How to Handle Layoffs as a Manager: Empowering Your Team for Success
While rightsizing is never enjoyable, it can be a much-needed step in redirecting a business to stay profitable, especially in fast-paced industries like technology and financial services. Whether directly involved in restructuring efforts or not, it's no secret that the aftermath of layoffs can be challenging for all "survivors" or remaining employees, including managers, who are often the focal point for concerns, anger, and uncertainty.
As effective leaders during these high-stress instances of change continue to become more and more critical, the guide below is designed to help managers, as the first-line responders, increase retention and better react to changes and challenges for themselves while leading their teams through uncertainty as the dust settles.
Developed directly from insights discussed with a panel of Engineering managers formerly at Google, including Dave Chen, Fred Weisinger, and Dan Delorey, these first-hand strategies and stories illustrate how to create a path forward in the face of uncertainty and difficult times, transforming the potential for a negative ripple into a positive company culture of growth.
Put on your own oxygen mask first: process the change as a leader
As a manager, your ability to help others depends significantly on how you cope with the changes yourself. So while ensuring you are as healthy, prepared, and capable as possible, with realistic expectations, the following tips and best practices will enable you to do what's expected as a leader. Incorporate the new skills in the points below into your day-to-day mindset and practice:
Self-directed emotional intelligence
Check in with what you are telling yourself about how you are processing the changes. Recognize what your inner voice is saying about your well-being and if you are accepting these feelings and thoughts. Give yourself time to process your own emotions. How does it feel, and how can you reach the most rational state? How have you come to terms with a jarring or traumatic event in the past? What can you do physically and emotionally for yourself? It could be walking, exercise, or meditation to allow yourself the time and focus to process.
Grant yourself forgiveness (grace)
You are human. Acknowledge the fact that you will introduce "manager bugs." Making a few mistakes, saying the wrong thing, experiencing burnout, listening less effectively, or procrastinating is normal. Accepting that reality can lower stress levels and help you see a path forward more clearly. People are not expecting perfection out of you.
Update your time management approach
With new day-to-day tasks and operations on your plate, create a decision-making plan to lighten your load and focus on the most essential. Consider what you can drop and what urgent meetings, emails, and documents require attention. Redouble effort to set aside protected, uninterrupted time for yourself. It could be 30 minutes every morning. Schedule it on your shared calendars and consider reducing notifications on your phone to minimize interruptions.
Strive to be a professional leader, setting a good example
Take joint ownership and represent the greater leadership decisions, despite misgivings. Commiserating with "the troops" may be easy, but avoid getting sucked in. It's important to acknowledge and handle the team's emotional reactions and then gently redirect to thinking toward the future instead of the past. Think "short retrospective, longer planning."
Maximize using available resources
Enroll in company or online human resources programs for your own emotional and mental health. This could include employee assistance programs, counseling benefits with mental health resources, talking to your manager, HR professionals, consulting competent peers, and getting coaching. Remember, you aren't in this alone.
Understand where your team members are & support your team
Focus attention on your team to ensure they feel heard, included, and supported. Time invested here is always highly appreciated and worth the investment to critically maintain the health of your team following destabilizing situations. Implementing some of the following practices if you haven't already can make a world of difference.
Spend time listening
Patience is key. Create time and space for each team member to air their concerns. Don't slip into problem-solving or presenting solutions; that will come later. Be genuinely curious and seek to understand their POV through open communication. Use active listening by paraphrasing what was said, summarizing their points, and validating their emotions. Probe gently for underlying motivations or fear, seeking elaboration to dive deeper into their concerns.
Utilize the phrase "tell me more" and put yourself in "rubber duck" mode - listening to complaints, grief, and anger. This requires complete attention. Silence distractions and dive directly in without avoiding topics or concerns (despite discomfort). Encourage candid openness and assure them you will also be. Remember that people look to you for answers. Try to build bridges and relate to whatever you can, remembering it's OK to acknowledge what you don't know. People management is no easy task, but honing in on new skills like active listening is crucial to rebuilding a positive and open workplace culture.
(Re)building trust
Your team's confidence and psychological safety might have taken a hit. Acknowledge the importance of employee engagement and safety and how communicating that in the process of rebuilding is a number one priority. Keep in mind that their confidence in you is possibly suffering. They might think, "As our manager, why didn't you protect us from these changes?" While this may be irrational, it could be an undercurrent that you need to factor into the relationship.
One element of building trust and empowering high performers is recognizing the need for candor, openness, and sincerity - from both you and them. If the connection is rocky, this can be difficult to regain. Try to build partnerships in processing what happened and how to work through it.
Focus on acceptance over agreement
Focus on their concerns and avoid denial of their thoughts and feelings. Practice this by saying, "I can understand why you feel that way." This doesn't mean you need to agree but ensure you acknowledge feelings and offer help. Remember that expressing care and empathy can significantly help build trust.
Provide active support
Picking up the pieces after big changes or mass layoffs demands strong prioritization and an initial focus on the most immediate challenges, shifting to a long-term focus with time. Get to the real issues in one-on-one meetings by asking what may feel overwhelming at that specific moment in time.
Provide reassurance to them by reinforcing a focus on priorities. At the same time, seek and understand their perspectives on needs by asking what they need that you can provide. Explore proposed solutions by generating and elaborating on ideas on all possible options rather than the most obvious. In this process, keep the following in mind:
The differences in needs across your team. Some will need more support, some less, and the level may be uncorrelated with tenure (e.g., a new hire who has been through multiple layoffs before).
Maintain some attention to what's realistic. Ask, "Can we live with some uncertainty?"
Ask yourself: How does this uncertainty and stress factor into a larger team setting? What are other team members dealing with, and how can we mutually support each other?
Include the larger context
Incorporate the larger "team" context (org, partners, peers) into the picture. This may inject additional concerns and challenges but also benefits from additional support (in both directions). Ask yourself: What would be most useful across/between our partners? Direct reports? How are we communicating that?
Provide direction to move forward
Once you have listened and set up a foundation for support, provide clear direction and a plan of action to achieve the desired organizational objectives. Aligning these strategies with the overall mission and business goals will help your team regain comfort, stability, and a sense of job security. Keep this in mind when providing that direction.
Be authentic and over-communicate
In many cases, it's OK to share how you feel, your intentions, and how you personally choose to move forward. Many will want to hear from their leaders post-layoff, even if there's disillusionment, lack of trust, etc.
Reframe the larger vision in the context of current events
Provide context on the bigger picture and work environment. Does the team mission remain the same? What do these new roles look like? Have things changed? It's good to be able to contextualize, especially for larger organizations, where things now fit into that bigger picture. Clarify what you know, what you don't know, and what's important in the bigger picture context. This direction will help justify the path forward and where risk or pain may come up.
Set clear expectations and intentions
As you choose how you will move forward, define how you would like the team to progress or adjust to projects and timelines to match the new reality. Your goal here should be to bring together where the team is at and chart a new course forward. It's also important to recognize that we live and work in a time of heightened uncertainty - be clear that the team will continue to prepare and respond as events warrant in an agile manner. It's essential to continue building resilience into the team's fabric and help team members build their own resilience.
Provide clear short-term actions people should take
Connect actionable short-term goals back to your intentions. Sometimes it's helpful to set achievable tasks for the day or the week connected to your plan to help people get back in the rhythm of work. Dedicate extra time to connect individually, especially for those who may be more affected and need more support from HR leaders.
Moving forward
While there is no perfect recipe for motivating your team and improving employee morale after a downsizing event, remember to keep the unique needs of each team and its members in mind.
While you may jump immediately to resolving the needs and concerns of your team, putting on your own oxygen mask first better equips you as a leader to listen, reassure, recognize, and support the team as a whole toward unified growth and success.
If you need help supporting your team or managers, let’s talk. For more information on team development and coaching, visit regroup.co and explore how we are helping innovative companies build thriving leaders and teams.
