Page 158 - Anne Bruce - Building A HIgh Morale Workplace (2002)

138 Building a High Morale Workplace

around the country began opting for home schooling. There’s
certainly nothing wrong with home schooling, but the decisions
that were made to do so were probably based more on fear

than on hope for a better education.)
The point is, when fear takes over, you’ve lost the battle.
Managers lose when their employees give up. Companies lose
when employees huddle together in fear and talk about building

bomb shelters in their basements, buying gas masks, or stock-
piling antibiotics for fear of anthrax or other kinds of chemical
contamination.
When tragedy strikes the workplace, employees look to their
leaders to give them something to believe in again and to

remind them why it’s important to keep moving forward.
Therefore, managers must be prepared to lead with confidence
in times of great uncertainty—even when they themselves feel
uncertain. Your every move and demeanor will be observed by
your employees when there’s a crisis. How will you demonstrate

your confidence?

Rudy Giuliani—Unshakeable
Confidence in Action
“Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy,” said F. Scott
Fitzgerald. For former New York City mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, the
tragedy was written on September 11, 2001.And from that event a
hero was born—a man who led the way to winning back the fighting
spirit of a city that he often calls “the capital of the world.”
After almost being buried alive just a few blocks from the attacks
on the World Trade Center, the mayor of New York proved to the
world that he could contain and manage the despair of millions with
an onslaught of continuous information and inspiration—never substi-
tuting one for the other. In the short time that followed, Giuliani, like
any manager, was faced with making fast decisions: immediately shut-
ting down parts of the city, creating makeshift command centers and
morgues, somehow getting hold of millions of gloves and dust masks,
and at the same time protecting the city from more attacks, riots, and
other vulnerabilities.The people of New York looked to their leader
when catastrophe struck, just as your organization’s people will look
to you if they get caught up in turmoil and crisis.