This is the fourth article of six, starting with Leaders Everywhere: How Can You Lead Changes In Your Team? (Article # 1 of 6) , moving to the second article where we cover change management as an investment then onto the magic of rough and ready templates.
“Good afternoon, passengers. This is your captain speaking. First, I’d like to welcome everyone on Qantas Flight 123. We are currently cruising at an altitude of 33,000 feet at an airspeed of 400 miles per hour. The time is 1:25 pm. The weather looks good, and with the tailwind on our side, we expect to land in London approximately fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. The weather in London is clear and sunny, with a high of 25 degrees for this afternoon. If the weather cooperates, we should get a great view of the city as we descend. The cabin crew will be coming around in about twenty minutes to offer you a light snack and beverage, and the inflight movie will begin shortly after that. I’ll talk to you again before we reach our destination. Until then, sit back, relax and enjoy the rest of the flight.”
1. Structure. An enticing, calming salve for your team.
The airline captain’s patter exudes calm and assurance. This calm is contagious and quells passenger anxiety. The captain conveyed a sense of what was about to happen-an activity called signposting.
So how does this relate to leading change? As a leader, you have authority over the structure of any changes you wish to make in your team. Structure is also conveyed in your messages to your team. Do your messages include straightforward accounts of both turbulence and pleasant weather? Customers now expect airline captains to provide this sense of assurance. Do your employees expect this from you?
As a leader what energy do you project to your team and the employee experience? Is it one of calm, stable influence?
2. Routine. Tamer of wild children and a leader’s friend.
“A strong character is one that will not be unbalanced by the most powerful emotions.”
-Carl Von Clausewitz.
Routine and consistency go together with providing a sense of structure. Ask any parent of young children! Young children may seem to resist a parent’s attempt to instil a sense of routine and consistency. Yet does routine help young children know their boundaries and feel secure? Of course, adults are more complicated and nuanced than children. Yet each of us have our own foibles, anxieties, and expectations — especially in the face of change.
Change is not only in the implementation. Any change requires at least three ingredients:
- Your pre-game: considered planning;
- The game itself: the implementation, and;
- The post-game: your follow up to make sure the change sticks and behaviours about the new way of working are consistent across your team.
Many leaders find the act of planning quite calming. if you don’t find planning a calming activity, it can sharpen the likelihood that your execution will hit the mark.
Want a brilliant sales tool to help you sell the merits of your change? Take pains to draft your plan on a single page. Can you describe the features and benefits of your change to various groups in your organisation? Practice your sales pitch with your plan on a page. Can you describe the activities and milestones to achieve your change in a few minutes? Your change is thus clearer and easier to understand. Clarity enhances the likelihood of others trusting and adopting your views. Your plan is a living document, and your main vehicle for showing progress.
Any resistance to your change is akin to a young child fighting against a parent’s attempts to maintain routine. Feedback from resistant stakeholder groups can be stressful and will test your mettle. You may feel compelled to tweak your plan and adapt to various demands. Tweaking your plan is fine if the core aspect of your planning remains.
Why only small tweaks to your plan? Sometimes the resistance or concerns that a stakeholder “wasn’t consulted” masks something. Maybe a fear of not being taken seriously? By listening and encouraging active involvement, you work with this fear. Your socially intelligent manoeuvre will often pay off — you gain a potential ally for your change.
But what if you’re not feeling the sense of calm yourself yet you are the leader? One mark of a great leader is when they consistently manage violent and compelling emotions. This is a tall order, especially when we also expect leaders to appear upbeat and decisive. People may indeed buy what you’re saying if you are confident in what you are saying. It is better to enter action with boldness after all.
Is it because of this strength of character — and even duality- why so few people become accomplished leaders? Even so, managing strong emotions is a learned behaviour. Your resolve to do so makes a significant difference to the anxious passengers on your plane.
As a leader, you have great influence over the tempo of your team. Can you use time and meetings to your advantage? Routine also applies to consistency in our message structure. For example, do you have access to easy-to-use templates for posters, team briefings and status updates?
Consistency may seem boring, yet the opposite of boredom is maybe what your team currently dread? After all, change is often rightly seen as adding stress to an organism — or in this case the people in your team.
Would your management and customer base see routine in a negative light? Probably not. In contrast, an excitable inconsistent approach has adverse effects on your change. When is this not the case? Erratic behaviour or inconsistency sends unnecessary shockwaves to both decision-makers and employees alike.
3. Signposting. How are you managing your team’s expectations?
Occasional turbulence- both foreseen and unforeseen — is expected. Yet how much of the foreseen turbulence do you signpost, and how do you handle the unforeseen turbulence?
So, you have your meeting cadence established. Your agenda is consistent and shared in advance. You have a history of following up on actions after each meeting. These meetings are short and well-controlled, so they always run within time. Your participants are screened for those who can get to the point and have the right level of influence. In each meeting, you show progress, and it’s all beginning to scream “boring and predictable”. Your drumbeat starts to grow louder. The sound may even carry over the broader organisational jazz playing in the background. Your team start to move to your beat and ignore background noise.
How do you know if your clever use of cadence — your drumbeat — is effective? Your drumbeat is tied to your goal for your change. Every meeting, status update and completed task ties back to your change goal.
4. Progress. Make a game of your change, and show progress — or “levelling up”
Great project managers have mastered the art of introducing a sense of progress while instilling calm in project boards. Accomplished change professionals similarly aim to instil a sense of calm. As a Change Lead, I take pains when crafting messages and regular project board updates about conveying progress. I also enjoy working with project managers and leaders who need a “speechwriter”. Our collective efforts pay off when conveying organisation-wide messages showing project accomplishments. Do we channel the airline captain’s relaxed in-flight patter? I like to think so. So what can operational leaders learn from both project and change managers?
Your regular drumbeat, such as using consistent meeting times and topics, pays dividends in the long term. It is at this point you may find your meetings become an open space for others to talk. This is the hallmark of a successful drumbeat. Others will start thinking through risks and issues far beyond those in your plan.
Everyone invited gets a sneak peek of the next steps of your change implementation. Could this sneak peek provide some people with a sense of control over the change process?
Could your change be like someone preparing for a stressful medical procedure? Research on psychological preparation techniques for surgery comes to mind. Why? Enhancing a patient’s sense of control over proceedings helps people cope 1(p268,269). Your change isn’t likely to be as painful nor dreaded as surgery. Yet this health psychology research has a remarkable parallel to our change work. Here are useful takeaways in enhancing control, applied to readers like yourself:
- Behavioural control: Can you provide team leaders or Change Champions with some agency to influence parts of the change? This agency may include authority to lead ways to reduce obstacles to their team adjusting to the new way of working. Or in coming up with cost-effective ways to reward pro-change behaviours in their team.
- Cognitive control: Can you reinforce your change’s features and benefits to team leaders? If they are cynical about the change, can they articulate the pros and cons of the change? What about the likelihood of the cons for the change materialising? Can you bring their attention to the probable long-term benefits of the change?
- Informational control: Can you provide people with early previews of the change, or a prototype of the change to “play” with and explore? Can you channel our airline captain and speak of likely turbulence and pleasant weather alike?
We have four ways to influence your team’s habits and attitude towards your change — structure, routine, signposting and progress.
The next article in this series examines systems thinking applied to your operation. The final article examines the psychology of change management. Thanks for sticking with us so far. Our article series strives to share with you practical takeaways for operational leaders performing “DIY Change Management”.
Our book — The Change Manager’s Companion — is available now. You can also check out our online course on Change Management.
Reference
1. Sarafino E, Smith T. Health Psychology: Biopsychosocial Interactions. 8th ed. Brisbane: John Wiley & Sons; 2014.