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What Your Government Employees Need From You Now (Hint: it’s not back to work as usual)
I’ve been through my fair share of furloughs, shutdowns, and no pay and no matter how long you’ve been in the federal government, or what grade you are, it doesn’t feel good. It never feels good, even when the furlough has ended or your pay has been restored.
Employees may be experiencing lingering feelings of anger, disappointment, and defensiveness. The last thing your employee wants to hear from you as a leader is, “it’s back to work as usual” or “you are lucky to have a job.”
We will all face challenging changes many times during our life’s journey. The longer we live the more changes we’ll face. Some of these are expected, though often dreaded – like growing older, a body that changes shape, eyesight or hearing diminishing, gray hair – no hair!
These are important changes to examine, but we are going to concentrate on a different kind of change – externally provoked changes. Changes in the world around us. Changes that are more often than not thrust on us and are not of our doing.
If you are employed by the federal government, most of us will face big and often surprising changes like new administrations, reorganizations, budget cuts, downsizing, government furloughs, or shutdowns. Employees may feel as if their tether has come undone and they are floating around without stability. Or their anchor is lost and they are drifting without any direction.
In fact, that is what change often conjures up for us. The sense of being out of control – being adrift with no direction. One of the pervading emotions around change is that “I am in this alone” or “no-one understands.”
William Bridges, PhD, author of Managing Transitions, Making the Most of Change, wants you as a leader to know there are three stages of change that occur for all of us. Knowing the three stages of change can help you understand what your employees and you have gone through during this shutdown period.
It is important to understand that change is an external event that requires us to make some kind of internal adjustment. When we adjust – even just a little — we have responded to change. And we respond to change by moving through three phases:
Phase 1: Experiencing the ending of something that we knew – also called the “letting go” phase. Employees had to let go of the stability of the job and pay during the shutdown.
Phases 2: The neutral zone – the time between when you let go of something and become comfortable with the new. This is also referred to as the transitional time. This has been the perilous time during the shutdown causing anxiety, frustration, anger, resentment, etc. It feels like the floor has fallen out from under you.
Phases 3: And the final stage of change is beginning anew. This is the time when you know you have moved on. You have left the old behind and made the necessary adjustments to move forward in a healthy way. This is when employees are expected to go back to work and assume business as usual.
Every employee will experience change differently depending on past experiences, both negative and positive. Some employees will take more time to move through the three phases of change and recover than others from the recent shutdown.
So, what do employees need from you as a leader during this time of turbulence, ambiguity, and change?
- Compassion: employees need you to care about them, really care for them and have their best interests in mind. Communicate with them frequently, check in with them and inquire after their welfare. Even though you have no control over the shutdown, the fact that you care about them will reap dividends in the future.
- Trust: employees need you to be authentic, tell it like is, and don’t spin the truth. They need you to respect them, invest in them, and look out for them.
- Stability: the best leaders are those we can count on in times of need. Employee’s need for stability factors in every decision a leader makes.
- Hope: Your job as a leader is to create hope and help people see the way forward. Hope for the future allows employees see through the chaos and complexity.
Change is both an external event and an internal response. We must recognize that the internal transition usually doesn’t match the speed of the external change that has occurred. Therefore, for a healthy and productive change, leaders need to allow employee’s internal response to catch up with the external change.
Need help at your organization? I specialize in organizational leadership development and change management.
You may be interested in my Employee Guide to Navigating Organizational Change or a Leader’s Guide to Navigating Change Workshops
Sandra Donati founded a certified veteran-owned small business in 2016 that specializes in Leadership Training and Development. Ms. Donati served her country with distinction during Desert Shield and Desert Storm and is a world-class facilitator, speaker, educator, trainer, coach and consultant. She has access to a cadre of world-class educators offering professional development training and solutions to government and corporate entities. Employees are an organization’s greatest asset with the foundation for success dependent on great leaders who are both mission and people-focused. InteGreat Peak Performance Work. Life. Play. LLC is headquartered in the National Capital Region (NCR) providing services both nationally and internationally.
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Sandra Donati
Sandra Donati founded a certified veteran-owned small business in 2016 that specializes in Leadership Training and Development. Ms. Donati served her country with distinction during Desert Shield and Desert Storm and is a world-class facilitator, speaker, educator, trainer, coach and consultant. She has access to a cadre of world-class educators offering professional development training and solutions to government and corporate entities. Employees are an organization’s greatest asset with the foundation for success dependent on great leaders who are both mission and people-focused. InteGreat Peak Performance Work. Life. Play. LLC is headquartered in the National Capital Region (NCR) providing services both nationally and internationally.