Change Management Skills Critical for You as a Manager and Leader
As a manager, one of your most important roles is facilitating organizational change for your employees. We all know that change is constant in business and in life and isn’t necessarily a terrible thing. Still, even good changes cause stress. In most organizations, change comes from:
- Adoption of new policies
- Structural shifts in management
- Downsizing
- Outside forces, both planned and unplanned
- Being acquired by another company
No matter the reason, as their leader, you must gain your employees’ support to see the department and organization through the changes successfully. To do that, use the following five change leadership techniques to create a positive environment that employees will draw upon to become more accepting of change:
1. Give them space and encouragement to try things a different way
Generally, when change is the result of something bad, present it as an opportunity for your staff and let them try doing something different in their roles to achieve better results. After all, the people doing the daily work probably have plenty of ideas about how to save time, cut costs, and be more productive.
2. Draw on the talents of your power brokers
These are people who possess an innate persona of power and authority over others regardless of their position or title. Because of this, they exert tremendous influence over the rest of the team. Spend extra time with these people, making sure they know what the changes are and why you need their help to be successful. If possible, delegate some of your responsibilities and groom a new set of leaders.
3. Help team members find their motivation
People will respond positively to your vision — or your challenge to them — if they see the possibilities of what can be. But they won’t recognize it unless you show them first AND give them the WIIFM ("What’s In It For Me?"). Obviously, before you can do this with them, you must believe in the possibilities yourself. Because if you're not buying in, it will be difficult to make anyone else do it either.
4. Empower your team
Provide as much information, responsibility, and authority as you can, whenever you can. Show your employees that you have faith in their capacity to digest it. If people on your staff will be reassigned due to the changes, allow them to continue to function as a team for as long as possible to alleviate stress.
5. Hand out praise and rewards like candy at Halloween
Immediately after the change hits, be generous with your thank you’s, kudos, shout-outs, and rewards, and make them public when you can. When your staff buys-in to the opportunity, goes above and beyond on a task and makes a visible effort to work with all the change, praise them immediately. If rewarded correctly, their positive attitude will rub off on the others.
Change Management Involves an Extraordinary Level of Sustained Communication
Listening
Effective change management involves a concerted effort by you to actively listen to employees. My colleague wrote an excellent guide on how to do it if you’re unfamiliar. All successful change managers are present in the moment with an employee and ask follow-up questions. They also excel at MBWO (managing by walking around) and it’s a process used by an involved leadership group.
Remember that even if you execute these steps perfectly, some employees will resist change for many reasons. They require more convincing as to why they need to adapt to the change.
Five keys to overcoming employee resistance to change:
- Before any announcement, identify what the resistance might look like and who is most likely to demonstrate those behaviors
- After the announcement, ensure everyone knows WHY the change is happening and the impact it will have on their daily work
- Create a willingness for people to change by modeling the behavior in yourself
- Be alert to resistance and consciously work to overcome it
- Motivate people to change and be excited about it
Finally, if people flatly refuse to embrace critical changes, help them see the following realities:
- The change will happen whether they want it to or not
- They can anticipate, monitor, and adapt to change quicker with your help
- They have the power to enjoy the change if they choose
If resistance persists or gets worse, document all your efforts with the employee and their actions in response. You might need it if the result is the termination of the employee. Some people will only change if they see that there will be consequences if they don’t. Change leadership is a singularly difficult part of your job, but if done correctly, one of the most satisfying.
