Battling the Holiday Slowdown

Once Thanksgiving nears, people start checking out at work mentally.

Say what you want, but it’s industry-wide.

The reality is corporate America is still on an academic calendar.

It doesn’t matter if you have kids or not.

Summer plus Thanksgiving until the end of the year is slow.

Spending during the holidays will increase, but productivity around the office will decrease.

So as an organization, how do you counter it?

I’m glad you asked.

The natural knee-jerk reaction is to decline time off requests and push harder, but don’t just beat a horse and expect it to run faster.

• Being empathic as management can go a long way.

• Time sensitive work is a reality, so I’m not suggesting waiving the white flag.

But why not counter the work culture norm by prioritizing training and development?

This can come in different forms: virtual, in-person workshops, fun outings, company retreats, etc.

• Most of the time last minute budget items need to be used before the end of the calendar year, so you can add some purpose to already planned events.

• If the excitement level is high at the start of the year…

• Pour into that momentum by strengthening your team at the end of the year.

Practical ideas such as: lunch and learns, company retreats or a golf outing can work.

Similar to keeping a distracted kid focused, offering training takes the attention away from vacation and puts it on bettering yourself.

There’s never a bad time for professional development because self-improvement leads to greater performance.

Q4 is rarely thought of as an ideal time for training, but it is.

You can’t change the fact the holidays are coming, but you can provide instruction to engage and enhance a last push before the year ends.

Think of training as giving a gift to your staff.

Although exhilarating, people’s “cups” are drained energy-wise in the latter months.

Putting an emphasis on development equips them with added resources to finish strong.

In a world of following trends, be different by standing out.

You can give an additional boost of morale to your team by pouring into them versus emptying them.

So in case you have upcoming events planned, but want to “add-on” a leadership component to it.

Look no further👇

God Bless,

Scott

If you found this helpful and you’re looking to improve your soft skills as a leader, here are ways to work with me directly:

• 🗣 Hire me to speak at your company or next event (watch my speaking reel here)

• 🎤 Invite me to lead an interactive training workshop, remotely or in-person (depending on location)

• 🤝 Start 1:1 coaching with me as a new manager, current leader or executive (I once managed 30 people 1:1 weekly❗️)

Also, you can help me out by forwarding this to friends whom would benefit from it! Thank you!