Taking Over a Demoralized Team After Layoffs

This post-layoff environment requires a dual-track approach focusing on both psychological safety and structural reorganization. Begin with a reality acknowledgment protocol: schedule individual sessions with each team member where you primarily listen to their experience of the layoffs, current challenges, and concerns about the future. This demonstrates respect for their institutional knowledge and emotional reality. Collate these insights into key themes, then hold a team workshop acknowledging the specific challenges while redirecting energy toward controllable variables using the 'Circle of Influence' framework. For workload management, implement an immediate portfolio triage system: classify all client accounts into critical, stable, and low-touch categories with differentiated service models for each. This creates breathing room by explicitly reducing service expectations for lower-priority accounts. To rebuild collaborative capacity, introduce 'micro-teaming' - small, rotating pairs of team members handling specific client challenges together, creating new connection points without requiring large meetings. With executives, negotiate for performance measurement adjustments that reflect your change management timeline - propose a 90-day stabilization phase with realistic metrics focused on team rebuilding and client retention rather than growth. Critically, establish a transparent operating rhythm with weekly updates on both progress and challenges, creating predictability in an environment where surprise has become traumatic. Finally, identify a quick win that demonstrates your understanding of the team's pain points - whether eliminating an unnecessary report, streamlining an approval process, or reallocating a particularly problematic client - and execute it within your first three weeks to show that positive change is possible even within constraints.