CHICAGO–Every leader within credit unions understands what it feels like to be overwhelmed by work and challenges. The task is only compounded when that feeling of being overwhelmed is felt by direct reports who are depending on their leader to do something about it.
Writing in on TheMuse.com, Jo Miller offered four “pieces of advice” drawn from three executives on “how to get out of the weeds, take the lead, and keep your team motivated and engaged even in the worst of times.”
The good news, said Miller, is “Most of these things don’t take much time at all.”
The four strategies:
1. Take a Stand for Your Team
“Early in her career, Liz Brenner, vice president of marketing employee engagement at SAP, received a crash course in how not to engage employees when a leader threw her under the bus in order to deflect responsibility away from himself,” wrote Miller. “Something had gone seriously wrong, and the senior executive pinned the blame on Brenner, who was a junior employee at the time.
“In this highly charged, stressful situation, Brenner learned one of her greatest leadership lessons when her manager stood up to the bully exec on her behalf,” continued Miller. “’She listened to my side of the story and then fought hard behind the scenes to protect me and my reputation. What a class act.’ ”
Brenner’s advice: “Great managers fight for their people.”
So, when your team is under attack, stressed out, or overwhelmed, advised Miller, you can follow Brenner’s lead by using phrases such as, “I’ve got your back,” “I’m here,” and “My job is to make you successful.”
2. Release Tension
Holly Pavlika, SVP of brand strategy at Collective Bias, has often been in the trenches with teams that were overwhelmed with work and punishing deadlines, wrote Miller, adding that in a past role in the advertising industry, Pavlika experienced first-hand how quickly a poor leader can crush the spirits of a team that’s already under intense pressure.
“I once watched a big-deal creative director destroy his team,” Miller quote Pavlika as saying. “He silently tore idea after idea off the wall, then told the team they were going to have to pull an all-nighter to come up with more ideas. They were completely demoralized, and I don't know how the team pulled themselves together to redo the work. He then turned to me to hear about my division’s work and said, ‘I hope you have something better than that (expletive)!’”
So how did Pavlika rally her teams, keeping them energized and creative when they were under pressure? Miller said Pavlika explained, “I would do crazy things to get them to release tension. For example, I once made everyone come into my office and shut the door. I made them scream as loud as they could. They thought I was nuts. But it made them laugh! And laughter is the best medicine for relieving stress, right? Someone may have said I was unprofessional, but those moments made people smile, stop for a minute, and take a break.”
3. Unleash Creativity
After allowing your team to blow off steam and release tension, your next move is to inspire creativity—but forcing it rarely works, according to Miller.
“Don’t ever say, ‘You just have to suck it up,’ or ‘That was a great idea, but we’re going to need more where that came from,’ ” Miller quoted Pavlika as saying. If you do, you’ll squelch the very creativity you’re trying to cultivate. Here, again, the out-of-left-field approach works much better, Miller said.
“I also used to hand out Post-it notes,” Pavlika continued. “Everyone was tasked with putting one on their forehead until they contributed an idea to the room.” According to Pavlika, it was amazing how quickly people came up with an idea. “I guess no one wanted to be stuck with a Post-it on his or her head!”
4. Stay Agile
Staying committed to a strategy and being tenacious in your pursuit of goals are laudable leadership attributes, but be wary of target fixation—focusing so intently on a goal that you fail to notice other hazards or obstacles that should be in plain sight, wrote Miller. If your team is feeling demoralized by the workload, it might pay to re-evaluate your target altogether, she added.
“Great leaders are able to re-examine goals and plans when new information becomes available,” Miller quoted Tara Jaye Frank as saying. Frank is Hallmark’s vice president of multicultural strategy, who names agility as one of the top 10 “killer” skills that differentiate the best leaders from the merely good ones. Those leaders know when to stay the course and when to reassess, Miller observed.
“Sometimes, what you thought was a good decision yesterday, isn’t today,” Frank was quoted as saying. Staying the course risks burning out your team in pursuit of a goal that’s no longer the right one.
Miller noted “to be an agile leader, don’t be afraid to reexamine your goals and plans. Ask, ‘What has changed?’ ‘What new information has come to light?’ ‘What assumptions have we made that are no longer valid?’ Then, if necessary, re-focus your team on a more rewarding goal.”