Confucius and engaging staff in tough times

• by motivational leadership speaker, Joanna Tong at Bright-i

It is the time of the year to put the clock back in the UK. This reminds me there are things in life that we cannot simply put the clock back. In the business context, these include the decisions we made.

Leaders and executives in the private and public sectors have to make tough decisions in recent months. Prioritising resources and objectives is hard; implementing unpopular decisions is even harder. Nobody can pretend business is usual. To rise to a testing time like this requires not only professional knowledge and technical skills but also leaders abilities to bring people with them to go through tough times.

It is no coincidence that I dedicated the first chapter of my book: Dragon Leadership: Eastern Wisdom for Modern CEO to the subject: 'To lead, you need people to follow.' Here are three suggestions I extracted from the book for you:

1. Communications: I had to make unpopular decisions in my previous senior roles. From this, I learned the importance of communications between bosses and employees. Instead of making announcements by senior management, which is a top-down approach, you need to include employees in discussions and consultations in the change process.

2. Clarity: in my experience, people are uncomfortable with bad news but this is no excuse to withhold information and hide bad news.. Employees expect leaders to tell the truth. They don’t want bosses to turn around a few months later and say to the staff: 'oh, by the way...' They feel they have the right to hear the full story in order to make informed choices.

3. Connections: executive clients told me that they felt frustrated by the lack of support from teams. 'They just don' t see the bigger picture,' they said. I could relate to this. However it is vital for leaders to see the views and concerns in the employees' minds so that they can have the genuine two-way communications.

Confucius said, 'Small men think about profit, gentlemen think about Li, righteousness.' Are you doing the right thing when implementing tough decisions?

All rights reserved. Bright-i 2010.