These are some of the headlines being bandied about on the news at the moment that could lead one to imagine that all in the economic garden was looking rosier and the outlook for 2010 was positively Mateus!
However, for the majority of people who work with us, for us and alongside us in supermarkets, restaurants and catering establishments across the country, uncertainty still abounds.
This time last year, we were quietly accepting that the start of 2009 was going to be awful and get worse, but now people are just not sure. I was at en event recently, facilitated by the BBC economist and political commentator Andrew Neil. At the start of the evening, he asked for a show of hands on whether people were ‘pessimistic’, ‘optimistic’ or ‘just not sure’ about 2010. The majority were in the optimistic camp. By the time he and the fellow ‘experts’ had finished the discussions, his repeat of the straw poll had the majority of people evenly spread between ‘pessimistic’ and ‘not sure’.
The consequences for those of us in leadership positions, with teams and groups of people to manage, is that motivation and confidence is as important in terms of our personal priority as it was this time last year. In fact, I would argue even more so.
Last year, the enemy of ‘recession’ was clear for all to see; a common enemy that united people in doing the extraordinary. This year, uncertainty and fluctuating feedback means that it’s much harder to sustain the efforts and motivation levels we have been seeing throughout 2009.
The challenge is to create certainty wherever you can, even if it can only be clarity over the very short term. Day by day and week by week, people need to feel inspired, motivated and passionate about what they do.
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