How to Lead a Team Through Change
Nearly 60% of people at work today say their organisation is not good at managing change. Leaders play a key role in engaging teams in change initiatives - but how can they do so successfully?
1. Involve the team
The first question a leader needs to consider is: How can the people who will be impacted by the change be involved in crafting the change? Ownership, early communication and empowerment demonstrate to teams that their skills and knowledge matter in making change happen. Teams can feel heard and trusted. This not only ensures there is real, diverse, tangible insight from employees to help shape change, but also develops employees’ abilities to be involved in change programmes, building a culture of people who can embrace change, are agile and resilient.
But sometimes high involvement is not possible, employees may be on the receiving end of a change that needs to be imposed and implemented quickly. Leaders need to positively support their teams in understanding and embedding the change through engagement and communication.
2. Communicate
‘The What’ – what is the message. Start with the audience in mind: what are their wants and their needs? Both cannot always be serviced, but the communication can be designed with them in mind. What is their context?
‘The When’ – usually the earlier the better before false or damaging rumours are spread. Even if leaders do not yet have all the answers, communicating what they do know builds trust and momentum.
The How – presentations, open forums, emails, 1:1’s, team meetings. What will be cascaded and how? Written material is useful for people to read, digest and understand key points. Verbal 1:1 or team meeting conversations are useful for answering questions, allaying concerns, supporting, signposting and motivating. Presentations are useful for inspiring, bringing together a community and explaining.
The Why – ‘Why’ underpins everything. If people understand the why, the bigger picture, the context, the future, the relevance, the sensitivities, the possibilities and the decisions, then they can start to get behind the change. The ‘Why’ gives meaning to change. Leaders need to communicate the why early, with consistency and with passion.
3. Understand where people are in accepting the change
The ‘House of Change’ metaphor describes how people move through four rooms of a house when they experience a change. The House of Change model was developed by Janseen, a Swedish psychologist. Leadership needs to adapt depending upon which ‘room’ someone is in. Crucially, people may to go through the rooms at different paces.
The Room of Contentment - before change - is where a person, or collectively an organisation of people, feel content with their situation, enjoying the feeling of comfort of familiarity or the pinnacle of success from a recent initiative.
Then a change occurs, or a change is initiated. People can then enter The Room of Denial, a place where they believe the change will not fundamentally impact them or is not truly happening. People may minimise the impact and trajectory. Staying too long here can prompt someone to go into the dungeon of denial where they can fester and hide, an uncomfortable place of not accepting reality. When team members are in the room of denial, the natural tendency of leaders might be to feel impatient and frustrated. In this room leaders need to lead with the emotions of the team in mind, as just giving more logic and facts will not lead the team to move to the next room. What leaders actually need to show is patience and empathy. They can communicate clearly and consistently and aim to build trust and rapport.
The next room is the Room of Confusion. In this room the person accepts the change is happening, but they are unsure about what will happen. This can be a room full of anxiety, stressful thoughts, confusion and even overwhelm. If people stay too long in the room of confusion they can fall into the pit of paralysis – where they can remain if too overwhelmed or unsupported. For people in this room leaders can provide information, be available for discussion and Q&A, build momentum behind the change by being really clear on timelines, and signposting team members if they need additional support.
The final room is The Room of Renewal. In this room people make a plan, they see how to move forward, seek the resources they need and support others around them in going through change. In this room leaders can support team members in their goals by using coaching conversations to empower and motivate them for the future.
Involving teams, communicating and engaging well and understanding the change journey enables leaders to lead change with confidence and success.
References
https://www.wtwco.com/en-ph/insights/campaigns/employee-experience-in-an-age-of-disruption
https://changing-point.com/organisational-change-management-statistics/