Keeping faith in the business when a leader’s health fails

My career in the automotive industry spanned several decades and includes experience working for a major manufacturer as a marketing executive followed by becoming a franchise dealer of my manufacturer in one of the largest cities in the United States.
I worked hard to learn everything I needed to know to be successful as an employee and as an entrepreneur. In this process I contracted colon cancer and later on heart disease. Both of these problems are life-threatening and require invasive surgery and long recovery, if you’re lucky.
Furthermore, their seriousness requires that you and your family and in this context your employees and their families plan for the worst and hope for the best. Personally facing your own mortality is a daunting exercise to say the least.
Secondly, planning the succession or sale of your business and security of your employees are equally challenging. However, these issues must be resolved personally while you keep the ship at home and at work on an even keel in high winds and waves perhaps successfully in a period of months.
I have weathered this hurricane twice, and I wish to share with you what I observed and learned while trying to retain confidence and optimism in the future of my enterprise during these extended periods of deep concern and doubt by all the key stakeholders.
Number one. I discovered early on that no one including some in my immediate family knew how to talk to me anymore. I therefore came to understand that as the afflicted, I had to help these people bridge the communication gap. So I stopped thinking about myself and started trying to heal them. This tactic worked for them and for me.
Number two. I accepted visitors in the hospital the day after both operations. I remained jovial, communicative, optimistic; regardless of how I felt during these visits. I called department managers every couple of days to follow up on current opportunities or problems. I stayed involved day-to-day.
Number three. I got back to a daily work schedule almost immediately, including a period of seven months of weekly chemotherapy treatment. I never missed working a day after the first two weeks following the colon operation.
Obviously these basic ideas work best if prior to any business disaster you have established a culture of mutual trust and respect, appreciation and loyalty.
The aforementioned health issues are now in my distant past, and my health and mental outlook remain good. I continue to work in semi-retirement mode and have helped several of my employees to transition their major health problems and return to work or retirement.
Life is good and so is business.
Gerard Dion is a U.S. Marine veteran and self-employed marketing executive with an extensive background in the automotive industry and defense and many years of experience with a Fortune 50 corporation. He has overcome both cancer and a three-way heart bypass. Long a proponent of U.S.-Cuba reconciliation, Dion has written his first novel, Cuba Unchained, about the relationship between the two countries.