.   “Sucking it up” and remaining emotionally detached is a very bad strategy for both employee retention and the bosses own survivor symptoms.   Engaging employees and soliciting their ideas as to how to generate new business and keep the dealership afloat creates a double win.  Employees feel involved and valued, and they often generate good ideas.

 Lastly, the boss himself needs to look in the mirror.  He needs to deal with his own anger and anxiety before he can be of help to his employees.  They will see right through him if he is faking it.  Cynicism, sarcasm – even veiled in humor – and apathy coming from the leader is toxic to organizational survival.  When I work with small businesses, I make very certain that the boss has taken sufficient time and is able to externalize her or his own survivor symptoms.  If they don’t there is not much hope for the employees.

I like to ask people to use layoffs or the threat of layoffs as a wake-up call; to take the opportunity to assess their life and career path and decide if they are really doing what they want to do.  If not, layoffs give them the opportunity to recalibrate and make some adjustments.

I’ve begun to think that sometimes people may hear the wrong wake up call and end up in worse shape than had the alarm not gone off in the first place.  An acquaintance from the Center for Creative Leadership decided that he really wanted to move out of the organizational cocoon and start his own consulting practice.  What he found, after ten futile months, was that he wasn’t ready or possibility not wired at all to become an independent consultant.  He missed the support services, marketing help, and collegial infrastructure of an organizational environment.  He’s now seeking an employer where he can find these services.  I think he may have heard the wrong wake-up call.

Another hypothesis is that he may not have spent enough time in the neutral zone. In Bill Bridges seminal work on Transitions he pointed out that, before we start something new, we need to spend time in what he calls the neutral zone – a place of ambiguity and uncertainty.  I think this is really good advice.

I was asked for three quick, clear, and concise bits of advice for a person who just got word that she or he would be laid off.  Here they are:

 Take a mental and physical time out.  Get away from your desk and your work space.  Do something physical take a walk, do some stretching, go to the gym for an hour.  You need to gain physical and emotional space.

 Bargain.  Take an inventory of your current projects and priorities.  Calmly and objectively meet with your boss and let her or him know how important these tasks are and how qualified you are to do them.  There is no downside but there could be an upside in terms of pushing out your actual termination date, potential consulting work, or working part time.

 Vent.  Keep your emotions in check until the day ends but as soon as it does, find someone to talk to.  You badly need emotional support and the best kind is not someone with gratuitous advice, but simply someone who can engage in empathetic listing. This can be a spouse, a significant other, a friend, or a helping professional.  Given the epidemic of layoffs you can intellectually understand what just happened, but you can’t get through the emotional impact without opening out to someone else.  You don’t need to wallow in it, but you do need to find someone to lean on.  This is something everyone should do.