Economic downturns are hard for everyone, at both work and at home. Week after week there are requests for managers to further reduce budgets, lay off more people and cut projects that were previously classified as “necessary to sustain normal business operations.” These pressures forge managers made of diamond, and those who perform well in both boom and bust are destined for greatness. The very best managers get out ahead of downturns and take action early to minimize shareholder losses and, ideally, create shareholder value.

Here are six simple questions to determine if you are one of these managers.

1. Do you treat economic hardships in your business as a time to relax, or do you look to improve your skills?
2. Do you constantly push back when new budget cuts come along, or are you offering up cost savings ahead of requests from higher level executives?
3. Do you complain that you are too short handed to accomplish your mission, or do you spend time developing tools, systems and metrics that help you determine how to get more done with less people?
4. Are your top performers worried about losing their jobs, or do you spend time nurturing them and growing them to be even more successful in their positions?
5. Do you complain that you need all of your folks, or are you constantly weeding your team of underperformers without replacing them when times are rough?
6. Do you treat hiring freezes as interview freezes, or are you constantly looking to find bigger and better talent so that you can move quickly when it’s time to hire again?

These questions help illustrate some of the steps we believe define exemplary leaders and managers in tough economic times. Put more directly, we think that the following are some of the five things that great managers and leaders do during economic downturns that help prove they are “the best of the best”:

1. Upgrading skills. This can be anything from getting an additional degree in your area of expertise, to getting a degree in a field adjacent to yours (technologists getting an MBA or marketing folks deepening their technology), to taking continuing education courses or just taking some time to become current with your job through professional reading. The best leaders and managers see being “the best” as a journey rather than a destination. We cover this in more detail in “To Get Better You Must Practice.”

2. Make More with Less. Stop talking about being the best and prove it. Put the systems in place that allow you to measure how much shareholder value you create with every dollar you spend on headcount or systems. Show how you can do more next year with the same budget or — better yet — more with less money. If you aren’t doing this as a standard operating procedure, start doing it while the economy is struggling, and you will absolutely be seen as being one of the best.

3. Mind Your Flowers. Whether you are making difficult headcount cuts or not — but especially if you are — you need to take care of the folks who are creating the most shareholder value within your organization. Exit the economic downturn with your best people on your side — not the folks with the longest tenure but the folks who create the most value.

4. Weed Your Garden. The best managers during great times are always looking to remove underperformers from their teams and upgrade them with superior performers. The best managers during economic hard times are ahead of the headcount cuts with a list of the folks who should be removed from their team for poor performance. Don’t ask if other organizations are getting their fair share of cuts; focus on what’s right for the shareholder and get it done ahead of the request!

5. Get Ready for Spring Planting. It may not seem like it today, but things will turn around; if not for your current employer then for your next employer. You need to have that list of great talent with whom you’ve been interviewing ready so that you can quickly augment your existing team as the need arises, or build your next team if your current employer doesn’t survive the downturn. Leadership is as much about people as anything else, and great leaders focus on building great teams.

Marty Abbott and Michael Fisher are partners with AKF Partners.