Article written by Dan Rose
Read the original article on the Skill Path Blog - Link here
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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