It’s been tough to watch the news in the last few weeks.  In fact, it’s downright depressing.  Company after company, many of them brands that we all know and trust, continue to announce layoffs.   

If you really want a dose of despair, you can track the nation’s lay-offs as they happen by checking Layoff Daily.  The owners of this site now have to provide updates four to eight times a day to keep up with the news! 

If you’re a recruiter or you’re coaching someone, in the near future you’ll probably come in contact with candidates, clients, and potential clients who have been laid-off.  Have you ever wondered what goes through the mind of someone in this situation?  It might be worth some additional thought.

Over the next few days we’ll be discussing this topic.  I’ll start by sharing some recent insight I gained from Malcolm Gladwell’s newest book called Outliers.  In this book, Mr. Gladwell tells the story of how Jewish immigrants to New York City in the late 1800s had a profound effect on how a small group of people were able to become wildly successful attorneys in the 1970s.  If you’ve read any of Gladwell’s previous books, you know he’s a master at making these odd connections.

During the development of this story, he makes an interesting observation.  Jewish immigrants who came to New York City were extremely hard workers.  They commonly worked in the garment industry and would put in 100 hour work weeks. 

“When [the main character in the story] came home at night to his children, he may have been tired and poor and overwhelmed, but he was alive.  He was his own boss.  He was responsible for his own decisions and direction.  His work was complex: it engaged his mind and imagination.  And in his work, there was a relationship between effort and reward…  Those three things—autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have to be satisfying.  Work that fulfills these three criteria is meaningful. ”

With these criteria in mind, what happens to a person who has recently been laid-off?  Many perceive that two of the three legs to their “stool of meaning at work” have been knocked out from under them. 

With a good job, a person has the perception of autonomy.  But when a lay-off occurs, that perception is shattered.  Self-sufficiency was really “company-sufficiency”, and is no longer available to that person.

In addition, many lay-offs are not performed along the lines of performance alone.  A person may be a very high performer and still get laid-off.  In the short term, this disrupts the desired connection between effort and reward.  To a person going though this experience, it doesn’t seem fair.

If you’re coaching someone, it is important to address these two issues.  Helping a person conceptualize how his previous job eventually lost its meaning is an important first step in establishing a new direction.

If you’re a hiring manager interviewing a person who has recently been laid-off, it might be worth probing on these two issues:  (1) Can the candidate find autonomy in your organization? and (2) Is there a connection between effort and reward in the position you need filled?  While these may not be pertinent issues during the interview (there are a lot of people who are desperate for jobs), they’ll become retention issues at a later time when conditions improve.

We interface with clients every day who are trying to make sense of the recession, the job market, and all the other negatives in our world today.  As leaders, they are regarded by those in their organizations as visionaries who are supposed to help them make sense of the future.  The perception is that employees want their leaders to be the “emissaries of the future delivering the news of how their markets and organizations will be transformed.”    

That’s difficult work in today’s climate.  But, it also may also be the wrong work to be doing if we want to be effective.  In research conducted by James Kouzes and Barry Posner, there was a slightly different, but important focus that was uncovered:

“Constituents want visions of the future that reflect their own aspirations.  They want to hear how their dreams will come true and their hopes will be fulfilled.  The data tells us what leaders struggle with most is communicating an image of the future that draws others in—that speaks to what others see and feel.”

It isn’t that people don’t have a desire to know what’s going to happen.  It just gets a lot more interesting when a leader can describe what is going to happen and then make the connection to how it personally affects each member of the team.

If you’re coaching someone, this has an important implication.  Those who you are coaching need to understand how to be visionaries.  But, they also need to understand how to communicate the vision so that they engage those they manage, work with, and even sell to.

If you’re in a recruiting role, it’s your job to outline the vision of your organization and paint a picture
of the possibilities that exist if the candidate leaves their existing organization.  Wouldn’t it be more attractive to the candidate if you could weave those possibilities into the things that he or she is trying to accomplish in their own life?

There becomes two important parts to the equation:  (1) The development of a vision that appropriately addresses the future of the organization, and (2) An understanding of how that vision can personally engage each member (or potential member) of the team.  

 “As counterintuitive as it might seem, then, the best way to lead people into the future is to connect with them deeply in the present.  The only visions that take hold are shared visions-and you will create them only when you listen very, very, closely to others, appreciate their hopes, and attend to their needs.  The best leaders are able to bring their people into the future because they engage in the oldest form of research:  They observe the human condition.”

We think observing the human condition is worth the time and effort.  I hope you do too.  

The information and the direct quotes in this discussion were adapted from a Harvard Business Review article (January, 2009) called To Lead, Create a Shared Vision.  The article was written by James Kouzes and Barry Posner.  These authors recently wrote a book called The Leadership Challenge.