Managing change skills

managing change skills

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Our managing change skills

Handling Transitions/Embracing Change – Personal Guidelines

Endings

⬜ Keep a balanced perspective. What seems like an eternity to wait now will seem like a ‘flash’ in the years ahead

⬜ Confide in a trusted friend about the losses you feel and difficulties of ‘letting go’ of the way things used to be.

⬜ Recall other endings in your life that unexpectedly led to new friendships, more gratifying jobs and wonderful opportunities

⬜ Take just ‘one day at a time’ and trust that everything you truly need, you’ll have

⬜ Give yourself permission to feel your pain and grieve your losses

⬜ Share your story with others. It will help you heal.

⬜ Stop fighting circumstances that are changing. Instead, accept their passing as an opportunity.

⬜ Be willing to face what is happening. Test out the ‘new realities’ with a friend who knows you and can support you.

Transitions

⬜ Look upon the time in between as necessary and valuable. A redefinition is taking place, your new identity is emerging and you are bringing completion to the past.

⬜ Practice letting go of the old, so the new can emerge

⬜ Spend time learning about the change

⬜ Look for the opportunity. The ‘what’s in it for me’ is not always obvious. Keep looking.

⬜ Stay in charge of your attitude. You can make you day as bright as you choose

⬜ Let go of the need to control. When you do, breakthrough happens

⬜ Prepare yourself for something new. No door is ever closed without another one being opened.

⬜ Feel your fears and do it anyway. Think of fear as energy in disguise

⬜ Reframe your perspective. Change negative thinking into positive. Practice optimism.

⬜ Be open to new experiences. They will be the right ones for your growth.

⬜ Seek and listen to all career advice you can get. Move ahead on what feels right for you.

⬜ Trust the process. The path will open. The answers will come.

Beginnings

⬜ Decide it is up to you to make the change work. Take personal ownership.

⬜ Dive into the new situation with your full energy

⬜ Adopt new thinking, new tools.

⬜ Go for the new and untested, drop the old tried-and-true.

⬜ Take time to build relationships on the new team. Do what you need to do to feel like you belong

⬜ See problems as the price of progress. Tackle them with high spirits

⬜ Make a decision to commit to the new goals and don’t look back

⬜ Live from a place of gratitude. It will bring forth abundant fruit.

⬜ See the positive change in your co-workers. This will help you see that you are changing too.

⬜ Celebrate the small wins and early successes.

Developing Your Change Management Skills

Change management requires you to develop your Leadership skills. The following is meant as a guide only.

  • Leading
  • Personal Adaptability
  • Initiating
  • Managing Implementing
  • Supporting

Leading 

• Make sure that you are clear about who needs to understand the vision. 

• Try and spend time checking how clearly you have communicated the vision. 

• Try to distil the purpose of the changes into a concise format – simple bullet points for example

• Think about creative ways you could communicate the vision to your team. For example, you could design a multi-media presentation, commission a ‘kick-off’ event, get your team to paint the vision, involve professional actors, make a video or stage production. 

• Think about someone you know who is particularly enthusiastic during periods of change. What is it that they do that makes you think this? Are there any tips you can pick up from them? 

• Spend time thinking of personalised language (e.g. “I believe…”) to demonstrate your personal belief and enthusiasm. Practice using these words. 

• Practise saying positive things to people around you. Every time you feel like making a negative comment, stop yourself and change it to a positive comment or at least say nothing. Make a challenge with yourself to turn negative statements into positive ones. 

• Invite a motivational speaker to present to your team as a pre-change-initiative event. 

  • Think about the things that are preventing people from feeling enthusiastic about the changes. Try and remove some of these barriers. 

Personal Adaptability

• Try to establish some certainty during the period of change. Think about a range of different ‘what if’ scenarios and prepare contingency plans for each. 

• Think about how you usually respond when someone comes to you with a suggested way of changing how things are done. Challenge yourself to think of 5 new ways to respond positively to these suggestions. 

• How quickly do you respond to changes? What is preventing you from responding more quickly? 

• Think about the times when you have moved too slowly in the face of change. What have been the negative consequences of this? 

• Set up information channels (e.g. rapid feedback loops from individuals involved in the change process) so that you can anticipate changes more quickly.

• Think about other times in the past when you’ve been through a period of change. Think about the positive things that came out of this – for you, for others or the organisation. 

• Identify someone you know who enjoys change. What can you learn from their approach? 

• Set yourself targets to try out new things. For example, draw up a list of the 6 things you will do over the next 6 months (one per month). 

• Critically evaluate your thinking when you find yourself feeling negative about the change process. Practice positive self-talk, perhaps by using techniques such as ‘Learned Optimism’ or ‘Appreciative Inquiry’. 

Initiating 

• Praise people for their creative efforts. Don’t stem the creative flow by criticising other people’s ideas. Set aside specific time for generating ideas, then have clear, allotted time for evaluating these ideas. 

• Whenever you are asked to write a report, analyse data, etc., think of three other ways to achieve the end result, and propose a better way of getting there. Encourage others to do the same. 

• Approach problems differently – for example, instead of putting your problem down on paper in written form, draw it out. 

• Think about the last time someone came to you with a new idea. Did you give them enough praise/encouragement? What could you have done to praise them more? Are there any barriers to overcome if you are to do this more effectively? 

• Set up a means of collecting new ideas – for example, a whiteboard, a box or an intranet site. 

• Actively encourage the generation of innovative ideas by using creative thinking techniques, such as: 

o Brainstorming, 

o De Bono’s ‘Thinking Hats’, 

o Rephrasing problems in terms of ‘how to…’ statements, 

o Asking people to generate separate ideas and then to work together to link the two ideas. 

• Try to take calculated risks. When faced with a situation, ask yourself “What is the worst thing that could happen?” – either from taking or avoiding the risk. Think about the potential benefits of taking the risk. 

• When faced with a range of possible actions, evaluate the level of risk of each (H, M, L) to you/the business. Track which options you routinely take – what is the average level of risk you take? Challenge yourself to be more balanced in the number of risks you’re willing to take. 

•  Identify a colleague or public figures (e.g. Branson) who enjoys taking risks. What can you learn from their approach? Try reading autobiographies to get a further insight into what motivates them.

second part

• Encourage those who work for you to stretch their capabilities and accept challenges. Maintain high performance expectations and delegate responsibility, while supporting them with a safety net which includes maintaining ultimate accountability for outcomes. 

• Think critically about how you allocate your time. Do you build in sufficient time for the development of others? When you are under pressure, do you find yourself regularly telling others that you are “too busy” to talk to them, or do not have enough time to focus on your own learning? If so, think about the impact of this. Are there ways you can restructure your time, or modify your priorities to ensure that learning and development do not get neglected? 

• During periods of change, create an environment that is conducive to learning. Make it clear that you expect mistakes to be made and that this is OK, providing the mistakes are learned from. Make sure you are able to offer help and support to help people learn from them. 

• Avoid blaming others when things go wrong – instead encourage an atmosphere of continual improvement, where review of how things could be done better is the norm. 

• After the period of change, spend time with everyone reviewing group and individual learning points. 

Managing/Implementing 

• When delegating tasks to your team ensure you clearly identify the specific measurable objectives that you would like to have achieved. Ensure you seek their feedback on how realistic and measurable they are. 

• Give people the opportunity to set their own targets together with you. 

• Make sure that everyone in your team is clear about what they need to do during the change initiative. Check that they understand their and others’ roles and their key responsibilities. Regularly check with them to make sure their understanding is still relevant and up-to-date. 

• Check with individuals to see what sort of direction they would like. Some may prefer absolute, concrete plans; others may prefer looser, less well-defined boundaries. Don’t assume that the direction you would want is what others would also want. 

• Build in time to regularly review progress against targets. Ask team members to generate interim targets – review & monitor performance against these. 

• Challenge team members to monitor and track their own performance. Ask them to come to you with updates. 

• Find a case study of a major project from your own or another team which was particularly successful or unsuccessful. Talk to people who were involved in the project about the planning process they adopted and see if you can identify any learning experiences.

part two 

• With team members and colleagues, draw up a list of all the potential barriers to change. Work with both groups to put in place realistic contingency plans. 

• Make sure that you yourself are absolutely clear about the rationale for change. Prepare yourself so that you can communicate this effectively to your team. Practice, for example by recording yourself and listening back to it, or go through a dry-run with a non-work colleague. Draw up a written list of potential FAQ’s and prepare answers to likely objections. Practice how you’ll respond. 

• Make sure that you build in sufficient time to talk individually with team members to check their understanding. Check with them that they have realistic expectations of how the proposed changes will impact on them. 

• Set up regular briefing sessions where you can up date team members on progress to date. Invite team members and/or colleagues to talk about their part of the business. 

• Set aside specific diary time for informal briefings. Make sure team members know when this is, how it can be booked & what the time can be used for. 

continued

• Think about more creative ways you could communicate to team members; for example, intranet, bulletin board in the office, SMS, fax-update, newsletter, video-conferences, coffee-break/lunchtime briefings etc. 

• Think about the ways you could adapt your style of communication when trying to sell the benefits of change to different individuals. How well do you understand what drives them or what style of communication works best for them? If you are unsure, ask them and try to adapt your style accordingly. Do not assume that they will be motivated by the same things as you or like to be communicated to in the same way as you. 

Supporting 

• Review your current or imminent workload. See if you can identify one project or issue where another’s input (e.g. a colleague from Marketing or Finance) would add a valuable additional perspective. Ask them to get involved. 

• In your everyday interactions with others seeking your advice, experiment with encouraging them to come up with ideas and suggestions to solve the problem themselves. Try to hold back from offering your ideas straightaway. 

• Make it known that when you ask team members for advice or their viewpoint you are not doing so to test them, but because you value their input. 

• Be clear about those times when it is appropriate to involve others, and those times when you need to implement previously arranged actions. Make sure that when you invite others to contribute you are genuinely open to these alternative ideas. 

• Write down a few examples of how you have encouraged colleagues at work in the last week/month. Write down the opportunities that you have missed, so that you can pick up on them in the future. 

• Ask your colleagues, team members, manager or non-work friends to give you some feedback on how you have supported them in the past. Ask them to identify what they like about what you do/have done, and what they would like you to do differently/more or less of. 

pt 2

• Spend time identifying those who are struggling with the changes more than others. Discretely offer assistance. Emphasise and ask them how they would like to be helped. 

• Ask someone about how they feel – how they are coping. Just listen to what they have to say and acknowledge their feelings. Avoid trying to solve their difficulties or offer advice unless specifically asked. 

• Check that no one is being unnecessarily restrained by external factors (e.g. insufficient administrative support). If you are unable to help, empathise, be clear about your rationale and try to jointly work out alternatives. 

• Without undermining the need for change, draw up a list of the ways in which things will be the same after the period of uncertainty (e.g. the way you will work together as a team). Emphasise these points of continuity during times of extreme ambiguity.

continued

• Identify those changes which have already been implemented and have now become standard practice. Draw attention to these and make sure everybody is clear about how they impact on them. 

• With your team, brainstorm a list of things which haven’t changed and/or are not going to change during the period of uncertainty. 

• Facilitate a session giving team members the opportunity to discuss their concerns about the lack of certainty during the change initiative. With them, establish the ultimate purpose of change. Establish which factors do need to be changed, and which will have no impact on the change process but are scheduled for change. Prioritise those factors which will have a critical impact on the change initiative. 

  • Map out all the changes scheduled to take place. Think about ways to stagger these so that they do not all occur at once. 

 

Suggested reading

Bridges, W. (2003). Managing Transitions. Nicholas Brealey Publishing

Burnett, D. (2016). The Idiot Brain. Guardian Books and Faber & Faber

Eagleman, D. (2016). The Brain; the Story of You. Canongate Books

Heath, C. & D. (2010). Swᴉtch. Random House

Kotter, J. (1996). Leading Change. Harvard Business School Press. (2006). Our Iceberg is Melting. Macmillan

Lundin, S.C; Paul, H., & Christensen, J. (2000). Fish! Hodder & Stoughton

Rock, D. (2009). Your Brain at Work. New York; HarperCollins

Storr, P (2012). The Psychological Manager; Improve your Performance Conversations. Lulu Press. The Psychological Manager; Change; increasing resilience through transition. Lulu Press

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