Standard leadership advice tough to practice under Trump’s government overhaul

As federal employees across government face the prospect of mass layoffs, public administration experts in a May 6 webinar suggested ways that leaders could help their teams navigate uncertainty, an increasingly difficult task under the Trump administration's oftentimes chaotic workforce changes.

Panelists at the event, which was put on by the public sector service company Leadership Connect as well as the National Academy of Public Administration, stressed the importance of communication. 

“When you think about public administration [and] government, we as leaders need to make sure that we are communicating often and clearly to our employees, our staff members, our team members, so that they understand that we're all in this boat going in the right direction,” said Maria Thompson, a senior government cybersecurity advisor at Amazon Web Services. 

While federal employees Government Executive has spoken to since the start of Trump’s second term have often complained about a lack of communication, they’ve also sometimes criticized the messages that they are receiving.

For example, some Agriculture Department employees got 20 emails in one week urging them to accept a separation incentive. Now, agency leadership is asking some of those individuals to reconsider their plans to leave federal service. One worker characterized USDA’s reversal as “insanity.” 

Likewise, after the new Trump-appointed director of the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs sent an introductory email in which she wrote that most of the work the agency “had been doing was out of step, if not flat out contradictory, to our country’s laws,” one employee said that staff were “offended” by the email and that it “seemed hateful.” 

Speakers on the panel also emphasized the need for leaders to be transparent, but that has caused issues for some federal managers.

Traci DiMartini, the former chief human capital officer for the IRS, believes she was removed from her position partly for mentioning in a meeting intended to calm staff that the Office of Personnel Management had directed the mass probationary firings across agencies. Unknown to her, an employee was recording her comments, and they appeared in the filings of a lawsuit seeking to overturn the firings. 

Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., while speaking to laid off federal employees who were protesting at the Capitol on May 6, encouraged federal managers to check in on their employees and make sure they know their workplace rights. 

“I’m hearing from federal workers in my district who say their managers aren’t even talking to them right now because they don’t have any information and they’re scared,” Stansbury said.  

Julia D. Novak, one of the panelists and head of the International City/County Management Association, said that it’s especially important for public sector leaders to “lead with empathy” through change so that their employees can continue to provide services. 

“Acknowledging the discomfort, owning your own level of discomfort, that's a little bit about empathy. Putting yourself in their shoes and saying that ‘I know this is hard. I understand this. It seems chaotic. It's unpredictable,’” Novak said. “Saying the words that people are thinking but are afraid to say sometimes just kind of lowers the temperature in the room and allows people to feel like ‘OK, it's not just me that's having some anxiety or angst about this, but it's a common thing, and so we have each other through this.’”