With 2011 nearly at an end, I am pondering not on the year that has just past, but on the year ahead and what it might bring.With recent developments in Europe and a gloomy forecast from the autumn statement; we are facing a year of austerity and economic doom and gloom. There does not appear to be a proverbial light at the end of the tunnel in sight for some time to come. Yet despite the grim news, there is appears to be some hope and optimism in the business community.
When I was small, my parents had a part of our garden tarmacked over. It was a cold and barren solution. I can still remember my mother’s delight when the spring crocuses pushed through the tarmac to flower year after year. Whenever I think of our own resilience and ability to shine through adversity, I think of the hardiness of those delicate little flowers.As communities and businesses, our best bet is to use the time to develop resilience in the face of adversity. It sounds like hard work, but actually it can be our greatest opportunity to grow and strengthen character. I can remember going through some hard times, and a friend saying to me when I was feeling sorry for myself “Try to think of it like this… its character building” No sympathy there, then. But it was of course sound and caring advice from someone who really did give a damn.
I am currently reading a great book called “The Happiness Advantage” by Shawn Achor. An author who was Head Teaching Fellow of “Positive Psychology” at Harvard. In it he describes a number of principles of positive psychology. One of which is about “Falling up”. Wherein he describes the psychological process of “Posttraumatic Growth” defined as “positive psychological change experienced as a result of the struggle with highly challenging life circumstances”[i]
Achor describes three paths we can take following crisis or adversity. The first is to end where you start; no change results. The second path leads to further negative consequences; you end up worse off. The third path is the one that we should focus on, and that is using the crisis or negative event to grow and emerge “stronger, and more capable than before the fall”[ii].In my career I have experienced highlights and adversity. I have led teams through downsizing and closure. My approach was and is, to see the opportunities that emerge through such change. It is easy sometimes when you have developed such character and have been “hard-nosed” through such changes as I have, it is much more of challenge to lead people who haven’t experienced such dramatic change to their working lives through it. But it can be done.
In one example, I led a team through a change project which ultimately led to the closure of the department. We knew from day one that there was a big possibility that closure would be the outcome. In the meantime we had some vital routine work and also ground breaking new projects which had to be delivered. My task was to keep the team motivated while spiralling towards an ending which looked increasingly unhappy. I didn’t turn it around so that everyone was tap dancing in the aisles; it was a challenging time for us all. What I did manage to do was catch the spirit of keeping the team focussed on the skills they were learning and the successes we achieved during that time.
Some of the vital steps me and my management team took with the team were:
- Dealing with the “What if’s” – I didn’t discount fears; I dealt with them head on, and set up an environment for my team to consider their worst fears (mostly these were of redundancy). I set up forums where they could develop options if the worst happened. We then kept them focussed on the positive possibilities they had identified.
- Dealing with the uncertainty by imagining a future where we were in the right place, where we would feel as if we gained something positive from the experience.
- Focussed on what was in our control. The final decision about the future of the team did not rest with us. What we could do was go down feeling proud of ourselves at a job well done. And we did. I held fortnightly “driving up performance” events, and used it both as an update forum as well as critically assessing our performance and successes.
- We recaptured the past. Each person wrote a resume about their achievements, and we made sure that they were practised at using positive examples for future job opportunities and recognised the great skills they had: Helped them polish up on skills they might need for any future options. They felt good about what they had achieved.
- I turned the rumour mill around and stressed that speculation was not fact and promised to tell the team the facts as soon as I had them and kept my promise. Developing trust was essential. People can cope with bad news, but vitally they also need to be trusted to be able to deal with it.
The whole journey took 10 months from knowing change was coming to the day we were told we were to close. It wasn’t a great success story in the traditional sense. A great team had to disperse. But it was an achievement, whereby everyone was honoured and people learned how to work through adversity and be their best. It took around 3 months to wind everything down finally. Everyone got a job. Another department took some of my team on. I remember feeling so proud when I received a letter from a colleague congratulating me on the standard and skill of the team members. It had little to do with me. I just tapped into what was already inside them and helped them make the most of it.
So, when it comes to 2012. Well what will we learn this year? Lots of “character building” I predict.
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