Last summer I interviewed 10 senior level public relations and corporate communications executives for three articles on leadership for The PR Strategist. One topic that didn’t make its way into any of the articles, but I thought would be of interest, was “What leadership lessons did you learn from the Great Recession?”

I shared insights from eight of them in Parts 1, 2, and 3 of this blog series; I’ll wrap things up today with leadership lessons from the Great Recession, as learned by Barri Rafferty senior partner, chief executive officer, North America, Ketchum, and Steve Cody, co-founder, co-CEO, Peppercomm, and author of the popular RepMan blog.

Rafferty: Here are a few leadership lessons from The Great Recession: 1) Take care of the talent you want to keep and invest in them as much as you can. How you treat people in tough times creates loyalty for the future. 2) Nurture client relationships more than ever. Clients who cut budgets yet were treated the same will reward your loyalty when their business bounces back. 3) Adjust creative ideas to be appropriate for recessionary times. There is less ability for clients to take risk and they need more assurances for success.

Cody: Like everyone else we took a big hit after September, 2008. We had also experienced that after the dotcom bust and the post 9/11 turn-down. It was important to calm everyone down, to let everyone know that we’d get through this. The entire management team shared regular communications, week in, week out. We were very mindful of the looks on our faces, and used a tone that signaled confidence, not fear. The mantra we learned after the fall of 2008: “Don’t get too high with the big wins; don’t go too low with the losses.”

We keep this in mind even now. Business as usual is really important, no matter how good things are going, or how difficult they are.

What leadership lessons did you learn from The Great Recession? 

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