Leadership Under Pressure: How To Lead Well In A Recession

Leadership, some say, is rather easy in good times

. Delegate fully, let the reigns become loose, and let peoples passion for their work manifest straight into the bottom line.

Indeed, for most of the 20th Century so far, leaders have been able to use this 'good times' approach to lead vast businesses through plenty of change and have seen a fair share of success in doing so.

However, come 2008 when the financial turmoil in the global markets reared up it's face, leadership new that the 'good times' could not continue. In anticipation for the slump in demand that a recession would bring, companies began to prepare for cuts in products, cuts in service, cuts in staff, wages, hours. It seemed that during 2009, there were no scared cows that leaders were afraid to cut.

During these difficult times, when employees start to fear for their current job stability, instead of dreaming about new products that the company could launch. It seemed that the generous delegation that leaders had previously extended to their favourite employees suddenly had two drawbacks:

1.The large responsibility that these employees now had for underperforming divisions were causing intense friction in middle management. This type of atmosphere encourages office politics and other detrimental practises.

2.Leaders felt that they suddenly needed to pick up the reigns again, and this meant actually taking back responsibility from their employees. This sent negative signals right the way through organisations, and also left the senior management team with far more work on their plate - at a time when their work was becoming stressful without an added workload!

For leaders in this position, I have 2 short pieces of advice that I hope will serve to get you thinking about whether YOU need to change your leadership style or set of leadership skills in the continuing downturn. Increased talk of a double dip recession will only further bolster the need for this advice:

1.Ensure your skillset is change-based. Traditional leaders who 'lead with good management' rather than 'with inspiration and charisma' (not that I'm saying the two are completely mutually exclusive), may need to re-think their approach to people. In times where the pennies are short, kind words can be a far better method of motivation, which can in part replace the loss of incentive from reduced pay packets.

2.Don't take back the reigns. You may want to hold more regular meetings, or receive more regular reports from your managers, but in general try to meddle as little as you possibly can. At the end of the day, your sales team will still know more about sales that you do, so it's important to remember that you have a better chance of selling well during the recession if you use their full strengths.

I hope you keep these in mind, and I wish you every success in the next couple of years in your leadership role.

by: matthew Anderson

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