Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink
Every action you take as a leader has a ripple effect, starting with your team, going out to the organization, and even out into to people’s personal lives. Here we offer you the chance to learn from real-life stories of leadership, so you can gain a deeper understanding, and level up your own skills. From communication, to culture, to power and equity, to feedback, to resolving conflict, and more. Join us and make sure you are creating the ripples you want.
If you would like your questions answered on the show, please share your story here: https://allthrive.ca/share-your-story/
To join the show live, go to: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-fink-all-thrive/
Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink
35 - Effective and Timely Change Management
How long should it take to introduce and implement large changes in the workplace? Join us for an exploration that goes beyond time lines, to the factors that will impact the efficiency and effectiveness of your change process. Learn which foundational elements pave the way for smoother transitions, while supporting staff and keeping them engaged.
Do you know how to get your staff to buy-in and be allies in your change process?
If you would like to know how to make your change management more efficient and effective, this is the episode for you!
To have your questions answered on the show, submit your story here: https://allthrive.ca/share-your-story
Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink is live every week at 12:00pm MST. Please join us to get answers to your leadership questions! https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-fink-all-thrive/
Every action you take as a leader has a ripple effect, starting with your team, going out to the organization and even out into people's personal lives. Here we offer you the chance to learn from real-life stories of leadership so you can gain a deeper understanding and level up your own skills From communication to culture, to power and equity, to feedback, to resolving conflict and more. Join us and make sure you're creating the ripples you want. Welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink Now. Today we're going to be talking about the timeline of change and how we communicate and work with change management. Ik writes in with their situation. I was recently hired at a new company that's only been around for a couple of years. They're now starting to grow and haven't done almost any work on developing their culture yet, so the owner wanted to prioritize that.
Speaker 2:This management role that I am in was created with part of its purpose to be developing and maintaining culture in the company. I've been able to create and maintain a healthy culture with my previous teams, but they've all been in well-established companies where the culture was already reasonably healthy. I know I'm the kind of person who likes to push change and I have some ideas of what I want to prioritize bringing in. I also don't want to rush things and I'm curious of what you think the timeline to change and create a culture should be. Thank you so much for sharing your story, ik, and congrats on your new role. It sounds like you're really going to get some neat learning and growth opportunities as a leader here, and I do really want to appreciate what you shared, which is that you're aware of some of your habits as a leader, maybe this habit that you want to jump in and make change quite quick, and the awareness that that might not work well for everyone. And, as a leader, it's imperative that we're all aware of not only these habits that we might have, but how they might be impacting the people that we're working with. So doing that check in, figuring out how we can work with that, great job. Now on to your question I don't believe that there is a simple answer to how long should this kind of change take, that it should be four weeks, that it should be between three and six months, and instead I want to talk a little bit more about the factors that come into play when you're thinking about making a big change or communicating a big change with your team. And I want to start, as I often do, on this basis of relationship, and particularly of your team's perspective, of their relationship with you.
Speaker 2:It's not an uncommon thing for me to hear stories from employees about being blindsided by a big change that came from someone way higher up in the company that they don't even know, but this change affected them quite a lot and these decisions are not always well communicated. And when they come up with someone that you're so removed from, like a upper, upper level manager, it can be hard to connect with them, to buy into them, to want to make this change at all, and that can lead to quite a bit of a slower process. So, ik, I hope in this new role, something you've already prioritized is how you've been connecting with your team. Have you taken the time to get to understand their preferences in the workplace, as learners, as staff? Have you gotten to know them a bit personally and showed that you care about who they are as people? In a general sense, have you already been expressing specific positive feedback and affirmation, basically, that you really appreciate what they do, how they helped you, how they've impacted the team? Have you already been building this foundation of trust in a relationship? Because that foundation is going to be so critical to lean on as we start communicating this change. Because when we don't have that trust, when we don't have this foundation in our relationships, it can be really hard for people to see the good intentions behind our actions or the positive way that they will be experiencing this change once it's happened.
Speaker 2:Because remember, as soon as you create any sort of change, you're increasing your staff stress. Not only is there loss involved in all change, even good change, there's the loss of habit, there's the loss of whatever benefit you did get from it, there's the loss of this ease. There might be loss of just what happened before. The chance to do something different involves that kind of losing of what there was before. And on top of that it takes more mental effort to do something different, to learn a new skill or learn a new way of doing things. And when you talk to your staff, when you first introduce a change, they probably don't understand how those changes might help them in the future. It just seems really like you're adding stress to them only the negative. And something you might have to consider is is this change a positive change for them in the long run? Are they eventually going to see a benefit?
Speaker 2:Personally, I'd argue generally, when you're creating intentional culture that you're improving whatever incidental culture there was before, maybe bringing in more value-driven work, better communication, better leadership, that's probably going to have a positive impact on them down the road. But realistically, if you're in a different situation, or even in this situation, there may be some changes that ultimately aren't going to help them personally, they might not see a net positive, according to your employees. So what do you do with that? Because you can't necessarily change what the change is going to be. It might come from someone higher up in the organization, or it is something that needs to happen for the company. And with all of this, a piece that I believe is so important in the change process but is often not given enough space, is the chance for employees to share what they are legitimately feeling and experiencing around this change that's going to happen and experiencing around this change that's going to happen.
Speaker 2:Often, leaders think they know what employees might be worried about, and so introducing a change and as we share and communicate about it, starts with introducing a change, then defending all the reasons it might not be a bad thing for the people and for the staff team, and so, for example, in this case, you might talk about how there's going to be restructuring to support this new culture you're bringing in, and then you reassure your team that everyone's job is safe and they're going to love their new positions. Now the employees might first of all, be worried about why you thought you needed to mention job security, and they might be feeling unheard and unacknowledged because you didn't mention the concerns that they actually had, and instead the best way, I believe, to do this is give them space to express what their concerns might be and before you, as you start sharing about that change, before you start reassuring them of all these pieces kind of defending the change, ask your employees what their reaction is. Maybe they're going to have some concerns, maybe they'll have some excitement, maybe they'll have some trepidation. Whatever that is, this is the chance for them to process and start to come to terms with what this change means for them, and it also tends to decrease side meetings after this change is announced, because often employees do want to process. So what happens is, if they don't have space in the meeting, they'll go off with their co workers and they'll do this debrief process by themselves, and when that happens, what you're going to get is misinformation being spread around, more fear and concern, and instead what you can do is you can give them this space, ask about what their concerns are and try to make sure you're not just defending the change, because when you genuinely are listening with an empathetic mindset, what you're going to hear are these concerns. You can answer any questions they have, you can address any misunderstandings and you can just let them be with whatever they're feeling at that moment. You can thank them for sharing, you can validate whatever their experience is and ask them about how they think that we might be able to get through this. What are some of their ideas about being a team together to face the challenge of the change?
Speaker 2:Because often what can happen is, if we're just addressing this change, now it's, we have taken this action against them by telling them that we're going to do this change. We have taken this action against them by telling them that we're going to do this change they haven't had the chance to process and now they're maybe kind of a victim to the change or they're now in a clash against you, whereas when we do this process, we can become allies alongside them. No-transcript. Now, one extra thing to consider in this process is that when you start out, when you start this conversation about communicating change, be very clear with where the space is for any changes within that. So if a change is already set and all these structures around it are already set, make sure that they know that that it's just about the ability to express and not necessarily about being able to influence that change to express and not necessarily about being able to influence that change. And, additionally, you might want to be clear on where there could be support or capacity or resources in how you're going to handle the change process.
Speaker 2:You want to make sure that, when you share this, that you're not kind of inadvertently making this promise to them that they'll be able to have some sort of impact that they won't have, because that's also very frustrating, that sense of, oh, I'll get to change something, oh, actually, no, I won't. It's much more disappointing than just knowing from the front what you will actually have the ability to change. One other thing that you might be worried about in this process is that you've now brought a group of people together and now they're all going to be complaining and making each other more miserable and feel worse about the situation and about this change process. So if you're worried about your staff having that kind of reaction, you also want to consider what kind of structure you could put around this that would be easier and healthier for them. You don't necessarily just want to say share all your bad feelings about this, share all your concerns. Maybe it's something like you use post-it notes and you ask everyone to write their concerns, so those are going to be more precise and you can share them all, maybe in more neutral tone, which will help decrease maybe some of this emotional elevation that could happen if everyone's sharing out loud all of their thoughts. Or maybe you could ask that people, when they speak to a concern, speak to some way that they could see the team working together to address that concern Once again, not trying to diminish their emotional experience, but also starting to get them thinking in that how can we get past this kind of way? So you get to consider how your team might respond, based on how you know them, and plan for how you can make this a supportive conversation and a useful one for everyone. Now that you have this information that you've gathered from allowing your employees that space to process and knowing those stumbling blocks that discomfort, you want to ensure that your staff stay on board throughout this whole process and that they stay as allies to you, that they have this agency. So, as you're going through this process, make sure you're also creating space, that this continues. That it wasn't just a one-time thing and now you're going to do the change. This continues, that it wasn't just a one-time thing and now you're going to do the change. Maybe this means a more regular staff meeting. Once a week you're going to get together to all make sure that what's happening is what you hoped would happen. Maybe you do need to brainstorm some different ways to do certain things that aren't working, and then you can solve any issues that come up.
Speaker 2:In the moment and this continues to be a process that they're engaged in the most common feeling I hear about during change process from employees is that they feel either helpless or powerless in the whole process. They're not participants in it, it's just something that's happening around them. So keep creating these options or these opportunities for them to give this kind of feedback and so they can keep working on better ways to do things in this new system, or they'll start to disconnect from it and maybe even go against it. Now I know obviously in this whole time I barely talked about timeline. I didn't really give that an answer, but the thing is, when staff feel untrustworthy of the person who's presented the change to them, they're not supported with. However, they're feeling about this experience and they feel powerless through this whole process.
Speaker 2:Change is going to take more time.
Speaker 2:It will be a slog.
Speaker 2:You might have people fighting against it.
Speaker 2:You're maybe emotionally supporting people who are constantly upset about it.
Speaker 2:People are dragging their feet because they don't want this change to happen, and when you have this sense of trust and people feeling understood and that they have agency, that they're part of this process of change, you can actually create some pretty big changes quite effectively and efficiently.
Speaker 2:It can take quite a short time, and so it's less to me about a specific timeline that we're going to set out for this and more about how skillfully you're able to engage your team within this whole process. So, ik, I hope that gave you some good ideas about how you might support this timeline, for how you're going to help your team through this change process. As a reminder to our listeners, if you have a short story that you would like to share, I would love to hear it and answer your questions and as a thank you for that, just like I will be doing with IK, I give a complimentary follow-up session so we can make sure your question's answered, and to say thank you for being able to share with us so we can all grow together. I want to thank you so much for listening, for learning with me, for engaging in this process so you can make sure that you're supporting your team in the best way possible. And, as we close, remember to ask yourself what kind of ripples am I going to create this week?
Speaker 1:We hope you enjoyed the episode. Make sure to subscribe, comment and connect with Leah at meetleahca.