These are skittish times, aren\u2019t they?\u00a0 I have seen this among reps and myself \u2013 every little item is scrutinized.\u00a0 Communication, email, reports\u2026I find myself looking for subtle clues in all of them.\u00a0 Is a layoff coming?\u00a0 How bad is it?\u00a0 What is going to happen next?<\/p>\n
These are not productive thoughts.\u00a0 As a manager, how do you quell these fears?\u00a0 There isn\u2019t one move, tool or approach that will cure it, but a concerted effort will help to minimize your team\u2019s anxiety.<\/p>\n
Selling Power offers up an article<\/a> that has some feel-good points that I question.\u00a0 However, there is something in the article that caught my eye:<\/p>\n Don’t make promises you can’t keep. <\/strong>Your mother probably told you this growing up and it’s just as important today. Manning says she often sees managers make the mistake of promising a desired outcome rather than acknowledging uncertainty. For instance, don’t tell your staff there won’t be any layoffs at your company because you can’t possibly make that guarantee. “Make no promises,” says Manning. “Don’t build up false expectations because that just creates more fear.” Instead, be honest about what you know, even when \u2013 especially<\/em> when \u2013 the news isn’t good. Your reps would rather have the hard truth than a pleasant lie.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Those last two lines are straight-up truth.\u00a0 The best way to allay these fears is to be forthright with your team.\u00a0 I believe managers often error in thinking their employees cannot handle the truth of the present situation.\u00a0 This is a leadership mistake that creates distance between the manager and the employee.<\/p>\n I will close with the next suggestion from the article \u2013 it is a good one:<\/p>\n Start a blog.<\/strong> Blogging is a great way to keep your people updated because it has an informal, conversational feel and reps can check it at their convenience. Manning says she knows of several CEOs who are having “tremendous success” with blogging right now, using it as a vehicle to keep employees posted on what’s going on, answering their questions and correcting rumors. Sales managers, she says, could expand those topics to include sales successes, news about products and so on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" These are skittish times, aren\u2019t they?\u00a0 I have seen this among reps and myself \u2013 every little item is scrutinized.\u00a0 Communication, email, reports\u2026I find myself looking for subtle clues in all of them.\u00a0 Is a layoff coming?\u00a0 How bad is it?\u00a0 What is going to happen next? These are not productive thoughts.\u00a0 As a manager, how do you quell these fears?\u00a0 There isn\u2019t one move, tool or approach that will cure it, but a concerted effort will help to minimize your team\u2019s anxiety. Selling Power offers up an article that has some feel-good points that I question.\u00a0 However, there is something in the article that caught my eye: Don’t make… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,23,4,11],"tags":[1760,1229,1766,551,1228],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-uZ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1923,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921\/revisions\/1923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}