The delicate balance of change leadership
In leading change for hundreds or thousands of people, there is a delicate balance to be struck. There are many advocates of the human-centric model of change. Many change professionals encourage empathy in one change practice. Yet can we go too far?
In tailoring change communications we may be doing ourselves a disservice if we take things too far. Should we tailor our communication to fit every stakeholder group’s circumstances? During any change, we ask a large cohort of people to adopt particular behaviours or prepare themselves for change. Occasionally we may have questions or pushback from people during their change readiness journey. Change professionals may accommodate or adapt to some of these requests or pushbacks. Yet at what point do we (in the nicest possible way) tell people to get on with what they need to do?
What perspectives can we bring to bear to help us find a delicate balance? Can we cater to individual or small group needs yet focusing on what benefits everyone? In other words, an adaptive versus a one size fits all approach?
Cost versus benefit.
Let’s set an example scene. You are working with several hundred employees for a change project. These employees need to complete some brief yet mildly inconvenient paperwork or a short online training program. This inconvenience is a necessary change readiness activity. A bit of grumbling about this is expected and I would think fairly normal. If it were me, I might have a grumble too. I have also learned to expect a small minority to push back and question why they need to undergo this preparation work. Surely this doesn’t apply to them for some magical reason?
What costs do we incur by repeated correspondence with someone pushing back against the change? What about those who somehow expect preferential treatment? Or when we spend vital project resources adapting communications or critical workflows to the needs of the noisy and influential? What benefit do we get by catering to individual or small group bespoke needs?
Yes, we may have provided a necessary adaptation to our change. Yet we might be inadvertently encouraging something which won’t work in our favour! Are we negatively reinforcing questioning, avoidant or rejecting behaviours in our employee group? Is our molly-coddling incurring unnecessary costs?
The people whom we are adapting to may not either be grateful or influential to our change goals in the long run. So are we wasting energy by listening to — and buying into — this noise?
Leadership ethos.
What are the time pressures and resource constraints faced by a project board? What is their appetite for risk if we don’t cater to these individualised or small group needs? Some individualised or small group needs may not need escalation to the project board level. If there is a quick adaptation that you can make without high cost or effort, then it might be a small change to your plan worth considering.
But suppose extra resources or project scope, or timeframes are compromised? Can you take the responsibility off your shoulders for adapting communications or change readiness workflows? Who is funding your change project? Yes, you can raise this with your project board or operational leaders. Leaders are likely to have a bigger picture view. Their perspective gives them comfort in either pushing back or seeing attendant risks. Their power is resistant to any dramas from deciding to not adapt to particular requests from individuals or small teams.
View your change as a system.
So you have hundreds of people undergoing a defined change readiness activity which will help prepare them for a change ahead. This activity is a little time-consuming and somewhat inconvenient to some people in the group. A small minority might even push back.
During change planning, what pushbacks or obstacles do you anticipate? Taking a system-like approach and mindset helps here. Anticipating pushbacks well before they happen takes emotion out of the equation. A dispassionate perspective provides you with a clearer mind for determining the best course of action!
If you are concerned about being “too nice” as a change leader — remember this: It is harder to say no to people when faced with an unforeseen request. This challenge compounds if they don’t take no for an answer or use various influence or leveraged tactics at their disposal!
So don’t wait for this heated moment to occur and plan for these instances well in advance if you can. The responses and ways to handle objections are thus far more professional and considered, especially if you have your project management team and senior stakeholders onside.
Thorough planning is helpful, yet probable that your plan won’t account for every circumstance. Despite meticulous planning, you can’t ignore pushbacks as they surface, nor give every pushback undue attention. Push backs can be a valuable source of information despite their irritating nature, and it also gives you practice in saying no in a diplomatic yet definitive manner.
It’s also an excellent opportunity to check in with yourself: Are you too friendly or too accommodating in working with change stakeholders? Or are you ignoring small yet valuable ways to tweak your approach and benefit a small yet crucial (and grateful) stakeholder group?
How do you respond to “hardball” negotiation tactics? For example, if someone uses influence tactics like repeated direct contact followed by emotion or impassioned arguments? Or abusive approaches, escalating to leadership or other fun approaches to help get their way?
In undergoing psychology training and supervision, psychologists learn about unconditional positive regard for their clients and taking a nonjudgemental stance. Many people might think that this unconditional positive regard is warm and fuzzy as it is maybe somewhat ineffectual or mollycoddling clients. Yet clients in a psychology practice may experience impairments where the therapist needs to encourage open exploration of the client’s presentation. In change, your “clients” are high-functioning employees and leaders.
It is surprising and enlightening to see an experienced psychologist work with mock patients during psychology training. It taught me that a trained psychologist can appear pretty hard-nosed yet still have empathy and this unconditional positive regard.
I played a mock patient during one training session, and my supervisor was walking through a treatment method with the patient I was playing. While the supervisor could empathise with my client’s plight, she was pragmatic in spelling out the likelihood of my client’s treatment success and identifying the consequences of not undergoing treatment. These consequences were quite dire. With consequences illustrated, my supervisor smoothly led my mock client to an ultimatum. The treatment would be hard work and distressing, yet would they commit to it?
This consequences-driven approach felt somewhat affronting for my pretend client. Why? My pretend client had just gotten their head around a few major concepts. For example, their diagnosis. Not to mention — the intensity and duration of treatment and some of the challenges ahead. Then being hit with the consequences to action and a call to commit (or not) to therapy?
Let’s say the supervisor wasn’t mucking around yet still maintained an empathic stance. This stance was quite impressive as nothing was sugar-coated, and it was clear that I had to get on board with the treatment or not. If not, I could look forward to one of three consequences presented to me in that mock session.
What did I learn from this mock session for leading change? There is scope to improve the balance between adapting to client needs and foibles and maintaining a pragmatic and ultimately practical approach.
There is a middle ground.
In our change practice the one size fits all is easier to put in place and requires little midstream adaptation. Yet can we leave a little room for adapting to people and pushbacks based on legitimate reasons? There is also merit in describing the consequences in plain yet respectful terms. Then letting employees or small groups pushing back decide for themselves.
We know that people are complicated. They have various motivations. Their motivations operate in three ways during any change. They either adjust to a new way of working, question certain aspects of it or reject a new way of working.
Is our role as change leaders to figure out and predict who will make one of three choices? No, but we can plan for how we mitigate risk and help people with their choices. This higher-level perspective helps elevate our mind above the immediate struggle with individual or small group “battles”. Instead we maintain a dispassionate yet empathic stance with the hundreds or thousands of people undergoing change within their care.
There is a way to end dissent respectfully and on a positive note. What happens if individuals or small groups have their request to “change the way the change is happening” rejected by our team? I like to thank them for their patience and flexibility. You never know if you will bump into these employees or groups again in future changes.
No matter what happens, aim to end the discussions on a positive note regardless of how their request to alter your change ends!
Our book — The Change Manager’s Companion — is available now. You can also check out our online course on Change Management.