Your CEO resigns without warning. The company is sold when you didn’t know it was for sale. Management announces a dubious pivot. For many employees, it seems impossible to make it through a few years, never mind an entire career, without encountering a destabilizing event.
What leadership teams often fail to appreciate during times of upheaval, however, is how jolts from negative events continue to ripple through an organization long after the initial shock, says Peter Atwater, a financial researcher, consultant, and adjunct professor of economics at William & Mary and the University of Delaware. Atwater originally developed a framework to predict how moods dictate behavior to move markets. But in his new book, The Confidence Map: Charting a Path from Chaos to Clarity, he writes that framework also applies to the way that people behave in many other realms, including in the workplace. And he’s found that what employees do when they’re fearful can have profound consequences on a company’s success—yet CEOs don’t do enough to predict and contain employees’ reactions.
