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How CEOs can pitch calmness and control to their employees

Dr. Goulston explains that CEOs can increase empathy between themselves and their employees during turbulent times with this four-step pitch strategy.
By Mark Goulston, M.D.
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Dr. Mark Goulston continues his featured series on advice for C-suite members. Dr. Goulston is an award-winning business psychiatrist, consultant for Fortune 500 companies and the best-selling author of seven books. His latest, Talking to Crazy: How to Deal with Irrational and Irresponsible People in your Life can be found on Amazon. Catch up on Dr. Goulston’s previous articles here.

Mark Goulston, M.D.

More things in life involve pitching ideas: from pitching a company to venture capitalists; products and services to your customers or your company’s opportunities to prospective job applicants. Even at home, we pitch to our families where to eat, what movie to see and what smartphone to buy.

With more employees becoming afraid of downsizing or the threat of technological obsolescence and structural unemployment, it’s easy to understand why people are feeling that their work life can spiral out of control. So what is the best way for you, as a CEO and leader, to pitch your people on how they can remain calm and in control?

Recently, I heard an amazing presentation by Craig Clemens, superstar advertising copywriter turned co-founder of Golden Hippo Media, who is passionate about helping people make an impact. In his talk, he outlined a four-step, ARCS formula for making an impact by getting through to people and leading them to take action.

RELATED STORY: How CEOs can lead their employees through uncertain and fearful times

For the purpose of this article, I will apply his formula to what a CEO can say and do to “pitch” remaining calm to his/her people during turbulent times and help them restore their sense of control.

ARCS

A = Ask a question that will get people to say, “Yes.” For example:

  • “Have you ever had times when your immediate future was so unpredictable that you couldn’t sleep?
  • “Have you had a knot in your stomach most of the time and/or felt like throwing up?
  • “Did you also feel that nobody could say anything that could help you calm down or make you feel better?”
Photo – Shutterstock

R = Reveal you have been there.

  • “Although you might not know it, I’ve gone through several of those times when I heard that the company I worked for was going to have layoffs.”
  • “There were the times when I was laid off and I was given two week’s pay and I had to tell my family that we needed to move in with my parents or my spouse’s parents. Geez, did I feel like a disappointment to my family and myself.”
  • “I remember how I was sick to my stomach for days and had trouble falling and staying asleep. I can even feel some of those feelings now that I’m speaking to you.”
Photo – Shutterstock

C = Call out your discovery. Feel free to borrow this anecdote or come up with one of your own that communicates the same advice:

I remember watching an NFL game where a previous Super Bowl team had lost its 12th game and a sports reporter asked the coach, ‘Coach, everybody knows you’re going to be fired on Tuesday. What do you think of that?’

The coach replied: “You know I’m going to be fired on Tuesday, I know I’m going to be fired on Tuesday and you’re right, everyone knows I’m going to be fired on Tuesday. That’s not important, what is important is what can I get done to make my team a better team between now and Tuesday?”

What that taught me is that you have less control over winning and losing than you do over trying and giving up.

Photo – Shutterstock

S = Send them to do something.

  • Say, “This is what I’d like you to start doing beginning tonight: Instead of worrying about something that may or may not happen, ask yourself before you go to sleep tonight and then every night, ‘What can I get done by the end of tomorrow to make my department/team/etc. more successful?’”
  • Then add, “It will then be easier to fall asleep because you have a plan for tomorrow and every day thereafter and then when tomorrow and beyond comes, you’ll be more focused on what you need to get done and what you can and can’t control.”
  • Explain that you are asking yourself the same questions and are planning the next step: “As for me, I can already tell you some of the things I will get done tomorrow. I’m going to reach out to all of you and ask…”
  1. “What did it feel like to make that commitment last night?”
  2. “How did making that commitment make you feel with regard to your anxieties and worries and feeling out of control?”
  3. “Going forward, what is something you discovered that can improve upon this approach for you and all of us that you can share with us?”
  4. “I’m going to set up a forum on our communication network where you can share your responses to these questions.”
  • Then close with: “We are all in this together and we will all get through this together.”
Photo – Shutterstock

And to you, my readers, I would say the same thing.

Happy Holidays.

Join the Conversation: How have you remained calm during turbulent times? Tell us your strategies for coping with them on our Facebook page.

Connect with Dr. Goulston through Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. His books are available on Amazon. Check out his videos on YouTube or take advantage of free resources available at www.markgoulston.com.

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Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.

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