New manager, old wisdom (prompt: manager)

One of the hardest things about being a new manager coming in to replace the one that left after a business disaster is inheriting traumatized staff. The first thing you have to do is hear them out.

"See, I tried to tell Old Manager that it should have been done this way ..."

"You would not believe the mess you have to clean up, New Manager... and look out for Ms. So-and-So because she created half the mess with her gossiping, Negative-Nelly self ..."

"Has anybody told you yet about where the bodies are buried... and those books have been cooked so hard that they basically are charcoal..."

"I'm sorry... from what we heard I thought you were just a little older than you are ..."

On and on and on. No one was yet willing to consider themselves as agents of change instead of agents of keeping the previous madness going. I had read all the files. I knew about the bodies, the books, and the personalities. The easiest thing would have been to fire them all.

But instead, there was some ancient wisdom I wanted to apply first. These were people, not chattel. They had value. They had knowledge that we would all need to succeed. They had families and communities counting on them to turn this place around and keep their paycheck coming. Nothing in the files suggested any of them were inherently unemployable. It would depend on how each of them responded to the ancient wisdom.

So I bought donuts and coffee and salad and chicken and asked all the surviving staff to come my office after we got it cleaned up. Different staff members brought flowers and things to brighten things up, and I noticed that even though they still seemed hesitant and afraid, there was just a little hope coming in with the last rays of the afternoon sun.

Yet they tensed up the moment I opened my mouth. What was I going to demand of them in order to turn this place around? They had already been hurt, abused, taken for granted -- what was next? I saw faces that told me people were ready to go into fight or flight mode, no matter what I said.

So, I started with the most ancient managerial wisdom I knew.

"Thank you all for being here, in spite of everything that has happened. I appreciate the effort all of you have made and the work you have done so we have a place left to turn around. THANK YOU."

Today, we are the best in our industry by every metric my team cares about. I keep applying the ancient managerial wisdom, and I must say it works well.

Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash

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