When times get tough as they are right now, it's critical for leaders to provide employees with direction that is both focused and positive. Negativity can be contagious and worry can cause people to lose sight of their goals. Success often takes a back seat to survival when employee morale begins to sag.

The good news is that even in difficult times creative leaders see opportunities that their employees and the organization can seize. Managing in tough times is a unique challenge, but a leader's role is to dispel negativity and inspire followers to look at the positives:

• Adversity builds team spirit.
  Whenever a team faces a tough challenge one of two things can happen ... they either pull together or they fall apart. A shared crisis naturally ramps up a group's anxiety levels and could create interpersonal conflict. But, when that team successfully faces the crisis, pulls together and overcomes its obstacles team members end up forming powerful bonds of shared initiative and success. Frequently they even come to look back at the tough times with a sense of nostalgia and fond memories, rather than with bitterness.
  
  
• Competition makes us stronger.
  President Kennedy once pointed out that the Chinese word for "crisis" was also a synonym in that language for "opportunity." In fact, leaders must look at tough times as a challenge, rather than a crisis. Surviving a competitive market or overcoming a faltering economy actually makes us better, stronger and more competitive in the long run. The challenge forces us to rethink how we do things, to become more cost effective or more profitable. It's an opportunity to re-conceptualize how we market or to revamp our mission statement. It may even be an opportunity to re-think our vision, so that our team can even emerge from the "crisis" changed for the better in a profound way.
  
  
• Creativity blossoms under pressure.
  If necessity is the mother of invention, then facing tough times and economic challenges could be the key to discovering creative solutions. The history of innovation is filled with stories of solutions that arose out of conflict and economic necessity: synthetic rubber, canned meats, penicillin, pre-fabricated housing, jet engines, radar, microwave ovens, the transistor and much, much more. As a leader your job is to challenge your team members to take a fresh look at organizational processes and products so they can find better ways of doing things. We've all heard that old clich� "think outside the box" and the "boxes" you want employees to think outside of are the mental "boxes" of habit, custom, routine, and the "we've always done it the same way" box. When the climate becomes challenging you have to motivate employees to challenge assumptions and expectations. Tough times can be a spur to creativity in this fashion.
  
  
• Bad news requires good communication.
  One thing is for sure . . . if your organization is undergoing a particularly tough challenge this is no time to clam up. Leaders can't afford to bury their heads in the sand like ostriches and hope the worst will pass. For one thing, your employees almost always know more than you think they do about economic conditions, budgets, cash reserves, and so forth. Second, your continued silence about the challenges you all face together will only serve to reinforce any fears or trepidation your people are feeling. Of course, you may not be at liberty to share every organizational detail, but holding frequent and frank discussions with employees about current conditions goes a long way towards maintaining their sense of trust and confidence, both in you and in your organization. Open communication also tends to build a spirit of teamwork, as employees begin to think in terms of "our" challenge, as opposed to "your" problem. Don't feel you have to have all the answers and don't be afraid to acknowledge the realities of the situation, either.
  
  
• Leadership flourishes during tough times.
  A crisis can either destroy a leader's reputation or it can make a leader's reputation. President Abraham Lincoln comes to mind as a man with minimal experience who took the reigns of leadership during one of America's greatest threats and literally saved the union. Fortunately, few organizational leaders have to face as monumental a task, but tough times also give you a chance to grow and prove yourself as a leader. During a crisis, employees look to their leaders to provide a sense of calm, confidence, and clarity of direction. By showing the way ahead way a strong leader inspires hope and motivates employees to remain fully engaged, no matter how complex the tasks at hand might be. Challenging times can be a forge from which powerful, effective leaders may emerge.
  

Preparing Leaders to Face the Challenges

At KEYGroup we've been helping our client companies develop effective leaders for many years. We offer a number of products and services that can help your organization's executives to develop the skills and perspectives necessary for leadership, including the following:

Motivate Your Employees and Make Your Workplace Come Alive (eBook)
If you're tired of coming up empty-handed when trying to address workplace problems, issues and questions, Motivate Your Employees and Make Your Workplace Come Alive is the book for you. There's no need to ever get caught flat-footed again. At last, here's a compendium of more than 100 tips to give you needed, practical insight into appropriate leadership behaviors as situations arise. Click here to order this invaluable eBook today.

11 Keys to Leadership (article)
In today's marketplace, leading a company to success can be difficult. A stagnant economy, increased unemployment rates, and unpredictable market changes make many executives uncertain of what to do. Click here to read this informative article.

Team Building Workshop
Effective teams develop creative solutions to complex problems and discover innovative approaches. Teamwork facilitates effective communication and creates synergy, where energy and ideas between people tap the creative resources of the entire group. But, building teamwork is a process that takes time and removes individuals from the traditional hierarchical structures, pulling them out of their comfort zone. In our Team Building Workshop your employees explore what it takes to form a cohesive, effective team with synergy. Participants learn to work together and promote collaboration, with each person contributing his or her best resources and inspiring fellow team members as well. Click here to learn more about this dynamic workshop.

Meet Jan Ferri-Reed

One member of our team who can always be counted on to remain positive and constructive is Jan Ferri-Reed. Jan is a seasoned consultant and President of KEYGroup, a 28-year Pittsburgh-based speaking, training and assessment firm. Jan has presented a variety of programs to thousands of managers and employees in a diverse range of organizations across the globe. She provides guidance, wisdom and wit to leaders who want to create productive and profitable workplaces.

Jan's work includes executive consultation to create and support dynamic workplace cultures. She facilitates senior-level planning sessions to help leaders to identify those values and behaviors that make their organizations unique and competitive. She also helps corporate leaders to hold themselves and others accountable through recruitment, hiring, evaluation and succession programs.

Jan implements and interprets a wide span of customized and off-the-shelf assessments including organizational culture, employee engagement, team and leadership surveys and tools. She provides executive coaching to leaders based on the assessment results and oversees the development of customized, highly-interactive leadership development programs for organizations.

Representative clients for whom Jan provides services include MARC Advertising, DelMonte Foods, The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, US Steel Corporation, Volkswagen-Audi-Porsche, Pitney Bowes, MTV Networks, The IAMS Company, Merrill Lynch and UBS-AG.

Besides delivering consulting and training services, Jan oversees operations for KEYGroup. Jan has served as an adjunct professor to the Human Resources Management program at LaRoche College. Her client and academic work contribute to her ability to translate theory into practice.

Jan speaks locally, nationally and internationally on a variety of topics relative to leadership and productive workplace cultures. She has appeared on local television business shows and has been featured in a number of publications on the topic of retention.

Jan is an active member of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), the Pittsburgh Human Resources Planning Society (PHRPS) and Pittsburgh Human Resources Association (PHRA). She has also served on the Board of the Association for The Arc and on the Advisory Board of the Association for Children and Adults with Learning Disabilities. Her doctoral work was completed at the University of Pittsburgh where her studies focused in the areas of consultant ethics and organization development.