Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor. I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise. We help leaders and

organizations crack their activation codes. Find those simple tweaks to enhance both their performance

and their employee engagement. I read an article earlier this week about the CEO of a company that

recently celebrated some pretty

record-breaking success. And as the teams were celebrating, they found suddenly in their

inboxes an all-employee memo announcing 800 layoffs. This memo was extremely well written.

It was professional and clearly it was overseen by various communication

leaders. And also, it came entirely out of the blue, and was so profoundly tone deaf, the CEO will

likely be waiting through a publicity nightmare that will cost him months and millions to resolve.

Specifically, excerpts from this note included some phrases like,

I am confident this is the right decision for our future, and these adjustments will help enable us

to build our momentum. And we have so much to be excited about. Notice nothing in there is

profane or overtly offensive.

What makes it offensive isn't what was said, but really what wasn't considered, like humanity.

Honestly, imagine being one of the 800 people to lose their job, or equally being someone still employed and knowing you're probably going to have to pick up their slack,

and reading these comments which sound only celebratory.

The CEO missed some huge opportunities here, to show some real compassion and empathy,

to say things like, here are some of the ways we'll be supporting those who are exiting

as they seek their next opportunities.

And for those remaining with us, you may feel sad about seeing colleagues go or anxious about

the workload you're afraid you'll be taking on. Here are some of the ways in which we'll be

supporting you. With a little bit of thought and planning, he could have totally and completely

...