Surviving the Crunch

Executive search and coaching company Quicksmith invited me to advise a leader running their business under pressure as part of their Agony Aunt series for Broadcast Magazine.

Dear Quicksmith, 

I've been at the helm of a series of companies over the years. We’ve been through many difficult periods but this feels different. I'm seriously worried about whether the company will survive. I'm desperately cutting costs and trying to find alternative revenue streams whilst trying to keep everyone beneath me hopeful and motivated, for a future I'm not sure is even going to come. I'm increasingly short-tempered and I'm not sleeping well.  I can't seem to stop spinning and I feel like I’m going under.  What can I do?  

Bree's Response

It is a real challenge to experience such uncertainty, so I appreciate why you feel like you’re going under. I hope the below helps provide some insight and new ideas.

Creativity Under Pressure

We all know that staying stressed for a sustained amount of time isn’t great for our health, but perhaps less widely known is that stress can also restrict the creative or problem-solving part of our brains. Throw uncertainty into the mix, and decision-making becomes harder, too. As creativity is vital to our industry (and your business), and problem-solving is needed to navigate challenging times, let’s look at some ways of creating certainty, stability, and support in the hope of reducing stress for you and your staff.

Certainty in Uncertain Times

Our brains crave certainty. Even a tiny amount of uncertainty generates an ‘error response’ in our brains, which causes a ‘jam’ that activates a stress response. The short temper and lack of sleep you are currently experiencing are common stress responses. 

On the other hand, certainty is rewarding. When expectations are met, dopamine, the ‘happy hormone’, is released.

Building guaranteed “small wins” into the working day for you and your teams can generate a sense of certainty. These wins can be as simple as writing and sticking to agendas, setting clear objectives, not cancelling meetings, and breaking larger tasks into smaller achievable parts. Most importantly, do what you say you will—don’t overpromise. Not only will this help create certainty, but it can also help build and maintain trust with your teams.

Lastly, if you are feeling overwhelmed, a helpful question to ask yourself is: If 99% of the problems are outside my control, what is the 1% I can control? Answering this may help you regain a sense of agency.

Stability from Chaos

If the cost-cutting you mention involves the hard decision to reduce headcount, this will not only impact those who are sadly losing their jobs but also create instability and stress for the remaining staff.

In his WorkLife podcast, Organisational Psychologist Adam Grant interviewed Airbnb founder and CEO Brian Chesky, who had to make significant layoffs during the COVID-19 lockdown. Brian shared the sage advice he’d received regarding redundancies: “Cut once and cut deep.” 

Multiple rounds of redundancies cause lingering anxiety at all levels; doing it just once, as hard as that is, helps limit painful conversations and avoids chipping away at morale. Additionally, being decisive, fair, empathic, and transparent can negate some of the adverse effects of redundancies for redundancy survivors, such as lack of trust and lower job satisfaction.

Support to Rebuild…and Keep Going

In my research on leaders in the creative industries managing creative teams post-pandemic, many of the leaders I spoke to reflected that while their businesses had weathered the storm and they had done their best to support their staff, they had forgotten to look after themselves.

By embodying healthy behaviour, leaders can enhance their own well-being and contribute to the overall well-being of their teams.  The staff of leaders who adopted healthy behaviours and encouraged healthy behaviours in their teams reported more resources, fewer stressors, less burnout and depression, less irritation and psychosomatic complaints, and junior staff reported better physical and mental health. 

Healthier habits, healthier business

So, how can you implement health-orientated leadership? Firstly, through your communication and behaviour, for example, being transparent or reminding staff to take regular breaks.

By influencing tasks and the working conditions you provide, for example, by setting clear priorities for your teams, then giving them the autonomy to crack on with the job. And, as a role model, from the harder-to-do actions, like regulating your emotions when interacting with colleagues—even when something has gone wrong, to something as simple as not sending emails late at night.

Understandably, some of your team may view some of this as counterproductive and focusing on the wrong priorities; however, during a crisis (which this arguably is for your business at this time), this leadership approach has been found to have a positive relationship with job performance. Furthermore, under a health-orientated leadership, staff put in more effort the bigger the crises, i.e., healthy behaviours and performance are not contradictory goals.  

Whether you try this approach or not, I encourage you to take care of yourself as best you can, physically and mentally. In short, if you are not well, it’s much harder to keep your business alive.

Parting Words

I’ll leave you with a quote I come back to time and again from psychotherapist Esther Perel: “Much of the self-care that is needed in a time of collective experiences is tapping into the resources of other people.” You need your leadership team and staff right now, and they need you.

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If you are struggling with your mental health beyond the advice provided, here are some recommended services that may help you further. Self-Space www.theselfspace.com, Talk Club www.talkclub.org/, The Samaritans www.samaritans.org. If you prefer not to talk, Shout provides a text-only service, www.giveusashout.org.