LEADERSHIP SKILLS SERIES

Leading Others Through Change

CHAPTER 1∏CHANGE

Change is rarely a straightforward process. There are decisions to make and directions to take that can lead to unpredictable results. Sometimes it might feel like walking through a maze blindfolded. However, most people make it through the change and are better for it. There’s an added wrinkle for leaders in the business world, though. Just because you have successfully managed yourself through change doesn’t mean your team has.

The Transition Curve

For the purposes of clarity, I think it’s warranted to do a brief recap of the Transition Curve, which is more fully discussed in our book “Managing Yourself Through Change.” People react to change in many different ways, but most people feel loss associated with the change, which can cause people to experience a range of negative emotions. If not managed properly, this negative emotional place will start to sap peoples’ self-confidence, perceived effectiveness, and morale. If people sit too long in this place (lower left-hand quadrant of the graphic), they can become very disruptive and destructive in organizations. The goal, then is either to move yourself through the transition curve or,

ideally, avoid the deep dip in confidence, effectiveness, and morale altogether by dealing with the negative emotions

honestly and proactively, as well as maintaining a future-focus, problem-solving mentality.

Assuming you’ve worked your way through the change and find yourself in the “Commitment” quadrant, you’ll find yourself ready to move forward and be maximally productive. It may also be tempting to assume that your team has worked its way through the change as well. However, if you’ve been a leader in the midst of corporate change before, you’ll know that people move through the Transition

Curve at vastly different paces and will be strewn all along the curve as they’re dealing with loss that the change brings.

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REASONS PEOPLE GET ‘STUCK’ IN CHANGE

• They fear for their job security

• Loss of a title that is tied into their professional identity

• Overexposure to change in a short period of time

• Lack of leadership support during change

• Poor and/or ambiguous communication during change

• Feeling disempowered by the change

• Not resolving feelings around a previous change

• Personal stressors or changes occurring at the same time as work changes

One mistake a leader can make after successfully working through change is to assume that his team has done the same. In fact, this can be a very dangerous assumption. Treating others like they “should” be where you are in your management of the change can drive people even deeper down the Transition Curve, possibly resulting in resistance or sabotage, not to mention the loss of trust in your leadership ability.

All too often, leaders have a hard time appreciating the aspects of loss their team members might be facing or the personal and professional history of their team members that impact how each of them are handling the change they’re facing. In a situation like this, employees are facing an ‘empathy gap’ with their leaders, causing them to feel like they are being judged, not being heard, not understood, and, as a result, not adequately supported. The problem with this ‘empathy gap’ is that it is polarizing and tends to create an us-versus-them attitude characterized by disdain for the other party. As you can imagine, this makes it hard for a leader to lead well. If you want to reduce resistance and help your people move on, there are several ways to lead your team through change.

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Leading Others Through Change

Building Blocks

There are four specific Building Blocks to help lead people in your organization through change. Leading people through change builds on the work that you have done on yourself (see our book “Managing Yourself Through Change”) and builds effectiveness and resiliency into your team. As you may have noticed, the Building Blocks map on to the four quadrants of the Transition Curve, helping you meet the needs of your people wherever they are on the curve.

Information

The first Building Block is providing information to your team. At first glance, this may sound easy, but there are several challenges you may be facing, the two most likely being that you don’t have much information and that the release of the information isn’t timed well to help you prepare to give it -

both of which can provide significant challenges to a leader. Despite this, there are several key steps you can take to help you make the most of what information you have. First, be

as honest, timely, and accurate with the information as you can. Second, provide as much information as possible and explain what can’t be shared and why. Third, explain not only what is changing, but why - and at a level that is meaningful to those impacted. Fourth, make sure information flows freely and frequently. Last, informal communication gets to recipients more quickly than formal communication, although both have importance. In other words, don’t just rely on the corporate emails that come out. Use that as a supplement to giving the information in person. Also,

remember that many people process information visually - use graphics to support your message when possible.

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Support

Providing information to people who are struggling with change often occurs to leaders as the common sense thing to do. However, many leaders have come into a meeting with facts and logic on their side and come out with nothing to show for it but frustration. Sometimes no amount of information or clear logic is enough for someone to move from their position of resisting the change. Unfortunately, these leaders often keep going back to their ample supply of information to overcome the perceived resistance, not realizing that they are not meeting the need of the person sitting across from them. People who are in the bottom left quadrant of the Transition Curve are reacting emotionally, not logically. What they really need is support. They want to feel heard and understood. Anything less is met with some form of resistance - shutting down or pushing back.

Engage in active listening and empathy - often, the less you talk the better. Encourage them to express how they feel through open-ended clarifying questions, summarize their

points, and avoid problem-solving for them. The moment you do that, you’ve stopped listening, and you’re providing information again. It is extremely important to remember that their primary need at this point is not to solve their problem but to be heard and understood. In fact, some

people have fallen so far down the Transition Curve that they have taken on a victim mentality. When here, it feels much more natural to focus on what forces outside of themselves are contributing to the situation. As a result, the individuals stop seeking ways to resolve the situation. Further, many resist the idea that they have contributed at all to how they are feeling and are convinced that things can only improve if those around them change. Moving from this position requires some ownership of the solution - a hard thing for some of these folks. If you’ve worked with someone like this before, you may have seen that there

isn’t really much you can do to lead them through the change.

That begs the question: when do you know that someone is stuck firmly and steps should be initiated to help them

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transition - either out of their current position or out of the company altogether. It is important to state that people should be given plenty of support to move through changes, as we don’t always know right away what about the change is causing them issues - or if it’s something in their personal life that is bleeding over into their work. That being said, it is best not to take personnel actions based on how much time or energy you have spent with someone, but on how disruptive the person’s behavior has been within the organization. Someone who takes a long time to work through a change but remains productive is worth the extra time investment. Someone who engages in sabotage or becomes aggressive should probably be moved on quickly.

Clear Direction

If a person really feels like they’ve been heard, you might be surprised to find that levels of resistance can fall away quickly. What started off as defensive behavior can quickly turn to a more quiet, reflective attitude. If you start to hear questions similar to the following, then you’ll know the person is beginning to move back up the Transition Curve: “What do we do now?”, “How do we move on from here?”, “Is there anything else I

need to know at this point?” These questions indicate that this person has moved from backward thinking about their losses to forward thinking about solutions. Now is the time for providing clear direction. At this point, you’ll find that having problem-solving discussions can be very fruitful. People are less defensive and they are more invested in

moving on and being more productive in the workplace. However, don’t fall into the trap of merely providing them with more information about the change. That is not likely to be helpful. Rather, keep the discussion about the future by making sure they understand clearly and specifically what is expected of them during the change, as well as after the change is over. Also, identify near-term targets that can be met with relative ease in order to provide opportunities for success early in the change process. In

other words, provide some easy wins early on. Keeping their momentum going is important, as it may not take much as this stage for the person to slide back into the lower left-hand quadrant of the Transition Curve. Keep them moving forward through clear guidance, expectations, and easy wins.

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Involvement and Encouragement

Once you have people moving in the right direction through the change process, lead them through change using involvement and encouragement. By this time, people have managed their emotions, re-engaged in the workplace, and are moving forward toward success. Now is the prime time to begin really empowering them.

Although it might seem obvious that encouragement is important in the workplace, we know that the longer we work with people, the less frequently we give positive feedback. In order to keep people highly engaged through change and beyond, we need to keep up a constant supply of encouragement and recognition, also known as strokes. This is crucial for resilience. Strokes could come in the form of one-on-one verbal praise, praise in front of peers, recognition in a newsletter or email, employee of the week/month/quarter awards, or “spot bonuses” for a job well done. Most of this doesn’t have to cost anything, and the “spot bonuses” don’t have to be expensive either, being something as simple as a Starbucks gift card. Whatever you do, be sure

to keep the encouragement up and reward behavior you would like to see more frequently.

Involvement is also essential to keeping people performing well through change. One thing we know drives people down the Transition Curve is feeling powerless over change.

As much as possible, involve people on your team in committees or groups that will allow them to have a say about upcoming changes or will allow them to have more access to the information that is coming out. Even if you can’t impact the onset of a change, you may be able to involve your team in deciding how the change is rolled out and implemented on a local level. Involve them early in those types of discussions and enlist their help in implementing the change. Getting people to think proactively about change, instead of reactively, will help to keep them engaged and make your job much easier as you

work toward leading your team through change. Involving them and encouraging them buffers the impact of change. It should be noted that the Building Block aren’t necessarily meant to be applied sequentially. It is best to use all four consistently with your team.

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BACKGROUND

• Thomas is a supervisor in a large, government contracting organization.

• He has been with the organization for 10 years and has a lot of experience in his field and as a supervisor.

• Changes in the government budget have impacted his company’s bottom line.

• Vacation allowances and 401(k) match have been cut, and the employees are having to pay a larger share into their health insurance.

• It has just been announced that to reduce overhead costs, people would be moving from offices to cubicles.

Thomas has just received notification from corporate that his team, along with numerous others throughout the organization, will be moving from their more traditional office spaces to large, open floor plans filled with cubicles beginning in the next week or so. It was explained that this would help reduce the overhead costs of the company in the face of budgetary pressures. He

could feel the frustration mounting within himself regarding still another change, and he was not looking forward to breaking the news to the already restless natives. Taking a few moments to compose his thoughts, he sends out an email to his team calling for an all-hands meeting that afternoon to discuss an upcoming change. When the meeting rolls around, Thomas isn’t sure whether or not he’s happy that everyone is present and waiting for his announcement. He opens up by saying, “I just wanted to call everyone together to say that we’re all moving out of our offices and into cubicles. I don’t know any more about it than you do, and I’m sure I don’t like it any more than you do, but we’re just going to have to deal with it.” Silence reigned for a moment before the employees realized that Thomas was serious. Then the floodgates opened. A series of questions and comments flowed from fed up and frustrated people. Thomas responded defensively to the questions and ended up yelling at his team before breaking off the meeting.

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Case Study

In order to better understand what just happened at Thomas’ meeting, it can be helpful to take a deeper look at what is going on with the different parties involved.

Thomas

Thomas is not a bad employee, and he is not a bad supervisor, despite how he approached the announcement with his team. One might wonder, then, why he chose the approach that he did. Going back to the Transition Curve, it can be supposed with high likelihood that Thomas has not successfully worked through the changes that he has faced on the job. He seems to be harboring lingering frustrations about past changes, and the most recent one just added to what he is still dealing with. Because of his frustration, he did nothing to reach out to his chain of command to get more information about the details of the move. Another tell-tale sign is the way he opened up the meeting. It’s pretty clear that he didn’t really want to talk about the issue, and his approach was one that he hoped would discourage discussion. He just wanted to break the news and be done with it. He had so much trouble dealing with the change the company was going through that he had little desire or energy to deal with the frustrations that he was afraid his team was going to express at the meeting. He was hoping the short, blunt message would cut that off at the pass. Without much information and feeling defensive to begin with, the meeting did not go as he had hoped, causing even more tension and frustration in the workplace.

His Team

Similar to Thomas, many of the members of his team were still struggling with the change and found themselves with Thomas in the lower left-hand quadrant of the Transition Curve. This likely means they have only set themselves up to resist any further change. Granted, not everyone will be resistant. Some people will take a wait-and-see attitude (upper left-hand quadrant). Others will try to find out how they need to work through the change (lower right-hand quadrant), and a few will find opportunity in the midst of the change (upper right-hand quadrant). Given what we know about the Building Blocks, it would have behooved Thomas to consider how he could meet the needs of his team. However, he provided no information for the wait-and-see people. He substituted support with defensiveness for the resistant people. He gave no direction for those trying to work through the change, and there was no involvement or encouragement for those wanting to make the best of it. The net effect of Thomas’ approach is likely to be pulling the wait-and-see down into the lower left quadrant, and pulling the people on the right-hand side of the Transition Curve down to the lower left as well. In an attempt to protect himself from the reactions of his team, he has only succeeded in sabotaging their acceptance of the change. Not only that, but the very negativity he wished to avoid, he has multiplied, and he is left sitting in his office wishing he could just check out, while his team is now seeing him as part of the problem.

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The Ideal

It may be true that many situations are far from ideal, and we can rarely expect the best-case scenario to come true. However, we can learn from the ideal and do our best to apply it, even if those around us don’t.

Thomas’ Supervisor

In this situation, it would have been a huge help to Thomas if his supervisor took the time to check in with him on how he was managing all the change. In addition, Thomas’ supervisor could have reached out to him to help explain the change and given more details, if there were any available. Thomas was left to interpret the email (and what was behind it) and pass this along to his team with no further context.

Thomas

It may have helped Thomas to talk to his supervisor or another trusted person in the company to do a little venting and re-centering of this thoughts regarding the change, as well as gathering as much information as possible to give to his team. This information would have gone a long way toward helping the wait-and-see crowd. However, as discussed previously, information doesn’t do much to help those in the lower left quadrant. They may see it as an attempt to convince them they shouldn’t be feeling upset. That doesn’t mean that Thomas should hold back with the information. Rather, when the information has been given, he shouldn’t spend a lot of time reasoning out and rehashing

the information with them. That would make him sound defensive and like he’s not hearing their concerns. Ideally, after giving out the information, Thomas would allow for the team to be able to express their concerns honestly and without judgment. Now is not the time to try to solve their problems or show them why their fears are unfounded. Now is the time to practice active listening and display empathy. Thomas would do well to acknowledge the difficulties of the changes they have faced and how being upset with the new change is a normal reaction. Asking a few clarifying questions and summarizing their concerns can be a great way for Thomas to help his team feel like they’re being heard. Believe it or not, at this stage, people are often more concerned about feeling heard than having their issues addressed. In fact, feeling heard is usually the gateway to their willingness to work on the issues. At this point, Thomas would have covered the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of the change with his team, and he will have listened to their concerns. Now, it may be helpful to cover the ‘how’ of the change. For those in the lower right quadrant, this is what they need to gain traction. Thomas may even want to appoint a small group of people from his team to help facilitate the transition - this will help involve those in the upper right quadrant, who are looking for opportunities to make the best of the situation. For Thomas, it’s not about avoiding the team’s emotion, or merely communicating the change - it’s about understanding the range of reactions on his team and giving them each something to work with.

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Although Thomas’ example is a somewhat straightforward one, helping to lead other people through change can be a very complex proposition. Part of the complexity comes from the fact that not everyone is equally skilled across the four Building Blocks. There seems to be two broad classes of ‘comfort zones’ for people. Identifying whether or not you fit into these comfort zones can help you both play to your strengths and help mitigate areas where you’re not as strong.

The Coach

Some leaders have a natural knack for thinking logically and linearly - and often are good at communicating this way to the people on their team. When mapping this person onto the Building Blocks diagram, they are often very good at helping those individuals who need information and those who need clear direction. These leaders can be very skilled at explaining not just what is happening with the change but the ‘why’ behind the change as well. This can go a long way in helping the people who are just entering the Transition Curve. Sometimes, when this information comes early enough it can help people avoid joining their peers in the lower left-hand quadrant, helping them make their way through the change quickly and productively. Likewise, for those who have spent their time struggling with the change and have started

to consider ways of moving forward, the Coach is skilled at giving them a clear direction on which they can focus, which can go a long way toward helping them manage change. However, the Coach may have a difficult time offering support to those struggling with change and offering encouragement to those who are thriving in the midst of change. This is where the next comfort zone comes in.

The Counselor

This leader is more adept at helping people work through their emotions when confronted with a change. Checking in with people and helping them through seems to come very naturally. People may feel more comfortable opening up with this person, because they feel like they’re being heard. As previously discussed, this is essential to helping people move out of the problematic lower left-hand quadrant of the Transition Curve. Additionally, given this leader’s focus on others, it can feel very natural to keep people involved and encouraged as they are successfully managing change for themselves in the upper right-hand quadrant of the Transition Curve. This leader can go a long way toward helping people feel valued. However, the Counselor may miss opportunities to relay important information and may assume people will find their own direction, instead of helping provide a way forward.

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CONCLUSION

It is important to understand that you can’t make anyone manage change in a healthy way, except yourself. Once you have yourself in a good place, you are in position to help lead your team through change. The Building Blocks are essential pieces of the puzzle that many of us face when we have to help people manage the constant barrage of change in our professional environments. Using Information, Support, Clear Direction, and Involvement and Encouragement, you can set the stage for your team’s management of the change they face - and make you an even more effective leader.

If you’re one of the few people who are equally good at providing all four of the Building Blocks to your team, consider yourself fortunate, and keep up the good work. If you more strongly identify with either the Coach or the Counselor types, don’t get discouraged. Continue doing good work in your comfort zone. Don’t stop there, though. Find someone with the alternate skill set to help you lead through change. Find a mentor or a coach to help you brush up on these skills. But most importantly - keep at it. Your team is relying on you!

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