When it comes to employee and employer relationships during turbulent times, the way you act and react matters. Article by Shabeer Ahmad, Software Sales Manager Gulf Business Machines and author of The Inspired Manager: 40 Islamic Principles for Successful Management and Top 100 Management Theories, Models and Frameworks.
Staying calm will help you think better and plan well. At work, you may hear news of resignations, closure of branches, shutdown of plants, or merger of companies. Stay calm and think about strategy you can pursue. If you face redundancy, perhaps you can speak to your partners, suppliers, sister-companies or even competitors about potential vacancies. Maybe you want to take few months out and retrain to sharpen your skills. Stay composed, explore all options before making a decision, remember you will get through it.
Always look for the positive aspect or opportunity in any seemingly negative situation. You have to search for that ‘silver lining’ in the dark cloud; it will not be visible by itself. Turbulent times provide abundant unseen benefits. In one company at a time of falling revenues, some key sales executives resigned. This caused a shock wave and a panic in the organization as people lost their nerve and wondered how the shortfall in revenue could be bridged. I treated this incident as an opportunity and visited customers to make a fresh start. I quickly found that these sales executives were actually not welcomed by some customers due to a breakdown of their relationship, maybe that is why they resigned, and this was preventing these customers from doing business with us, thus partially explaining why revenue was dipping. Once these sales executives were out of the way, I managed to repair the relationship by convincing customers to leave the past issue behind and promised them a better service and sincere relationship. My action led to a million dollar opportunity with one customer. This definitely strengthened my position in the company.
When the going gets tough, you’d better get going, to show your real self. Of course, you have many good ideas, plenty of suggestions for improvement and chances to demonstrate your skills. In the turbulent times, good managers are always seeking new ideas and are looking for positives. During this time, you can strike gold. Put your ideas in an email as bullet points and get this to your manager. Get talking to your manager and show your real value. In one company, I was not able to show my real value due to an archaic management structure. When turbulence hit the organization, many people resigned, including my manager. I put my ideas to the new manager, explained to him how they will benefit the team, and gave him suggested action items. Not only did this secure my place but I also found myself promoted to a position of a team leader. In turbulent times, employee confidence is often shaken. Negativity sets in quickly, thus employees become pessimistic. During these times, it is essential that you remain confident and maintain optimism . Dr Martin Seligman, Director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, discovered in his research of 99 Harvard University students that optimism leads to less stress, increased productivity and better health. Not surprisingly, good organizations tend to retain confident and optimistic people.
Be prepared to adapt in turbulent times. Consider taking a different role within the organisation if possible, get another job and be prepared to travel out of town or even the country. It may sound harsh, but in turbulent times, consider taking a pay-cut if this will secure your job, which may be better than no pay at all, if you lose your job. I know people who never adapted in the light of changes in their workplace, their ego, pride or laziness getting the better of them – ultimately they found themselves out of a job.
Adaptability is the survival secret adopted even by organizations. Take IBM as an example, it ditched many of its inventions when markets were depressed, changed its course from producing typewriters to computer hardware (it invented the compatible-PC), then sold PC hardware business to the Chinese and now it has moved into enterprise software and services. No wonder it has reached $100b in revenue and celebrated its 100 years in 2011!
Shabeer Ahmad, Software Sales Manager and author
