Coming Up
Why the team lunch can wait – and what needs to happen first
The small things that actually bring people’s energy back
How to spot recovery across people with different personality traits (it doesn’t always look like enthusiasm)
The one question worth asking every person on your team this week
Welcome to the final day of our Leading Well After Layoffs Challenge!
Earlier this week, you worked on how to hold the first conversation post-layoff, you helped your team start processing, you began rebuilding trust, and you reset the workload. Which brings us to the final question in this challenge: when does the energy come back?
If you’ve been tempted to speed that up with an offsite, a team lunch, or a big fresh-start speech – hold that thought. Today is about why those things so often fall flat after a layoff, and what brings a team back for real.
Before we jump in, here’s a recap of all that we’ve covered together in this challenge:
Day 5: Reengage the Team Without Forcing Positivity (You Are Here)
Why the Pep Rally Backfires
After a layoff, a drop in productivity is pretty normal. People are tired, distracted, worried about what comes next, and often doing more work than they were before.
In the Perceptyx survey we’ve cited this week, 51% of workers overall described themselves as fully engaged. But at organizations that had recently gone through layoffs, that number fell to 44%.
The mistake is treating that dip like a motivation problem.
This is when leaders reach for the pep talk, the morale event, or the team-building activity. But after a layoff, those things can feel badly timed at best and tone-deaf at worst. If people are still processing what happened, asking them to get excited on command usually doesn’t help.
And motivation isn’t really the first thing to fix anyway.
If people still don’t trust what they’re hearing from leadership, go back to Day 3. If the team is carrying more work than it can realistically handle, go back to Day 4. Appreciation won’t solve a trust problem, and enthusiasm won’t solve a capacity problem.
But if you’ve started to repair those things, then you’re in a much better position to help the team get some energy back.
What Actually Reengages People
Usually, it’s not the big stuff. It’s a few smaller things that help people feel like themselves at work again.
