Nothing is tougher than leading in a downturn.

My previous two blogs were on the theme of ensuring your company is recession-proof.

The first, ‘A recession is coming. And you will not survive’, told tales of recessions past, and how we rode them out when many others did not. Last week in ‘Recession. Are you vulnerable?’, I provided a checklist of warning signs, and the corresponding action points you can take to protect your company against a downturn.

However, once the proverbial hits the fan, then it’s all about leadership.

Trust me on this. You have never had a test of your leadership until you have managed through a recession. In my experience, there are three key areas you need to focus on to lead successfully in tough times. You don’t have to wait for a downturn to focus on these by the way. They stand up anytime.

Laser-like Focus

Desperation in bad times can lead to losing focus. I believe in specialisation and that carving out a series of niches gives you power in the good times, and is highly defensive in the bad. My mantra in my businesses has always been “we are a mile deep and an inch wide”.

Winners in a downturn narrow their business portfolios. Do not try to become all things to all people. You must walk away from bad business. Allow losers to chase unprofitable sales in an attempt to hold market share. As a leader, you must encourage the business to focus on just a few critical priorities that you know will drive revenue.

That could be many things, but it may be as simple as; (and these are just examples. Yours will be different.)

1) Grow temp sales in the clerical accounting sector.

2) 70% of our time must be on face to face or verbal customer contact.

3) we only work on qualified job orders.

These are clear business priorities. They give your team focus. That is what leadership must ensure during a downturn.

Bring People Together

When the pressure is on, it’s often true that recruiters become defensive and territorial. Your teams start seeing internal colleagues as threats. And when that happens, they take their eye off the real target – competitors and customers.

Leaders have to stop this self-destructive behaviour from catching on. Firstly, I recommend you spend as much time with your staff as you can, on the job. Running job meetings, taking training sessions, going on client visits. Don’t lock yourself in your office. Be more visible, not less visible. In 2010 at Firebrand Talent Search, business was tough. The mantra was more face to face client visits. I did 100 visits that year myself, and I was CEO. That’s just two a week. And mostly someone else arranged the visit. But a good example set, and I felt useful too, because seeing clients is my sweet-spot.

However, you must do more. You need to actively encourage people to work together. That could include joint meetings of temp and perm teams to share ideas. It could mean encouraging people from different teams to go on joint visits. Alternatively, you could get a real ‘gun’ recruiter from one part of the business to share her success ideas with those from another. Small steps, but important ones to keep people aligned with the common goal. Winning business.

Staff engagement – nothing is more important

It’s crucial that during challenging times, you open up a dialogue about what is happening with people in your teams. Don’t leave them in the dark. Lack of information promotes uncertainty and takes focus off the job at hand. As you go about making change, you need to make sure that people understand the decisions you are making and the reasons for them

So, at Recruitment Solutions and also at Aquent many years later, these were some of the actions I took that I like to think kept people engaged;

• Constant communications including mailing of results, successes and updates.
• In person or video ‘Fireside chat” where cut-backs were explained, results shared, and updates were given. Very powerful.
• Coaching need for change in tactics by recruiters. Dedicated training sessions to deal with changed market conditions. Not more of the same old stuff, but bespoke tactics for what they were dealing with now!
• Repeats of the old stories of previous recessions and how for us, while painful, it will be a great thing in the long run.
• Talk candidly about how the business is doing. Keep people informed.
• Tell staff the bad news (like people cutback or advertising freezes) including the why and the how.
• Celebrate the small victories publicly.
• Mix it up – make it fun.

I had a telling experience during the Recruitment Solutions recession. I mentioned how revenues dropped and staff numbers halved, in my first blog in this series. I operated out of an office at that time, and in the middle of the worst period, I closed and locked my office door, and I announced to the permanent recruiting team that I was coming to sit on the desk with them and recruiting hands-on myself. And I did, for over a year.

Many years later after the market recovered and some of us ‘old-timers’ from the recession years were sitting around on a Friday night spinning yarns about the old days. Two consultants from that challenging era mentioned that the day I closed my office door was the day they decided to stay and see it out with Recruitment Solutions. They believed that if I was going get in the trenches with them, shoulder to shoulder, that was a fight worth fighting.

I want to take credit for that brilliant leadership initiative, but the truth is I had nothing to do in my office. I was lonely, bored, feeling ineffective, scared of the business future, and so decided to get back to recruiting, where at least I could look busy and maybe make a meaningful contribution.

However, as I have said elsewhere many times, leadership is action, and that action had a potent effect on morale and motivation at that tough time.

Save these last three ‘recession’ blogs somewhere safe. I hope you don’t need them for a long time. but when you do, you will be glad you did!

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