LTL 003: What To Do When Team Morale Is Lower Than Congress Approval Rating

There are so many causes for low morale. Some of them are outside of your control: layoffs, outsourcing, “rightsizing” – and it might not even be within your team – it could be your co-workers in finance or tax or IS&T, projects that get canceled or have funding stripped, the sale of a business (or even just the rumors of a sale) to a competitor or venture capitalist, changes in your economic conditions or those of your customers, new products that don’t meet expectations, poor financial performance, bad executive decision making, and the list goes on and on.

So what do you do when your team morale is lower than Congress’ approval rating? Surprisingly, you can do a lot!

Six steps to raising team morale:

#1 Focus on what they can control
#2 Talk about their hopes/dreams/fears/concerns
#3 Check their attitude and who’s influencing it
#4 Celebrate successes, even seemingly minor ones
#5 Don’t make promises that can’t be kept
#6 Remind them of who they are

Now, go and lead like someone you would want to follow!