Over the last few days I have engaged in conversations that have had me pondering the impending economic upswing and what will happen to those who were courageous leaders during the tough economic times and those who lead from a base of fear.
I truly believe that although many leaders felt they made the TOUGH decisions and followed through by having the courage to engage in crucial conversations to tell people they no longer had a job or they had to take a pay cut - I do not beleive these were "the" tough decisions at all - they were the easy ones and came from a place of fear.
The truly tough and courageous decision would have been to keep the people and collaboratively and innovatively work together to determine other ways (not thought of yet) to combat the tough economic times.
What we saw within many organisations was yet again that "our most important assets" were the first to go. Now as the upswing starts these same leaders are fearful of losing people they do not want to lose - as organisations start to advertise to recruit new people and making highly favourable salary offers - so the fear is probably warranted. Because the damage to loyalty has been done during this last year and people will now look to go where the best money offer comes from! Why should they stay loyal and "do the right thing" when organisations did not "do the right thing" by them and their colleagues during the tough economic cycle.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens in 2010.
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Hi Mandy,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your article. True, cutting people is the fear based easy decision whereas the hard decisions are often avoided. I just came off of a near 5 year stint where authentic dialogue was avoided. We had a senior management team that lacked cohesiveness, and the courage to take on big things. Funny thing is they probably thought they were taking on big things but the biggest opportunities and challenges (gotchas) are invisible and a culture that lacks intellectual honesty and authentic dialogue will never strive to make the invisible, visible. I wrote a post a couple of months before yours that is related. You might appreciate the read. http://www.fordoers.com/2009/03/bit-of-guidance-for-those-left-behind.html
Regards,
Greg