Every organization is going to go through tough times, but it doesn’t have to be a cataclysmic tough time to want to know how to keep people energized and engaged.  It could be a restructuring, it could be a new change initiative, or you could be implementing a major IT system.  It doesn’t have to be a major recessionary period or giant merger; it could be something smaller. Whatever the situation, any time there is stress it is going to impact the organization.  It doesn’t have to be a giant stressor for people to feel it as stress.
 

We conducted a study that found that the tougher the times get, the more unproductive people become. Specifically, we studied about 6,400 people.  We measured them over the course of several years, both in good times and bad times, and looked at how much time they were wasting per day.  Because we’re a research company, people trusted us and were very honest about how much time they wasted.  We found that when times were good (according to the general economic state), and people were feeling more optimistic about things, they were wasting a smaller amount of time per day.

However, when times got stressful (in our study it was a negative change in the overall economic climate) the amount of time people were wasting per day went up by about 44%.  The more people were stressed about the world around them, about whether or not they were going to have a job, make their mortgage payment, if the country was entering a recession, the more time they wasted thinking about the bad things in the world.

During tough times, 71% of managers say, “I am communicating confidence in my people. I am communicating to them that I know they can overcome this.”

While that is good, the problem is that only 18% of their employees say that the manager is actually communicating those expectations.

Keep that in mind, most managers are better at communicating negative feelings than positive ones.  And, most managers and leaders don’t do enough checks as to the message they think they are communicating and also what message is being received.  That’s the subtle twist to this.  It’s one thing for you to assess yourself; it’s another to ask whether that message is being received in the way you intend.

Here’s another self-test you can do on the “me” side of the equation.  These five questions tackle our mindset or predisposition to want to acknowledge that tough times exist, but still approach it with confidence and hope.

1. Do I get excited when people rely solely on me to get things done?

2. Do I believe that I have control over my professional success?

3. Do I believe that a problem has at least one solution?

4. Am I known for challenging the status quo?

5. Do I get excited when I’m given a really difficult problem to solve?

These questions start to get at whether or not we embrace tough times, do we acknowledge it, and does it excite us?  Does it make us feel good?  Do we see this as a wonderful opportunity, or do we look at this as an inherently bad thing?

Another critical and related issue is how we’re setting targets, and how we’re setting the goals that we’re going to need to overcome these tough times.  We’re not just going to sit back and let the tough times wallow all over us.  We’re going to figure out how to divvy up our work and break it into bite sized chunks so that we can get things done and overcome these tough times.

People tend to get motivated by goals that have a roughly 50/50 chance of success.  If you give people work that is too easy, not challenging enough and with a high chance of success, it’s not very motivating because achievement is a foregone conclusion.  By contrast, if you give them something that overwhelms them so much, with something that is so hard to do and requires so much work that there is no chance that they can complete it and has only a 10% chance of success, then that also isn’t motivating because failure is a foregone conclusion.

One of the things that happens when we go through tough times is we start to see some people reacting with denial, some start blaming each other, some make excuses, some get anxious, some freeze, and some (a smaller number) become accountable.  We have to deal with this and can do so with conversation. Leaders have a huge impact on the extent to which folks embrace accountability.  But, we do need to understand that there tends to be a very natural staging and system of reactions as we go through tough times.

Ultimately, as leaders, we’re going to have four simple conversations that can help people move through these various phases.  As long as you understand that this is the basic flow that people will often work through. In other words, not everybody is going to start at denial, some may start at excuses and work their way up.  Some may start at anxiety or blame.  But, as long as we understand that this is the basic flow, and you are going to have people in each of these categories, you can handle it when you hear denial, blame, excuses, etc.
 

One other key point about this, and that is that the reason we’re going to have these conversations, and the reasons we’re going to tackle this biologically, is that behaviour drives attitude.

It is going to be very difficult for you to change the attitudes of the people around you.  What you can do, however, is change your behaviour and change their behaviour by changing the dynamics in the conversation.  This is where attitude change comes from.  You’re not going to climb inside their head and magically alter their personality.  But, what you can do is change some of the language you use to begin to have a radical impact on their attitude because what you are doing is, by de-facto, altering and changing their behaviour.  That is what’s going to ultimately change their mindset and make them much more comfortable and able and accountable and much more ready to deal with the tough times around them.
 

If you would like to get the eLearning material on "Motivating during Hard Times " and 39 other eLearning topics by Leadership IQ, you can e-mail info@directions-consulting.com or call +86-136 7190 2505 or Skype: cydj001