Are Good Workers Still Valued? | Leadership Solutions

Why Are Good People Losing Their Jobs?

I must start this post acknowledging that I have not written to my group of leaders in awhile.

Why? I lost my mojo for encouraging leaders to show up and demonstrate your ability to collaborate and communicate with passion. I have spent a 30 year career encouraging and supporting leaders who desire to demonstrate a collaborative leadership style for the purpose of working effectively with other people to get the job done.

Yet, I am finding that those same good leaders are losing their jobs like mad. So as a leadership expert, it makes me wonder what does it really take to have a successful career in this new mad world that has been created over the last couple of years?

If you communicate effectively, seek to collaborate with others no matter how difficult they may be, strive to demonstrate leadership, and practically do everything right, shouldn’t one expect that they will not be found redundant and terminated?

I keep hearing from leaders who fit this description and who do even more at work and yet they are being terminated. Why? I think it is because corporate america decision makers no longer base their hiring or firing decisions on who has the most talent.

The decision is coming down to how can the company show the best profit to the shareholders regardless of the people who will be impacted.

So what is a collaborative, influential leader to do in order to remain employed? My gut tells me there is no answer other than……it is the luck of the draw so you have to find a way to add a high level of value.

The minute you stop attempting to influence your organization’s results or stop trying to communicate in a manner that keeps your people informed, you will become an unemployed leader and join all the rest of the people out their trying to survive with no job.

So in order to minimize the chance of this frightening dynamic happening to you, here is what I suggest:

You can play the blues all the way to work each day and even sing every word to the lowest of the low song you know. But when you step out of the car and go inside; or if you work remotely, when you sit at your computer….you better play to win!
Never compare yourself to anyone else. Work your heart out to distinguish how your work is the best in the planet. Never stop giving value.
Create a trigger every time you start feeling sorry for yourself. Remember, if not for the grace of God there go you.
To do your best to avoid being marginalized. Make sure your boss, your boss’s boss and every other senior leader you can get the nerve to talk to understands how the work you do is highly connected to the long term success of the organization. If it isn’t, you have got a problem.
Volunteer on committees.Just do what ever you have to do to find out what is most valued at work right now and then do your best to provide it.

This is not the time to be shy. Create every opportunity to demonstrate the value of what you do and you may make it through the cut. This time.