Leading Your Team Through Change

Every leader should be ready, willing and able to lead their team through change.

Change is inevitable in both large and small organizations today. Change is happening rapidly for a number of reasons: technological advancements, the challenges of attracting and engaging global talent, merging legacy with new or different organizational cultures, aggressive competition, shifting teams from tactical to strategic approaches, and a plethora of information, to name just a few.

It’s tough to keep up with change, but if you fight or avoid it, chances are high that either your business will fail or you will miss out on key opportunities. In fact, according to McKinsey and Company research, 70% of all organizational transformations fail. This is at least partly due to lack of leadership preparedness—our brains are hardwired to resist change—and in part due to a focus on processes and systems versus the organization’s people.

This article focuses on the people side of leadership— involving your team members and leading them through change. Times have changed, and, unlike the world of, say, Mad Men, leadership is no longer a solo sport.

Systems View

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines a system as “a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole.” As a leader you need at all times to have a holistic picture—or systems view—of your organization and understand that a change in one area will effect change in another area. Each part of the system is interconnected in some way. Having a systems view is a powerful way of understanding the workings of the organization—and more importantly, its people—in order to bring team members along and make sound decisions.

You may already be strategically savvy and have a holistic view of your organization. Encouraging and teaching your team members to adopt the same outlook will expand their understanding of the “what” and the “why”—key elements in supporting employee engagement. Check in with each member to ensure they are on board, and help them connect the dots to the bigger picture if they’re not sure how.

Stay connected across the organization and readily speak with each member of your team—and then connect your team to others as well. This two-pronged approach will serve to increase knowledge and connectivity from a people perspective.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate—and Communicate Again

I’ve been through a number of organizational changes, mostly due to acquisition, and I’ve worked with hundreds of effective leaders. Whenever I ask about the most common success drivers for change, “over-communicate!” comes up 100% of the time.

Knowing the inner workings of the organization can be extremely challenging—especially if top leadership is still trying to figure it out. So, it’s important to continue to network, ask questions, listen to understand—and to be comfortable with not having all the answers. And then communicate, communicate, communicate—even if you have don’t have new information to share. It’s okay to simply say, “There is no new information to share but as soon as there is I will keep you in the loop!”

A word of caution: when you’re delivering negative news, don’t sugar-coat information. Many times, I’ve heard leaders tell their people their jobs won’t be affected by the change. Don’t say everything is going to be okay, because you really can’t know that for sure. Instead, be straight, be optimistic, and encourage feedback and dialogue.

To communicate is one thing, but having a consistent, effective communication strategy, including appropriate pathways and forums, is another altogether, and it will guarantee that the majority of employees will receive your messages loud and clear. These communication vehicles can include road shows and town halls, focus groups or forums for employee feedback, leader team meetings, social media, and social events to allow for discussion, education, and people connection.

Nothing can replace the one-on-one and team communication. It’s crucial to have regular conversations with people to build trust and personal connection. Effective communication builds trust—their trust in you and your trust in them—which will help create stability, especially during tough times. Create a safe space for conversations and open dialogue. Explain to your team the “why” of change. Explain the organization’s vision and team goals. And where possible, bring employees into the change decisions as an effective way to influence their buy-in to change.

All of this helps to boost employee engagement, not only during times of change but in general. And as research tells us, employee engagement not only creates a personal connection to the organization, it ultimately drives productivity and your company’s bottom line.

I often refer to the “Rule of Three”: communicating pieces of information three times helps to ensure the message is received effectively. People have different ways of processing and remembering information. Most people can’t remember more than three things at a time, especially during times of change—and in a highly digitalized world—when people are being overloaded with various stimuli.

Did you know that, according to a study by Microsoft, the average human attention span is just 8 seconds? This is one second shorter than a goldfish’s attention span!

Memory—whether in goldfish or humans—is a highly complex process. We filter out irrelevant or unnecessary data, and organize the meaningful bits into patterns we recognize. To prevent dumps of information coming at us, we associate the information in meaningful ways to information that already exists in our memory banks. There is so much more to the way our memories work, of course, but for the sake of this article, this is another reason to provide relevant, interconnected, consistent information over time.

Include Others—Support and Encourage Change Champions

I’ve heard the term “change champions” used a number of times by organizational leaders. Change champions are typically people who welcome change, are optimistic, have a systems view of the organization, are good listeners, ask questions to further understand the change, have well-developed networks, and are comfortable with speaking up and sharing. In short, these are people who help to initiate and facilitate the change process in a planful manner. They are the people you should include in the strategy of change, each step of the way, whose roles are to educate and support those employees who are struggling with the change. Change champions help those people who need time to discuss, absorb, discuss again, and understand the effects of change on them and the organization—the “what” and the “why.”

And, even though change champions are good at handling change, ensure they too get the support they need so they can continue to be effective change champions. Everyone can be affected by change fatigue.

Empower Your People

Are you of the camp that believes you have some control over your life events, or do you believe that things merely happen to you? The former camp accepts that their lives and careers are their own responsibility—and lead and act accordingly. The latter camp sits back and blames others for what’s going on around them. Based on research from University of Florida psychologist Tim Judge and his colleagues, “people who feel that they control the events in their lives and are confident in their abilities end up doing better on nearly every important measure of work performance.”

Empowering your people is one way of moving them forward through change. There are many views on how to empower people. Here are a few of my favourites. If you’ve taken the time to build relationships with each team member, you are in a better position to help them empower themselves and manage change. If you haven’t, there’s no time like the present!

Keep communicating and encourage open discussion. Share the organization’s vision—and the changes associated with that vision—and invite them to co-develop goals and solutions toward that vision. Delegate responsibilities to encourage their sense of control in the change. Ask questions and encourage them to do the same. I’ve often seen a leader who will “protect” an employee from change by not involving them in necessary change communication and activities so as to not overload them. Depending on the employee’s situation, this can actually have the reverse effect: alienating the employee and creating a fear of the unknown. Include your employees early in the change process to maximize buy-in.

Build Resilience—and Help Your Team do the Same

Merriam-Webster’s definition of resilience is “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” To take it a step further, organizations need—and often expect—people to not only bounce back but to perform at optimal levels even in the midst of change.

Building resilience and managing stress can lead to three critical success factors: increased productivity, enhanced communication, and effective collaboration. In fact, sometimes a bit of stress can help us accomplish tasks more efficiently, boost memory, and make us much more alert to factors that might harm us (also known as the “flight or fight” response—do we fight or run away from the beast?).

As Dane Jensen notes in his talk about resilience via Smith School of Business at Queens University, we have four resilience choices: 1) eliminate the stressor(s) or modify the environment (which can be difficult to do when an organization is going through the change whether you like it or not!); 2) build and maintain physical resilience (think: exercise, take time to recover, meditate); 3) develop and maintain (positive) relationships (think: team discussions, social activities); and 4) build inner skills (think: build on self awareness; develop and maintain perspective, focus and purpose).

As a leader, it’s key to be resilient yourself so that you show up effectively at all times. Having a meltdown in front of your peers or your team can destroy their trust in you, and that can take months—or longer—to build up again.

To Jensen’s “big four” resilience points, I would add just three final things to help you navigate change effectively: first, continue to be optimistic (building resilience will help!). Second, remain flexible and expect the unexpected— again, resilience will help you here.

Celebrate Success

And finally, don’t forget to celebrate success! As a leader it’s so easy to simply move on to the next thing, to keep the wheels in motion. But by celebrating the big and, especially, the small wins, your team will feel motivated to move forward and stay interested. Oh—and I’m not talking about ordering pizza for lunch. The celebration has to be meaningful to ensure the biggest return on your investment.

Think about distributing small gifts—a coffee card or a good book—or giving an individual an extra day off. Personally thank them. Really—this is something leaders forget to do! Set up a company social media site highlighting the success and the individual(s) involved.

One of my favourite celebration stories came from an executive client of mine: after a particularly big success that happened to fall during the holiday season, the organization gathered together all the teams involved and had them dress their managers up like Christmas trees, right down to the stars on top of their heads. It required teamwork and creativity, to be sure, and was also a memorable and stress-busting reminder that work—even during the tough times—can be fun!

The bottom line is that change is challenging, so make sure you and your team remember to kick back and savour your victories, no matter how small.

-Originally published in CIM | Toronto Manager, Spring 2017 issue