The smell of fear is getting stronger as the "R" word pops up more frequently in business discussions and layoffs loom in many companies. In this month's Harvard Business Review, Janet Banks and Diane Coutu assert that workers who feel that their jobs are threatened often react in exactly the wrong way.

Banks, a former executive at FleetBoston Financial and Chase Manhattan Bank who is currently doing small group facilitation work for nonprofit companies, told Kathleen Melymuka that your best strategy may not be the one that's intuitive.

If I'm an IT professional, what's the single most important thing I can do to keep my job when layoffs seem to be looming at my company?

I'd love to say it's your work on relevant projects, but attitude is probably the single biggest thing you can control, and it will impact how you perceive yourself and how others perceive you. It's much easier to deselect a sour, negative person than someone who is constructive and creative.

Janet Banks suggests raising your profile when layoffs seem imminent.

I don't want to pigeonhole people, but tech work often attracts introverted people. And most business people are extroverts, so they are not going to know how an introvert is thinking. So you need to take risks and put yourself out [there] more -- offering constructive ideas.

Many people hunker down and keep a low profile when layoffs threaten. Your advice seems to be to do just the opposite.

Hunkering down is an illusion. You have the payroll sheet with everybody's name on it. Nobody is invisible, and you can't hide. Everything is being assessed: every project, every person. And if you're not visible in a positive way, it's easy to say, "I won't miss him."

You write that it's also valuable to be ambidextrous. What does that mean for an IT professional?

The ability to play multiple roles. For me, the most important would be a capacity to identify with the business as opposed to just the tech role. In companies I've worked with, there have been terrific examples of people in IT who really became business leaders. Art Ryan at Chase came from that world and became CEO. But he was always identified with how to make the business more profitable. That's a [mind-set].

You stress the importance of showing empathy for your leaders, even if they may be planning to cut your job. How does that differ from sucking up?