Recovering from Morale Challenges

08/17/2023

Recovering from Morale Challenges

Unmanaged change is almost always a trigger to bad morale.
Jerry Parr, early childhood leader and consultant

At times, despite our best efforts, teams struggle with morale. This is certainly impacted by challenges with balancing budgets, hiring and retention. In the Exchange Hub video “Recovering from Morale Challenges,” Debra R Sullivan invites leaders to “call people together and have conversations about why is morale low. If it’s low because of things that are outside of their control, then [ask] what can we do to make this a more exciting place. I think just being very open about it, so that bad morale, low morale doesn’t take place behind closed doors. . . The director has to lead that initiative, because you can’t just hope everybody starts feeling better.”

Emphasizing, “If it’s not a good space for us as grownups, it can’t be a good space for children,” Sullivan continues, “Sometimes people feel better coming together and knowing this is something over here that we can’t change, but we still need to be excited about our work. Let’s find other things that we can bring in that will make our work exciting, that will make us feel really good about what we do.”

When morale is low, what do you do to raise people up? What helps your team feel excited for the work? Please share in the comments.

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