Author Mary Olson-Menzel’s 5 tips for motivating your team after layoffs
The executive coach for Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council shares wisdom on navigating personal and professional challenges from her newly-published book.
When Mary Olson-Menzel, founder and CEO of MVP Executive Development and a coach to Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council began to write about her work, she knew it could be so much more than another business guide.
The stories of navigating her career and her life side by side, which include losing her mom and beating breast cancer, give her indispensable wisdom in “What Lights You Up? Illuminate Your Path and Take the Next Big Step in Your Career” a profoundly personal resonance.
Published this October during Breast Cancer Awareness Month and amid under-reported numbers of mass layoffs, “What Lights You Up?” finds Olson-Menzel channeling her story into practical tips relevant to communicators navigating change in their personal and professional lives.
Staying organized when the ground falls out from under you is tough, and counseling your team on how to do this isn’t much easier. But it all starts with understanding how emotional acknowledgment makes room for focus.
- Acknowledge the emotional toll.
Layoffs are emotionally draining, even for those who remain employed. Survivor’s guilt is real, as is stress and uncertainty. Olson-Menzel advises those laid off, and those with teams that are impacted, to not make big moves right away and allow space for those affected to experience stress and uncertainty.
“It’s the same way as any other loss, right?” Olson-Menzel said. “You have to allow yourself to feel the anger, allow yourself to feel the sadness, allow yourself to feel the loss, and then from that space of the deep exhale, pause. Then you can come out and spring into action in everything that you need to do.”
Encourage open conversations where colleagues can share their thoughts and feelings. This builds a support system, helping everyone process the emotions surrounding the loss of coworkers. Ragan Leadership Council member REI demonstrated this artfully when the co-op reimagined its layoff strategy based on employee feedback and designed a new, chapter-based comms approach that laid out the next steps with a cadence that allowed its workforce time to process the change.
- Reassure your team of its value.
Feelings of uncertainty won’t go away a week after layoffs , and employees will continue to question their own job course. You can help by reminding employees why they are important—and encouraging them to let it shine.
“Look for ways to be essential,” Olson-Menzel said, “so when layoffs come, someone in the C-suite says, ‘I can’t lay you off.'”
- Circle the wagons with a collective mindset.
We all struggle to articulate our worth when we’re still working through feelings of friends being laid off.
“We’ve counseled quite a few Ragan Communications Leadership Council members on this,” Olson-Menzel said. “It’s really hard, because you have to circle the wagon of all the survivors and create a whole new dynamic for what you want the team to look like, a whole new mission and vision for the future without all those friends and co-workers.”
Olson-Menzel recommends waiting at least a week before setting a fresh sense of purpose.
“You get all of the remaining team members and say, ‘We are in this together. It’s our job to create the strategy for what this looks like moving forward,’” she said. Fostering this collective mindset not only rebuilds morale, but also strengthens the team’s commitment to pressing on.
- Ground your focus on self-care.
While managers often rely on benefit administrators and HR for language around mental health and wellbeing, helping remaining colleagues through layoffs requires encouraging them to take time for self-care.
Olson-Menzel believes that effective leaders encourage their reports to focus on the parts of work that fill them up while carving out time for meditation, exercise, and time with friends and family — often the last things to happen amid fears of surveillance or productivity tracking.
“You’ve got to look outside of the workplace sometimes to find your light,” she said. “Are you surrounding yourself with people who can help you reignite the light? Are you tapping into the parts of your job that you actually enjoy?”
- Offer practical career support to those impacted.
Encouraging team members to help former colleagues are struggling with the next steps in their careers is a great opportunity to demonstrate what kind of leader you are and offer tangible support. This could include reviewing resumes, giving them a review on their LinkedIn profile and social strategy, or making professional introductions.
Tell your laid-off colleagues that the “80/20” rule followed by PR pros—spend 80% of your time targeting the top 20% of outlets you want to secure coverage with—can also be applied to the job search.
Through this frame, Olson-Menzel stresses the importance of encouraging those colleagues to actively manage their careers by having a “target list” and be intentional in job searches.
It’s a reminder that your empathy and care needn’t stop a treasured colleague when they are laid off.
“It goes back to what [MVP Executive Development Co-Founder Melissa Shahbazian] and I call ‘the humane leader’,” Olson-Menzel said. “You can’t just take in the numbers and the processes. You’ve got to take in the people, wrap your arms around them a little bit, then you all set the time to move forward.”
Read an excerpt from “What Lights You Up? Illuminate Your Path and Take the Next Big Step in Your Career” here, and visit Olson-Menzel’s website to order your copy today.
Olson-Menzel’s executive coaching is available to Ragan Communications Leadership Council members. Learn more about joining here.
