Healing the Wounds E-Book

David M. Noer

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 390

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

From the founder of "layoff survivor sickness" an updated edition of a book for today's downsized workforce Thoroughly revised and updated, David Noer's classic book about downsized organizations has never been more relevant. Reports of the most recent layoffs are making the front pages of our newspapers with frightening regularity. And massive downsizing continues to reshape the face of American business. But what about those who remain behind? Healing the Wounds provides an antidote to the widespread malaise on the American business scene left in the wake of workforce reductions. Drawing on case studies and original research, David M. Noer-an expert frequently quoted in major media such as The Wall Street Journal and Fortune on the topic of layoffs and layoff survivor sickness-provides executives, human resource professionals, managers, and consultants with an original model and clear guidelines for revitalizing downsized organizations and the employees left behind. * Offers thoroughly revised edition of a book about layoffs and those who are left behind * Filled with relevant case studies and recent research * Written by David Noer an acclaimed expert on the topic * Gives employers much-needed guidance for revitalizing downsized companies

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Praise

Title Page

Copyright Page

PREFACE

Audience

Overview of the Contents

PART ONE - THE SHATTERED COVENANT

CHAPTER 1 - Forgotten Survivors

Lessons from Act One: Juanita and Charles—Victim and Survivor

The Basic Bind: Lean and Mean Leads to Sad and Angry

Metaphor of the Surviving Children

Acts One and Two: A Family Legacy

Issues to Be Explored

Definitions

Learnings and Implications

CHAPTER 2 - Changing Organizations and the End of Job Security

From Assets to Costs: The New View of Employees

From Nurturing to Violence: The Symbolism of Layoff Language

From Long Term to Short Term: The Shrinking Planning Horizon

From Synergistic to Reductionistic: Taking Apart Is Better Than Putting Together

Layoff Survivor Sickness: The Legacy

Learnings and Implications

PART TWO - THE SURVIVOR EXPERIENCE

CHAPTER 3 - Learning from the Past

The Saga of “No Toes,” the Gunslinger

Universal Survivor Linkages

Lifton’s Model of Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Survivors

Learnings and Implications

CHAPTER 4 - Speaking for Themselves

Organizational Characteristics

Research Methodology

Job Insecurity

Unfairness

Depression, Stress, and Fatigue

Reduced Risk Taking and Motivation

Distrust and Betrayal

Optimism

Continuing Commitment

Lack of Reciprocal Commitment

Wanting It to Be Over

Dissatisfaction with Planning and Communication

Anger over the Layoff Process

Lack of Strategic Direction

Lack of Management Credibility

Short-Term Profit Orientation

Sense of Permanent Change

Unexpected Findings

Learnings and Implications

CHAPTER 5 - Time Does Not Heal All Wounds

Stress, Fatigue, Extra Workload, Decreased Motivation, Sadness, and Depression

Insecurity, Anxiety, and Fear

Loyalty to Job (Not Company), Nonreciprocal Loyalty, and Self-Reliance

Sense of Unfairness and Anger over Top Management Pay and Severance

Resignation and Numbness

Lack of Management Communication

Helpful and Communicative Managers

Honest Communication

Short-Term Plans and Strategy

Layoff Process Problems

Resentment over Being Made to Feel Guilty

A Look Back from the Second Act

Learnings and Implications

PART THREE - INTERVENTIONS FOR HEALTHY SURVIVAL

CHAPTER 6 - A Four-Level Process for Handling Layoffs and Their Effects

Layoff Survivor Feeling Clusters and Coping Strategies

The Four-Level Intervention Model

Learnings and Implications

CHAPTER 7 - Level One: Manage the Layoff Processes

“Clean Kills” and the Survivor Hygiene Factor

Redundant Communication Is Essential

What to Communicate

Control Traps That Block Communication

Balancing Feeling and Thinking

Tell the Truth, and Never Say Never

Two Denial Traps

Process Research

Learnings and Implications

CHAPTER 8 - Level Two: Facilitate the Necessary Grieving

The Burden of a Heavy Bag

A Team Intervention

An Attempted Systemwide Intervention

A Small Business Visioning Intervention

A Departmental Wake

Empowering Leaders Through Models of Change

Learnings and Implications

CHAPTER 9 - Level Three: Break the Codependency Chain and Empower People

Dagwood’s Prescient Stand

Codependent Relationships

Organizational Codependency

Detachment

Letting Go

Connecting with a Core Purpose

Learnings and Implications

CHAPTER 10 - Level Four: Build a New Employment Relationship

The Global Context of the New Reality

From Long-Term to Situational Employment Relationships

From Rewarding Performance with Promotion to Rewarding Performance with ...

From Paternalistic to Empowering Management Behavior

From Toxic Fidelity to Healthy Self-Responsibility

From an Implicit Career Covenant to an Explicit Job Contract

Elements of Explicit Contractual Relationships

Learnings and Implications

PART FOUR - THE LEADERSHIP WAKE-UP CALL

CHAPTER 11 - Requisite Leadership Competencies They Don’t Teach in Business School

Choose the Right Wolf to Feed

Avoid Layoff Leadership Traps

Behave Courageously

Let Go of Outdated Managerial Commandments

Don’t Listen to Chicken Little

Learnings and Implications

CHAPTER 12 - Rethinking Loyalty, Commitment, and Motivation

Ten Old Paradigm Commandments Reframed

Putting the Pieces Back Together: Reintegrating the Busted Culture

Learnings and Implications

CHAPTER 13 - Developing the Right Leadership Stuff

Developing Philosopher-Kings: Learning from Plato

Intrapersonal Insight

Interpersonal Competence

Core Skills and Relevant Models

The Global Context of New Paradigm Leadership

Learnings and Implications

CHAPTER 14 - Life After Downsizing

The Top Ten New Reality Managerial and Employee Roles

Fragile Choices

The Existential Act of Choosing Freedom

Learnings and Implications

REFERENCES

Acknowledgements

THE AUTHOR

INDEX

Praise forHealing the Wounds

“A sequel rarely equals its predecessor, especially when the latter is on course for the rarified status of ‘classic,’ but David Noer achieves no less. Essential players in job loss dramas will applaud the expanded learning and implications sections, and the extensive treatment of leadership issues. Organizational career management is indeed indebted to David Noer’s contribution.”

—Michael E. Hall, Ph.D., board-certifiedcareer management fellow

“Dr. Noer is absolutely right—there is no one big tool that will save you during a downsizing effort. It takes many little tools. This book will give you the tools and insights into how to save those who are left behind.”

—Kevin R. Planet, principle, Integrity Staffing

“Excellent guidance on how to deal with the most complex and difficult issues of anxiety, fear, and sorrow.”

—Ingar Skaug, president and CEO, Wilhelmsen Lines

“David Noer’s book is a handy remedy for anyone caught up in today’s corporate survivor illness. It contains a healthy dose of practical advice from an authentic management professional.”

—Walter F. Ulmer Jr., Lieutenant General, US Army(Retired), and former president and CEO, Center forCreative Leadership

“Much-needed insights on effectively managing downsizings while forging productive relationships with its surviving workers.”

—Joel Brockner, professor of management, Graduate Schoolof Business, Columbia University

Copyright © 2009 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Noer, David M.

Healing the wounds: overcoming the trauma of layoffs and revitalizing downsized organizations / David M. Noer.—Rev. and updated. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-0-470-52859-4

1. Downsizing of organizations—Psychological aspects. 2. Organizational change—Psychological aspects. 3. Unemployment—Psychological aspects. 4. Layoff systems.

5. Employees—Dismissal of. I. Title.

HD58.85.N.4’06—dc22 2009021546

HB Printing

PREFACE

It had been nearly a year since I’d visited my friend and client in Charlotte, North Carolina. At that time, Charlotte was buoyant and bustling, the banking capital of the South with glass-encased buildings filled with creative, optimistic people. This time it was different. From the profusely sweating employee who refused eye contact as he nervously scuttled out the front door carrying a cardboard box crammed with personal photographs, company trinkets, and carelessly packed papers, to the empty offices, eerie silences, and the thousand-yard stares that hovered above desks and conference tables. It was all too familiar. In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, it was “déjà vu all over again.” I’d been here before.

My friend was a top executive in the financial services industry, and the economic meltdown had dealt his firm a staggering blow. It was entering its third round of layoffs: a hoped-for merger had fallen through, and federal bailout money, which my friend described as “fool’s gold,” wasn’t helping. His employees were suffering the classic symptoms of layoff survivor sickness—a toxic combination of fear, anger, and anxiety—and he was struggling to hold his own anger and depression in check. At the very time that creativity and innovation were crucial to turn the organization around, employees at all levels were risk averse, hunkering down in the trenches, paralyzed by their survivor symptoms. This was not a team you would bet on to compete and thrive in the global economy.

As we near the second decade of the new millennium, that scene in Charlotte is being played out around the world. Organizations of all types—public, private, profit, nonprofit, government—are experiencing a pandemic of downsizings where people are viewed as expenses to be reduced as opposed to human resources to be grown and nurtured. Both employees and organizational leaders need to shed comfortable but outdated concepts of loyalty, motivation, and commitment and, in order to ensure their individual relevance and their organizations’ survival, venture into the uncharted waters of the new reality.

As I left the building that afternoon, I saw an unmanned crane parked in front of a half-constructed high-rise building, initially intended to house still another bank, and was struck by the symbolism. Would it ever be finished? Was the glass half full or half empty, not just for the financial services industry, but for the global economy and the psychological employment contract between employee and organization? We’ve been there before, but the lessons didn’t take. The layoffs of the late 1980s and early 1990s—what I call the first act—were an early wake-up call but one that was not adequately passed on and was overridden by the short-term noise of the recent boom. Today we have reached the tipping point, and we have no choice but to accept and accommodate the new reality. What is at stake is the survival of our organizations and individual relevance.

The new psychological employment contract has experienced a long and painful birth, but it is here, it is real, and it has a major impact on our ability to revitalize our organizations. My focus in Healing the Wounds is on those who remain in organizational systems after downsizing. For the employee, a primary danger is what I call layoff survivor sickness. I explain the nature of this disease and discuss ways to become immune to its toxic effects. For organizational leaders, I outline strategies, perspectives, and models congruent with the unique leadership challenges of the new reality. Too often organizations institute layoffs to cut costs and promote competitiveness, but afterward, they find themselves worse off than before. All they have to show for it is a depressed, anxious, and angry workforce that is confused, fearful, and unable to shake an unhealthy and unreciprocated organizational dependency.

Audience

Although anyone interested in the profound changes taking place in the relationship of person to organization will find Healing the Wounds useful, I direct my comments here toward three often overlapping audiences: organizational managers and leaders, layoff survivors, and layoff victims.

Organizational Managers and Leaders

If you are a manager or leader in an organization that has been, or is about to be, downsized, you have a tremendously important role and a difficult twofold task. First, you must come to grips with your own survivor status. You must deal with your own feelings while you work toward a relationship with your organization in which you are more empowered and less dependent. You cannot be of much help to other layoff survivors until you have helped yourself. Second, you must take on the most vital and complex managerial role since the industrial revolution. You must lead the other people in your organization through a painful and irrevocable shift in the terms of the psychological contract that exists between employee and organization.

This book can help you reach a personal understanding and acceptance of your own survivor feelings while also providing insight into the ways employees can develop a more autonomous and less dependent organizational relationship. Chapters Seven, Eight, and Nine offer examples of managerial actions that support the new psychological employment contract, which no longer guarantees job security. Chapter Ten sets out an important frame of reference for those striving to understand the basic shifts taking place in the new reality. Many organizational leaders feel a great deal of pain and guilt over what they perceive they have “done to” employees in the service of organizational downsizing. This chapter helps alleviate this guilt by pointing out that the organizational changes are systemic.

If you are a manager, you are caught up in a basic change in the relationship of individuals to organizations, and you are asked to play a vital leadership role during this painful transition. You must lead the change from within the change. Chapters Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen provide valuable perspectives and models for leading in the new reality. This book will help you deal with your own survivor issues and frame the environmental changes underlying downsizing; it will help alleviate guilt you may feel for what you have “done to” employees; and it will offer practical ideas for exercising leadership in the midst of fundamental change.

Layoff Survivors

If you are among the increasing legions of people who remain in organizations that have been downsized, merged, or delayered, Healing the Wounds will help you understand that you are not alone. The anxiety, fear, and sometimes depression that you experience are normal survivor feelings. However, many who survive cutbacks work in organizational cultures that do not permit individuals to admit to natural survivor reactions. Even in organizations where emotions are considered valid data, it is difficult for most people to be truly open about their survivor feelings. After cutbacks, there is great, if often subtle, pressure to dig in, tighten your belt, grit your teeth, and work harder to move the organization forward. After layoffs in macho cultures, people feel it would be selfish or not teamlike to admit their true anguish and say how debilitating that anguish is.

If you are a layoff survivor, the most immediate benefit of this book may well be a clearer understanding of your normal and yet often unshared survivor feelings. The first three chapters show why those who survive layoffs universally feel such a deep sense of violation. In Chapters Four and Five, readers will discover both personal and organizational echoes in the actual voices of layoff survivors. Chapters Four and Five legitimize survivors’ repressed feelings and begin a necessary catharsis, and Chapter Nine points the way for survivors and victims alike toward breaking an unhealthy organizational dependency and learning to create an empowered employment relationship, with reduced susceptibility to layoff survivor sickness.

If you are among those who remain after cutbacks, Healing the Wounds will help you toward a deeper understanding and acceptance of your survivor symptoms and give you strategies for an employment relationship in which you are more autonomous and less likely to feel like a victim.

Layoff Victims

Most layoff victims—those who have left involuntarily—eventually find themselves employed in another organization. A surprising number, particularly managers and professionals, rebound into organizations with worse epidemics of layoff survivor sickness than those the layoff victims came from. In this way, many employees simply transport their survivor symptoms from one place to another.

I have a friend, now in his third organization, who reports feeling less enthusiastic with each successive move. When it comes to life planning, his scarce and marketable skills, good network, and interviewing savvy ironically have made it easy for him to rebound. He has not taken the time to deal with his survivor feelings, take stock of what he really wants to do, or come to grips with the reality of the new employment contract, which calls for a more autonomous, less dependent employment relationship.

If you are a layoff victim, you must make your transition a learning experience. An understanding of the nature of this new employment contract (Chapter Ten), the personal perils of organizational dependency (Chapter Nine), the survivor symptoms that probably exist in many of the organizations to which you are applying (Chapter Four), and the empowering possibilities of your choices (Chapter Fourteen) will be of great help in your personal transition.

Overview of the Contents

Layoff survivor sickness debilitates both organizations and individuals. Organizations should develop systems to accommodate the new linkages that are called for between individuals and organizations, and individuals should develop more entrepreneurial and less dependent connections to organizations. What is at stake is nothing less than the survival of our organizations and of our self-esteem and autonomy as employees. That survival is also the subject of this book.

Because denial is a primary symptom of layoff survivor sickness, its effects are nearly always underestimated. Moreover, the higher a person is in an organizational system, the more she or he denies the symptoms. For these reasons, I devote the first six chapters to an explanation of the pathology of layoff survivor sickness. In the remainder of the book, I show what to do about the sickness using a four-level intervention model (Chapters Seven to Ten), and then I outline leadership strategies and perspectives that fit the new reality (Chapters Eleven to Fourteen).

I have divided the book into four parts. Part One outlines the profound changes in the relationship of person to job that leads to the mistrust and sense of violation that survivors of organizational layoffs feel. Chapter One examines the dynamics of layoff survivor sickness through a case study and a metaphor. Chapter Two outlines the fundamental paradigm shift that has occurred in the relationship of person to organization.

The universality of the survivor experience and the similarities between the feelings of layoff survivors and the feelings of survivors of other traumatic situations are the subjects of Part Two. Chapter Three explores the universal traits of survivorship, demonstrating the emotional links between layoff survivors and others who have survived trauma and tragedy. Archetypal survivor themes emerge that are also apparent in the statements of layoff survivors.

Most research on layoff survivors is conducted in a laboratory or is a summary of questionnaire results. Chapter Four presents raw data on actual layoff survivors, bringing home to readers the depth and complexity of these survivors’ symptoms. It will be a rare person who is not reminded of his of her own organizational situation. The host organization for the research sample in Chapter Four was revisited five years later, and the results of a second sample are presented in Chapter Five. It is apparent that, unlike wine, layoff survivors do not automatically improve with age.

Part Three is centered around a four-level intervention model that serves as a road map to reestablishing healthy and productive relationships between employees and organizations in the midst of continual downsizing and trauma after layoffs. Chapter Six sums up the research and introduces this model. Chapter Seven explores level 1, or process, interventions. These are basic first-aid interventions at the point when layoffs take place. Level 1 interventions will not cure layoff survivor sickness but will provide damage control until more permanent solutions are found.

Layoff survivors carry heavy emotional baggage, and unless they are given the opportunity to drop it, they are unable to progress beyond their debilitating funk. Level 2 interventions allow survivors to grieve. Chapter Eight outlines processes for breaking blockages and stimulating catharsis.

Chapter Nine applies the concept of codependency to organizations. Level 3 interventions deal with the painful but liberating process of breaking away from organizational codependency. Employees are codependent with an organization to the extent that they index their self-worth by their success in that organization and attempt to control and manipulate the organizational system. Organizationally codependent people are always susceptible to layoff survivor sickness. Those who break the bonds of organizational codependency are immune.

Chapter Ten reviews the series of shifts that have made a new employment contract necessary. It explores processes for making organizational systems relevant to the new contract, which demands profound and evolutionary changes in our organizational systems and in us as individuals. On the personal level, they often require us to behave in accordance with a reality that opposes the values conditioned into us through organizational cultures that were formed just after World War II.

Level 4 interventions alter organizational systems to accommodate the reality of the new employment contract. In discussing levels 1 and 2 (Chapters Seven and Eight), I have been as prescriptive as possible and include case studies and specific advice to both the employee and the manager. My advice is more general for levels 3 and 4 (Chapters Nine and Ten). Implementing the new employment contract demands complex individual and organizational changes. Therefore, I help readers explore the changes in their own organizations and personal careers.

Part Four deals with the critical leadership challenges within this new environment of change, ambiguity, and violated employee expectations of long-term job security. Today’s leadership requires new skills and a great deal of courage. Chapter Eleven examines leadership competencies relevant in the new reality that are not often found in business schools or corporate training programs. Chapter Twelve reviews the critical leadership task of reconceptualizing perspectives of loyalty, commitment, and motivation from the old paradigm. Chapter Thirteen outlines the core skills and relevant models necessary to lead organizational systems in a new paradigm.

The death of the old patterns of organizational thought and behavior, painful though it may be, opens up the possibility that we as individuals will acquire greater personal empowerment and autonomy and that more organizations will survive these competitive times.

Chapter Fourteen discusses the ultimate existential choices that individuals and organizations now confront.

Healing the Wounds is the culmination of multiple ways of perceiving and responding to the global epidemic of downsizing and the need to put the pieces together—both individual and organizational—and move on. It combines research, case studies, and methodologies from my own consulting practice and specific advice based on my experience. The case studies have been disguised to ensure client anonymity. Although this book is based on research, it is for practitioners and can be used at several levels: to help line managers intervene in their organizational systems, consultants and consulting managers develop intervention techniques, and individual survivors understand what is happening to them and see that they are not alone.

Healing the Wounds views layoff survivor sickness as the symptom of a condition even more toxic to the human spirit: unhealthy dependence. For organizational leaders and employees who respond courageously to the call to combat this symptom, there is the exciting promise of reclamation of lost autonomy, the ability to index self-worth by good work, and the exciting potential of a quantum increase in organizational productivity and customer service.

June 2009Greensboro, North Carolina

David M. Noer

PART ONE

THE SHATTERED COVENANT

CHAPTER 1

Forgotten Survivors

What Happens to ThoseWho Are Left Behind

“No one is happy anymore. I think a lot of people are under stress, and it tends to balloon out, and everybody is absorbed by it. You don’t have anybody coming in in the morning, going, ‘God, it’s a great day!’”

Layoff survivor sickness begins with a deep sense of violation. It often ends with angry, sad, and depressed employees, consumed with their attempt to hold on to jobs that have become devoid of joy, spontaneity, and personal relevancy, and with the organization attempting to survive in a competitive global environment with a risk-averse, depressed workforce. This is no way to lead a life, no way to run an organization, and no way to perpetuate an economy.

The root cause is a historically based, but no longer valid, dependency relationship between employee and employer—a type of cultural lag from the post-World War II days when employees were considered long-term assets to be retained, nurtured, and developed over a career as opposed to short-term costs to be managed and, if possible, reduced. The first act of the harsh reality of this new psychological employment contract became painfully evident in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Then there was an intermission when both employees and employers were seduced back into complacency by the liquidity and economic boom of the early years of the new millennium. The curtain abruptly rose for act two with the financial meltdown of 2008, and we are now facing the jolting reality of a worldwide wake-up call. The second act is much more somber and represents the final shattering of the old psychological employment contract. We are caught up in an unprecedented global epidemic of layoffs, and the toxic effects of layoff survivor sickness on both individuals and organizations are approaching a pandemic tipping point.

The battle to ward off and eventually develop immunity to these survivor symptoms must be waged simultaneously by individuals and organizations. This battle is among the most important struggles that we and our organizations will ever face. Individuals must break the chains of their unhealthy, outdated organizational codependency and recapture their self-esteem; organizations must reconceptualize their paradigms of loyalty, motivation, and commitment in order to compete in the new global economy.

The old psychological employment contract began to unravel about twenty years ago, and some people are still feeling the effects. Although we are well into act two, the dynamics haven’t changed, and we can learn much from the past. For the organization, managing according to outdated values will no longer work. For individuals, struggling to hold on to a meaningless, deflated job can be a Faustian bargain that is hazardous to their mental health, as the following examples illustrate.

Lessons from Act One: Juanita and Charles—Victim and Survivor

When the layoffs hit, Juanita and Charles were both department directors, the lower end of the upper-management spectrum in the high-technology firm where they worked. Juanita was in her late forties, Charles in his early fifties. Although they had traversed very different paths to their management jobs, they were equally devastated when their organization started “taking out” managers to reduce costs. They experienced similar feelings of personal violation when the implicit psychological contract between each of them and their organization went up in smoke. Although this contract was only implied, Juanita and Charles had assumed that the organization shared their belief in the importance of this contract.

It wasn’t long before both were experiencing survivor symptoms of fear, anxiety, and mistrust.

Juanita had achieved her management role. She had returned to school in midcareer, earned an M.B.A, and—through talent, determination, and the efforts of a good mentor—moved quickly through Anglo-male management ranks that were lonely and uncharted for a woman. When Juanita lost her job, the official explanation was that her department was “eliminated” and no other “suitable” positions were available. In reality, she was done in by the existing old-boy network, which at least in the early stages of the layoffs looked after its own. (In a form of layoff poetic justice, the network fell apart as the “rightsizing” continued.) Juanita was a “layoff victim.”

Charles evolved into his management role. He was a classic organization man, joining the company right out of college and following the traditional career path of working his way up the system by punching the right tickets, knowing the right people, wearing the right clothes, and generally walking the walk and talking the talk. This career path was a hallmark of the large hierarchical public and private organizations that dominated the post-World War II era in North America, Western Europe, and Japan. The psychological contract that Charles and Juanita trusted was a legacy of this organizationally endorsed career path. Charles believed he had made a covenant that unless he violated the norms and standards of his company, he could count on his job until he retired or decided to leave.

Although Charles lost his influence, watched his support network disintegrate, ended up taking a substantial salary cut, and lived in a constant state of anxiety, guilt, and fear, he managed to hang on long enough to qualify for early retirement. He carried anger and depression with him when he left. Although technically a survivor, he is a victim of layoff survivor sickness. He would have been better off psychologically if he had left, and his company certainly would have been much wiser to invest in helping him make an external transition than living with his anger, guilt, and anxiety for fifteen years.

When Juanita was laid off, the company helped her take stock of her life and career. It spent some time and a fair amount of money on her psychological counseling and outplacement services. Juanita took over two years to grope her way through a time of exploration, regeneration, and ambiguity that William Bridges (1980) has called the “neutral zone.” She emerged as a principal in a small but vibrant and thriving consulting firm. She has cut back her hours somewhat in the past few years, but is still excited about life and stimulated by her work, and she has merged her career and personal life into a balance she found impossible in her previous job. She become a much more integrated and congruent person as a layoff victim.

Charles is still living an anxiety-ridden life. His guilt, fear, and anger have spilled outside the job. He is now divorced and emotionally isolated, and he continues to struggle with alcoholism. His company, which after twenty years and two mergers, is still mostly intact, is going through another round of layoffs. Once again, in act two, it is spending some of its very scarce recourses to help those who are leaving but doing nothing to re-recruit those who have survived. As a result, the legacy of Charles lives on in a whole building filled with angry, unproductive, risk-averse employees. This is the team the company is fielding to compete in a global marketplace where innovation and creativity are the only true competitive advantage.

The Basic Bind: Lean and Mean Leads to Sad and Angry

Layoffs are intended to reduce costs and promote an efficient lean-and-mean organization. However, what tends to result is a sad and angry organization, populated by depressed survivors. The basic bind is that the process of reducing staff to achieve increased efficiency and productivity often creates conditions that lead to the opposite result: an organization that is risk averse and less productive than it was in the past.

The key variable is the survivors’ sense of personal violation. The greater their perception of violation, the greater their susceptibility is to survivor sickness. The perception of violation appears directly related to the degree of trust employees have had that the organization will take care of them. Since nearly all organizations in the past had strategies of taking care of their employees, this basic bind is alive and well (Figure 1.1).

One symptom of layoff survivor sickness is a hierarchical denial pattern: the higher a person resides in an organization, the more he or she will be invested in denying the symptoms of the sickness. This is one of the reasons that managers are often reluctant to implement intervention strategies, despite the increasing evidence of an epidemic of survivor symptoms, despite entire organizations filled with people like Charles. Understanding and dealing with survivor symptoms requires personal vulnerability and an emotional and spiritual knowledge of the symptoms. Most top managers are excellent at playing the role they and their employees have colluded to give them. Their egos require that they present an image of cool control and that they appear skilled and comfortable with rational and analytical knowing rather than emotional knowing. The management job in a downsized organization is extremely complex and demanding.

Figure 1.1. The Basic Bind

Metaphor of the Surviving Children

Managers and organizational leaders play a vital role in bringing about the emotional release necessary to begin the survivors’ healing process after layoff. Their denial must be dealt with before there can be any release. In my experience, confronting denial head-on serves only to reinforce it. Methods that help people reach out to and legitimize their emotions and spiritual feelings are more useful in helping these people to understand the dynamics of their layoff survivor sickness. For example, I find that the metaphor of the surviving children is a compelling way to demonstrate the emotional context of survivor sickness to managers and help them move past denial:

Imagine a family: a father, a mother, and four children. The family has been together for a long time, living in a loving, nurturing, trusting environment. The parents take care of the children, who reciprocate by being good.

Every morning the family sits down to breakfast together, a ritual that functions as a bonding experience, somewhat akin to an organizational staff meeting. One morning, the children sense that something is wrong. The parents exchange furtive glances, appear nervous, and after a painful silence, the mother speaks. “Father and I have reviewed the family budget,” she says, looking down at her plate, avoiding eye contact, “and we just don’t have enough money to make ends meet!” She forces herself to look around the table and continues, “As much as we would like to, we just can’t afford to feed and clothe all four of you. After another silence, she points a finger: “You two must go!”

“It’s nothing personal,” explains the father as he passes out a sheet of paper to each of the children. “As you can see by the numbers in front of you, it’s simply an economic decision. We really have no choice.” He continues, forcing a smile, “We have arranged for your aunt and uncle to help you get settled, to aid in your transition.”

The next morning, the two remaining children are greeted by a table on which only four places have been set. Two chairs have been removed. All physical evidence of the other two children has vanished. The emotional evidence is suppressed and ignored. No one talks about the two who are no longer there. The parents emphasize to the two remaining children, the survivors, that they should be grateful, “since, after all, you’ve been allowed to remain in the family.” To show their gratitude, the remaining children will be expected to work harder on the family chores. The father explains that “the workload remains the same even though there are two fewer of you.” The mother reassures them that “this will make us a closer family!”

“Eat your breakfast, children,” entreats the father. “After all, food costs money!”

After telling this story, I ask surviving managers to reflect individually on the following five questions. Then I ask them to form small groups to discuss and amplify their answers:

1. What were the children who left feeling? Most managers say, “anger,” “hurt,” “fear,” “guilt,” and “sadness.”

2. What were the children who remained feeling? Most managers soon conclude that the children who remain have the same feelings as those who left. The managers also often report that the remaining children experience these feelings with more intensity than those who left.

3. What were the parents feeling? Although the managers sometimes struggle with this question, most of them discover that the parents feel the same emotions as the surviving children.

4. How different are these feelings from those of survivors in your organization? After honest reflection, many managers admit that there are striking and alarming similarities.

5. How productive is a workforce with these survivor feelings? Most managers conclude that such feelings are indeed a barrier to productivity. Some groups move into discussions about effects of survivor feelings on the quality of work life and share personal reflections.

What most managers take away from the metaphor of the children is a powerful and often personally felt understanding of the radical change the managers are experiencing in their own organizations. The vast majority of managers were hired into organizations that encouraged employees to feel part of a family in which the managers performed the benevolent parent role. The reward for such performance was that all organizational employees, from executives to production people, would be taken care of.

The harsh reality of the new psychological contract is that many “family” members are no longer cared for and are treated as dispensable commodities. It is not my intent to label this situation as good or bad. It is a sad situation for many, and the existing situation for everyone. The fact is that the old “family” contract is ending and the new competitive realities are creating a fundamental shift in the relationship of individual and organization. Managers and nonmanagers alike are part of this fundamental change in the system. It is how to respond to this change, how to make it good rather than bad, that I am concerned with here.

Acts One and Two: A Family Legacy

George was a casualty of an act one layoff. He was manager of production control coordination for the manufacturing division of a computer company. What that title actually meant was that he was highly skilled at managing an administrative system that was of value to only one company at one point in time. When he lost his job, he found himself with large mortgage payments, loans on two cars, quarterly payments for a country club membership, the prospect of twelve years of private school tuition payments for his first-grade daughter, Betsy, and no transferable skills. Like the metaphorical children who left the family, he too was a victim; he had trusted that if he did his job well, the organization would take care of him. When that didn’t happen, he went into an emotional tailspin that took him nearly five years to pull out of. He eventually went back to school and leveraged his increasingly irrelevant degree in industrial engineering for a teaching certificate in math. He moved to a smaller town, bought a smaller house, downsized to one smaller car, sent Betsy to a public school, and played golf at a public course. He is about to retire from his job as a high school math teacher.

Betsy developed into a smart, independent, and ambitious woman. With the aid of scholarships and student loans, she went to an expensive private college, majored in business administration, and went directly to graduate school, where still more loans helped her get an M.B.A. with a concentration in finance. She took a job in New York with a financial service firm and used her signing bonus and lucrative new compensation agreement to finance a flat in Manhattan’s notoriously expensive real estate market.

Enter act two: soon after the 2008 meltdown, Betsy lost her job. She was enmeshed in debt, far from home, with no realistic prospects of a job that would pay even a quarter of her brief, but liberal, previous compensation. Demographically, she was representative of generation Y values. She had great comfort with technology, a need for instant gratification, and, most relevant to the layoff symptoms of her generation, had never before experienced failure. Unlike her father, whose symptoms when he was laid off were depression and anxiety, Betsy emerged angry and cynical. Unlike her father, she did not expect the mutual commitment and lifetime contract of the old paradigm, but she had not expected to lose her job. If she had left, she figured it would be her own choice.

The story of George and Betsy illustrates that although the causes and symptoms often vary by generation, the dynamics of layoff survivor sickness for victims and those who remain are alive and well. Although the old covenant is irrevocably broken, its power lies deep within our collective psyche. If our economic system is to survive, individuals and organizations need to find ways to move on.

Issues to Be Explored

Metaphors or analogies tease out underlying issues and move them past our defense mechanisms. The metaphor of the surviving children allows survivors to bypass their denial. They begin to understand the dynamics of layoff survivor sickness by looking at the symptoms through the experience of others. This metaphor, along with the stories of Juanita, Charles, George, and Betsy, illustrate the following layoff survivor issues, which we will explore in this book.

Common Symptoms

Those who remain in hierarchical organizations after layoffs share feelings of anger, fear, anxiety, and distrust. These feelings are particularly strong when the organizations have been nurturing and have captured the spirit of their employees. Employees have these feelings regardless of employment level. In the metaphor, the children and the parents shared the same feelings. In real organizations, those in the executive suite and on the assembly line share similar survivor feelings.

Norm of Denial

Employees follow a norm of denying and blocking layoff survivor symptoms. This psychic numbing is also commonly found in survivors of other forms of trauma. The chain of denial among layoff survivors is difficult to break systematically because it is hierarchical:

the higher the employee’s rank, the stronger the denial. Denial also seems to be stronger in those who must plan and implement the layoffs. Human resource people, for example, often seem to exhibit a “Judas complex” and engage in extensive rationalization and explanation to justify workforce reductions. If there were a character equivalent to a human resource person in the surviving children metaphor, that character would be a caring aunt, uncle, or cousin who planned the separation, helped decide who would go, and either scripted or delivered the layoff notifications. That character would present rational arguments as to the economic need for the downsizing.

Shared Symptoms Among Survivors and Victims

The feelings of those who stay and those who leave are mirror images of each other. In fact, some evidence shows that the terms could reasonably be reversed: those who leave become survivors, and those who stay become victims.

Helping Resources Restricted to Those Who Leave

As the example of Juanita and Charles illustrated, the laid-off employee, Juanita, was helped by life and career counseling, outplacement assistance, and a variety of transitional support services, all paid for by the organization. But the survivor, Charles, was expected to report to work the next morning as though nothing happened, be grateful, and work harder. A strong norm of denial within the organization made him suppress his anger. The suppression resulted in survivor guilt, depression, and, in Charles’s case, alcohol abuse. The organization devoted no resources to help Charles deal with his layoff survivor sickness.

Long-Term Symptoms

The literature about survivors clearly shows that survivor feelings exist for the long term. Although more research is needed, current evidence indicates that layoff survivors are no different from survivors of other forms of tragedy in that their symptoms do not go away unaided.

Needed Intervention Strategies

The family in the metaphor was a system in need of an intervention. Given the persistence of survivor symptoms, the norm of denial, and the general atmosphere of risk avoidance, the people in an organizational family tend to lock into a pattern of codependency with their survivorship. The codependency is also change resistant and persists. Multilevel intervention strategies at both the individual and systems levels are needed to break the unhealthy and counterproductive pattern.

Definitions

Layoff survivor sickness and the organizational realities that accompany this sickness are a relatively new topic in management writings, and some of the terminology is also new. These are the definitions of the terms I use to help people understand layoff survivor sickness and the need for new leadership strategies:

• Layoff. The term layoff is used generically to refer to all involuntary employee reductions for causes other than performance. Layoff in this sense does not imply that the employee may be recalled when business improves. Other common terms that convey the same meaning are reduction-in-force and termination. I do not use firing because it implies poor performance.

• Layoff survivor sickness. Layoff survivor sickness is a generic term that describes a set of attitudes, feelings, and perceptions that occur in employees who remain in organizational systems following involuntary employee reductions. Words commonly used to describe the symptoms of layoff survivor sickness are anger, depression, fear, distrust, and guilt. People with survivor sickness have often been described as having a reduced desire to take risks, a lowered commitment to the job, and a lack of spontaneity.

• Victim. The term layoff victim is used in this book, and increasingly in both academic and popular literature, to refer to the person who involuntarily leaves the organization, who is laid off. I hope to show how organizations can be “lean and mean” without creating people who feel victimized.

• Survivor. Layoff survivors are the people who remain in organizational systems after involuntary employee reductions. The boundary between victims and survivors is blurred, however, because survivors often behave as victims.

• Old employment contract. This is the psychological contract that implies that employees who perform and fit into the culture can count on a job until they retire or choose to leave. I use this term interchangeably with the old reality.

• New employment contract. This psychological contract, which I sometimes describe as the new reality, says that even the best performer or the most culturally adaptive person cannot count on long-term employment. It replaces loyalty to an organization with loyalty to one’s work.

• Act one. This is a generic term for the first significant round of layoffs (approximately between the late 1980s and early 1990s) that began the unraveling of the post-World War II covenant and violated the old employment contract.

• Act two. This is a term for the global pandemic of layoffs that followed the financial meltdown of 2008 and irrevocably shattered what was left of the post-World War II convenient.

• Organizational codependency. The concept of codependency originated in the treatment of alcoholism and has since been expanded to other addictive relationships. It is used here to describe the employee’s relationship with an organization under the old employment contract.

• Old paradigm. This is the broad context, or setting, within which the old employment contract was played out. It describes the boundaries or limits once used to understand organizations, employees, and their relationship.

• New paradigm. This is the broad context within which the new employment contract is manifested. New paradigm describes the boundaries of a new way of understanding employees, organizations, and their relationship.

• Good work. This term describes task-specific behavior from which individuals derive worth, self-esteem, and value. Good work is part of the new employment contract.

• Survivor guilt. Survivor guilt