Support your team through change
Help your team to focus on the positives and embrace uncertainty
Penny Hunt
Objectives
- To master proven techniques to help you and your team develop different and effective responses to change.
- To identify support actions that will transform the change experience for your team.
An important part of the change process is often overlooked in our binary world. It is that time between. Things are happening but nothing is fixed. The landing place is not quite in sight. Everything is still in flux, or even chaos.
Rarely do management teams put as much time, energy and resources into supporting the teams undertaking the change plans as they put into scoping and designing the plans themselves. This is where inspired team leaders can make a real difference. Supporting a team’s well-being and performance during instability can be hugely enjoyable. It is also strategically crucial and a great learning opportunity.
At this eye of the storm stage, a great team leader can transform team happiness and effectiveness.
We are all in the same boat. We all know that change is constant and really tricky. We experience this daily. And some of us will go to amazing lengths to avoid it.
This book will lead you through ways of recognising some of those avoidance responses and modifying them, and ways of developing responses that put you (and your team) more in control.
No longer need you feel that being good at change is a matter of luck or personality.
The underlying approach taken in this book is practical, proven and positive. It will enable you to focus on:
- yourself and your responses in order to help your team
- what you can affect when dealing with others
- what you can affect in your environment.
Ok, so you cannot wave a magic wand and make the changes go away (or speed up), but you can actively develop and grow your responses to change.
In half an hour, you will acquire the know-how to successfully land change by supporting, growing and leading the team through the stages, conditions and responses that change upheaval (however well planned) produces.
Practising the skills described in this book to help a team cope well with change will bring huge professional and personal rewards – fame, reputation and happiness. Why?
The approaches outlined here work. They are derived from positive psychology and will grow both emotional intelligence and self-awareness. Any increase in self- awareness brings rewards.
You will learn ways to develop not only your own emotional intelligence, but also that of your team.
This is radical personal development that will equip you and your team with new ways to operate long after the change process you are going through has morphed into another change process.
The added bonus outcome? The ideas and interventions that help you and your team cope with change will also build the team’s capacity for collaboration and creativity.
Master these skills and everything else falls into place.
ASSESS YOURSELF
Before starting this text, how would you rate your confidence in your knowledge and ability in identifying and delivering support to your team during times of business change? (Make a note of your answer.)
Overview
What does coping really mean?
In everyday use, we think of striving, persevering in the face of difficulty. In the business management sense, we can be more specific. There are two commonly used definitions of coping within organisational change:
- The first (by R.Lowe and P.Bennett in ‘Exploring Coping Reactions to Work Stress’ from Journal of Organisational Psychology, Sept 2003) describes:
‘the process whereby the negative emotions generated by negative events are minimised’.
- The second (more commonly used and first used by R. S. Lazarus in Psychological Stress and the Coping Process, 1966) describes:
‘a process of cognitive and behavioural efforts to deal with expectations that strain or exceed resources available’.
Both definitions sound dry, don’t they? But they guide two aspects to the following ideas and techniques:
- The first, that negative feelings are real. The situation is not in everyone’s heads. These are real feelings of fear, of inadequacy, even of impending doom.
- The second, that there will be a perceived gap between what an individual or team thinks is required of them, and what they feel they have available to them to deliver it.
The ideas and techniques in this book all acknowledge the reality of what everyone is feeling, and look at ways to fill that resource gap.
Positivity is the mood music to all the tips. But it is important to recognise that positivity does not mean simply choosing to ignore what is happening. It is not about adopting a fixed (false) smile with your hands over your ears.
Positivity involves facing what is there, reframing it, seeing new perspectives and creating new opportunities.
You may well already be a naturally positive person.
The ideas in this book will harness and grow that positivity in a systematic way that you can call on – always – regardless of your own positivity baseline at the time.
The ideas and techniques fall into three sections:
- Business teams experience stress-like coping symptoms during times of change. We will look at ideas and techniques derived from cognitive behavioural therapy and positive psychology that help the psychological and motivational health of the team. And you.
We will call this section all things mind. - How you are, and how the team works together; how change, and change progress is communicated, will be powerful in both reducing negativity and filling the gap. We will look at ideas and techniques that reinvigorate communications and reframe positively what is going on for the team. And you.
We will call this section all things message. - The inspired leader concentrates on positive reinforcements. This includes practical and straightforward actions about the management of the change process. We will look at ways to support the team with sometimes quite minor adjustments to the work experiences during this time of change.
We will call this section all things management.
All the ideas in this book are practical tips grounded in proven behaviour models. Contrary to images conjured by the words ‘cope’ and ‘stress’, these tips will play to a constant mood music of lightness of touch, humour and positivity. And remember that bonus benefit: the skills developed in coping positively with change are the very skills that encourage creativity and creative problem solving.
Tip
Think about when you have been a member of a team going through a serious re-organisation in a business. Looking back, what did you handle well? Which aspects of the process were successful? Which were not so successful?
Context
‘Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.’
Surprisingly, this was said by Einstein. It is a helpful analogy.
Supporting your team through change will be closer to riding a bicycle than other more finite project work you may have led. Every push on that pedal is into something unknown: it is a genuine, brave experiment. With forward momentum, there is little time for regret or blame. The road and the environment will matter. Instinct and responsiveness will play a huge part in keeping your balance.
Bicycle clips on…
As team leader, you may feel you are dealing with a tricky paradox. Your team is apparently functioning, yet at the same time showing clear symptoms of stress.
How does this make you feel? Do you feel responsible? Is that another source of stress?
You may grab at those handlebars, but this will unbalance you. So, you start to pedal and make minute instinctive adjustments – of enormous skill and intelligence – as you ride. To an experienced rider, these adjustments are unconscious. But they had to be learned.
The ability to diagnose, make positive micro interventions and respond to changing circumstances can become completely natural, just like riding the bicycle.
We are going to pay attention to what is going on, what is possible, so that your riding ability becomes instinctive. And all these techniques underpin true authentic leadership.
The tips in this book will help you help your team to cope with change and also provide a concentrated form of business leadership training.
Soon you will have the skills to operate at the highest level. Tour de France level.
Tip
Sit somewhere quiet. Ask yourself how you would rate yourself at:
- taking decisions instinctively
- using new and different data
- your responsiveness – do you stick to a course, or adjust it?
Make a note. These are predispositions you will bring to how you work with your team – your baseline.
Challenge
Why does this subject feel so hard?
The language used in this book is always positive. But that cannot disguise that this is a really challenging subject for team leaders.
Let us think for a moment about why. These are really serious forces at play.
- Fear and threat are two key emotions aroused by change. Change is such a simple word, but think for a moment about what is actually happening for you and your team. Something is coming/already happening that challenges your core sense of who you are, your lovingly constructed behavioural system. How do you see yourself, how do others see you? This is about to shift.
Your very identity, what you see as fundamental to your personality, is about to change. It is a big scary thought: you may not be who you thought you were. - If these fear feelings swirling around were not enough, strangely, powerful feelings of guilt, shame and, even, hostility emerge. It is because the process of beginning to redefine oneself inevitably results in wondering who the previous self was. Comparing past actions – and beliefs – with the emerging self is a tough process. That gap can be tricky to accept, and stirs up strong feelings.
- The team’s unconscious attention – and yours probably – will be somewhere other than the task at hand. All are looking (naturally) to when the time of change will be over, to feeling relief. Is anyone paying attention to what is actually going on? At the very time deep stuff is being stirred and brought to the surface, everyone gets into a ‘one day it will all be over’ mode.
So, facing up to stuff becomes even harder than usual.
The positive thrust of the ideas that follow is to enable the reader to become more self-aware, become more aware of others and begin to see more data than was superficially apparent.
Supporting the team will not involve deep psychological training or advanced mind exercises. An awareness of some responses to change is all that is needed.
This book will also summarise the stages of change acceptance. This will stop you getting caught up in any swirl of misleading emotion.
The tips will build self-awareness, help reframe challenges and help you choose the best way to address them. You will feel much more in control.
Tip
What are your reflections after reading the preceding two sections? Is it possible to see where fear, anger or a focus on when it is over might have been at work during previous experiences of change?
Key leadership approach
Objectives
- To become familiar with two basic models of thinking about people’s responses to change.
- To master ten ways to shift your thinking in order to support the team.
- To master six ways to improve your communication style and content to support your team.
- To master six ways to apply your management skills to support your team.
It has been said that no amount of positive thinking can turn an elephant into a ballerina. And it is hard to disagree. But, on the other hand, everyone can dance… Which reminds us not only:
that the perfect need not drive out the good, but also
- that change brings the opportunity for everyone to enjoy themselves as well as to find their own ability level.
So, to bicycle clips, we add dancing shoes.
Twenty-two helpful and practical techniques will be presented here in the three steps described in the overview: mind, message and management.
But, first, let us do some emergency preparation.
Two models of thinking
What should you do if you find yourself parachuted in to help a team (a team you do not know well) over a short period of time?
Let us look briefly at two basic and helpful theories of change response.
Having a couple of models up your sleeve will help you diagnose a situation speedily, identify where your support is most needed, and respond to team needs in a targeted way.
The first model (the Change Curve model) is about the stages in accepting – and embracing – change that all of us negotiate and experience at some point.
The second model (change response typologies) looks at the different change response personality types.
These models will help give you some immediate thinking structure with which to make sense of what is going on when you suddenly meet a new team.
A thought to keep in mind is that positivity is a good thing. Positivity will accumulate and will help the situation. Positivity accrues. Hang on to being positive from the moment you and your parachute land.
A. Change Curve model
In the 1960s, the Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross famously developed a five-stage model called the Change Curve from her work with people moving through a process of grief or loss. The original stages she described were:
denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance
This broad process model was then applied to organisational change wherever significant upheavals were taking place and, by the 1980s, it had become a text-book approach to understanding change in business. It has been adapted and modified many times, sometimes to fewer stages, sometimes to more. Such a basic thought model gives you some very practical advantages: you will be able to decode the vast amount of emotional information you are suddenly receiving more easily, and you will quickly get an idea of where the response issues really lie.
The simplest version of this model to remember, as you are parachuted in to support your imaginary team, is as three stages.
It is not rigid (it was never intended to be). Some of us speed through a stage, others linger or even get stuck at a stage, but it is a reliable guide.
The three simple stages are:
Stage 1: Shock or surprise and denial
Stage 2: Anger or hostility and (possibly) depression
Stage 3: Acceptance and integration
You and your team will move through this cycle, broadly, either together or separately.
Let us look speedily at what is happening in each stage and the real practical actions suggested by this model.
Stage 1: Shock or surprise and denial
When you experience a shock in your life, you will notice a tendency to slow down or stop. You may even feel completely immobilised. Everything will just seem more difficult. Denial tends to follow hard on shock’s heels. Denial will not just manifest as: ‘It’s not happening,’ (or ‘lah, lah, lah’). Another denial sign is to trivialise and diminish the changes that are planned.
So, you will see, for team members in this stage, there will be either a mood of ‘nothing happening that I need to worry about’ or a real slow down – a physical ‘nothing happening’.
If you see these responses amongst your team members, concentrate on information (as much as possible), on repetition (to help things become real) and all the reassurance you can muster. Keep the communication constant.
Tip
Do you think your team is in stage 1 of the simplified Change Cycle?
If you think your team is in the first stage of denial, ensure:
- a steady flow of information
- a steady flow of the reasons for the change
- constant and repeated communication.
All with an attitude and tone of calm reassurance.
Stage 2: Anger or hostility and (possibly) depression
It has to happen at some point. Anger is natural.
But it is worth knowing how this may manifest itself. Anger will cause certain people in the organisation/department to be blamed and vilified.
It is so important not to collude with this. Do not get sucked in to any partisan place at this point. Just ride it.
Then, watch out as the planned changes become real. The inevitable feelings of loss may begin to border on depression.
If you see these responses amongst your team members, remember, too, that team performance is bound to be lower (temporarily).
So, for team members in this stage, you will see either constant carping about other individuals or departments or classic ‘what’s the point?’ depression symptoms.
If you see these responses, demonstrate wherever possible that everyone is experiencing these feelings. Make time to check how things are going. Do not collude with any scapegoating. And, again, share all available information continuously, promptly, and equally.
Tip
Do you think your team is in stage 2 of the simplified Change Model?
If you think your team is experiencing hostility:
- rise above any partisan politics
- reinforce: ‘We are all in this together’
- keep sharing new information, however minor
- ensure complete equality and democracy in how each team member is treated.
Stage 3: Acceptance and integration
New light does dawn and things will feel possible again.
There may be some amnesia within the team about what happened in the previous stage.
As individuals, and as a group, this third stage becomes about seeing the opportunities, beginning to feel that there is a values match with the future and that it is worth asking questions about what comes next.
But, just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, watch out. A sense of relief may give way to complacency. Be careful.
While all sounds good for the team at this stage, it is exactly now that support must be maintained. Keep paying attention and clarify everyone’s responsibilities.
Tip
Do you think your team is in stage 3 of the simplified Change Model?
As the change process lands:
- be as specific as possible about emerging roles and responsibilities
- step up your level of attention and support; do not reduce it.
B. Change response typologies
The phrase ‘early adopter’ has long since passed into everyday usage from business management theory speak. The descriptor was coined by Everett Rogers in his book Diffusion of Innovations, 1962. His study looked at how innovation moves through a population. As he studied how innovation was accepted, he discovered clear attitudinal subsets and groups. This will help you. You will be able to get what is happening quickly, as team members display different – possibly contradictory – attitudes to a business change plan.
The typologies are:
- Innovators: They are always amongst the first to try new ideas and new products. They will take risks to be the first, if necessary.
- Early adopters: Keen on the new, be it fashion, technology or ideas. This group does not take risks and tends to be more critically thoughtful and discriminating than the innovators.
- Early majority: There is a mean, an average, for the time taken by any community to accept the new. This group is ahead of this average, but displays a need for more group acceptance and reassurance than the innovators or early adopters.
- Late majority: As well as being slower than the early majority, this group tends to have a default mode of scepticism. They will, finally, adopt the new, but the (slightly late) decision probably will be as a result of other options closing down – almost having to be forced to adopt.
- Laggards: This group has a clear preference for the status quo. (The title of this group may not be very complimentary, but do still afford them respect. They have lots to offer.) They may be sentimental about how things used to be done. They may never accept change. But, interestingly, there is evidence that this group may be valuable keepers of the corporate memory.
If you are faced with a new team, and a high-stress time of change, recognising these different typologies in your team will help you adjust a balance of expectation and support and guide you where to give extra focus – and where to be extra patient.
Tip
Think back to when you were last part of a big change and imagine a line-up of your team colleagues. Do the typologies described above match any of the personalities? Does this affect any interventions you might make if you were to find yourself in that situation again?
Step 1: Mind
Objective
- To master ten ways to change your thinking to support your team.
Here are ten techniques here to harness thoughts and feelings – the power of your mind – to feel in control, to feel positive and to help support your team.
1.1 Control coping versus escape coping
You and your team members may be employing escape coping responses. We all do this at certain times of pressure. The signals are pretty recognisable: they might be extra food, drink or drugs.
You want to encourage control coping rather than escape coping. Control coping means getting into a place of non-victimhood. Practically, this means running towards what is happening – right into the middle – where you can be more in charge. Join the change committee, for example, volunteer as part of the change group.
To help your team move into control coping, you must help them face what is happening. Clarify and repeat the plans. And repeat them again.
Tip
A great way to shift into control coping is to find where you can volunteer help with the planned change. Actively volunteering exposes you to shared goals and timelines, new people and new information, and helps shift your outlook.
Encourage your team to do the same.
1.2 Natural responses
Often we cope with extraordinary change demands in our home lives quite naturally (new baby? a move abroad?) Intuitively, we consult with friends or supportive people, we make plans (that we keep revising), we look at different ways of doing things, we list the stuff that might get in the way, we ask others what they are thinking.
These natural and instinctive responses are right. And they work. Sometimes they are overlooked in the work setting, as if the workplace follows different motivational laws.
Do not forget the straightforward, the completely obvious, when your team’s problems threaten to overwhelm you and them.
Look at what happens naturally – when we are not thinking too hard – and apply that instinctive thinking.
Tip
Are there any obvious support steps to take that no one has thought of? Think about a colleague you know well – what would they see if they were to look at the situation?
1.3 Use the team’s intelligence
You are feeling responsible. You may feel that you need to find all the answers. You may begin to feel that everything that happens should be laid at your door. No.
Your team is intelligent. Your team may be able to see what you cannot see. So do not assume you know all that needs knowing. Ask your team what they think.
POTENTIAL PITFALLS
Before your next team meeting, assume a fresh and open ‘let’s find out’ attitude.
Do not assume that you know (yet) what the real issues are.
Ask and listen. Lots of listening.
1.4 Creativity triggers
Putting in place some mental creativity supports and refreshes everyone.
Use with care – you do not want to add more ‘be creative’ pressures.
But for the duration of the time when your team needs help with coping, ask a few creativity questions when problem solving with your team:
- ‘Imagine we did twice as much as is being asked of us.’
- ‘Imagine we did the opposite of what is expected of us.’
- ‘Imagine we did nothing.’
- ‘Imagine our ideal outcome.’
These sorts of questions have an amazing power to lighten the mood, broaden the horizon for everyone and grow a sense of power and control.
Tip
At your next team meeting, try new constructive problem-solving question formats.
Seed images and thoughts of a positive future in team conversations.
Encourage the team to imagine the ideal outcome.
1.5 Self-support
When the oxygen masks are released in an aeroplane, the accompanying instruction is that you attach your own mask before helping others. You can do more for everyone else when you are ok.
As well as ring-fencing rest and recovery time for yourself, keep a brief diary for the duration of the change chaos. A simple template is ‘Event – Response – Thoughts’ to record: what is going on, what happened as a result and what your real view of this is.
There are three benefits:
- Genuine learning for next time.
- You get to find out more about what you think but never have a chance to reflect on.
- Events are put immediately into perspective.
Tip
When you next have a quiet five minutes, use it to reflect on how you are.
Keep a written record. It will provide great perspective. It will help you avoid drawing big conclusions from small events and generalising from one incident.
1.6 Thriving
Research tells us that those who do well during times of change have three key qualities in common. They are:
- confident
- curious
- good at collaboration.
Build these three qualities into every interaction and you will help your team to become strength-based.
Tip
At your next team meeting, encourage thriving qualities.
Try introducing a team mantra. Create one afresh, or use ‘confident, curious and collaborative’.
1.7 Positive emotional contagion
Emotional contagion does exist. (Just recall your last visit to a sports match.)
Use this to you and your team’s advantage.
Create in every interaction a sense of positivity and this will create an upward spiral.
Tip
Before your next team interaction, take a positive breath.
Who is the most positive person you know? What might they say in this situation?
1.8 Mindfulness and thoughtfulness
Mindfulness is having a bit of a moment. Regardless of your opinion, or long-term commitment to the idea, get a mindfulness session booked in for you and your team.
Just do it.
1.9 Habit phrases
Who does the voice in your head sound like? You know, that critical voice? We all have them. The voice is an echo of a long-distant authority figure, now internalised, yet still powerful.
It will really help if we can turn down the volume. If we can eradicate a couple of favourite morale drainers that will help even more.
A common critical voice habit phrase is: ‘But what if…’ where the imagination fills in a disaster scenario.
Try editing out any negative imagining that starts with these words.
Tips
Take a quiet five minutes to review your own internal critical voices.
Banish all disaster thinking from any critical voice you are in the habit of listening to. Watch out for phrases like ‘But what if...’
1.10 Mens sana in corpore sano
You know this one: ‘A sound mind in a sound body’.
Deep down we know that the body and mind are connected.
You cannot think your way out of all the challenges during a time of change. You won’t be able to think at all if you are exhausted. Set a good example – do it yourself – take some exercise, schedule in some pleasant distraction, try to create routines that save energy.
Rest and exercise your body, and the balance of your own morale and feeling will steadily grow.
Tip
Go and review your weekly schedule. Is there time for some gentle regular exercise? Often quoted by Ghandi, but bears repetition:
‘To change the world, first change yourself.’
Some thoughts on emotional intelligence
The words emotional intelligence appear widely in business and self-help guides. Daniel Goleman’s seminal book on emotional intelligence (Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ) appeared in 1995.
Here is a summary of the three primary components of emotional intelligence needed to support yourself and your team and the tips associated with them.
They are:
Self-awareness – knowing your internal state. Goleman defined this as ‘an ability to read your own emotions and recognise their impact while being able to use gut instinct to make distinctions’ – sections 1.2, 1.8 and 1.10 help with this.
Self-regulation – managing those internal states, controlling emotions and impulses and adapting to changed circumstances – sections 1.4, 1.5, 1.7 and 1.9 help with this.
Empathy – awareness of others’ feelings, needs and concerns, and ‘understanding the social networks involved’ – sections 1.1, 1.3 and 1.6 help with this.
ASSESS YOURSELF
Take a quiet five minutes and review these dimensions of emotional intelligence.
Are there any practical steps or actions you can take immediately?
Step 2: Message
Objective
- To master six techniques and ideas for communicating and connecting in ways that will support your team.
2.1 The question habit
Simple, yet powerful, this immediately involves everyone in the team in what is to happen, positions you as interested and trustworthy, and helps you gather facts and data that may prove crucial.
You are in a change stage. Very little is really certain. Rather than be trapped into making statements that cannot (yet) be supported, adopt a mode of checking in, being curious and asking questions.
If things are going awry, or you suspect bigger problems below the surface, try using the question format below. It allows you to raise what you want to raise without communicating any unintended criticism or frustration.
Tip
At your next team meeting, move into questioning mode. Get into the habit of asking questions.
Try: ‘Have you noticed that?’ for avoiding blame or accusation in charged situations.
2.2 Language
Do you know anyone who leaves you feeling tired after a conversation? Check the vocabulary being used. ‘Struggling on’ rather than ‘working through’ or ‘trying’ rather than ‘doing’ may be examples.
Check your own vocabulary. Replace ‘We should’ with ‘We will’. Replace ‘We must’ with ‘We choose’. It will work wonders.
Use the active rather than the passive tense in communication. Not ‘That needs doing’ but ‘We will do that’.
Tip
Before any important conversation, think active tense. Filter out negative language and speech patterns from your everyday style. Use active language.
2.3 Over-communicate
Communicate constantly. To the point of ridicule, if necessary. Send summaries after summaries, send the responses to those summaries. This is a strong signal that you care, that you are there and that the whole team being in the loop matters to you.
Connect with coworkers; connect with stakeholders. Include them in your web of communications.
Tip
During times of change there is no such thing as too much communication.
2.4 Team leader magic
Your team needs something very specific from you. They need you to make sense of the changes that are happening and then to translate this into what it all means for them. As a team and as individuals.
Your primary communications mission during difficult change is to interpret and explain. Use a style that suits you to do this.
It would be good if that style could include optimism and humour and a habit of focussing on positives rather than negatives. Include any previous real-life examples and experiences you have and include any success stories (as long as they are real). Include any positive feedback, support or praise from elsewhere in the business.
Tip
Before your next team meeting, think interpreter. Remember your primary team leader communications role is to interpret and explain the changes the business is going through for the rest of the team.
2.5 Team leader tough talk
You did not think it would be all sweetness and light, did you? Things need calling out sometimes and you must do so. Promptly, honestly and with discretion.
When the team is in need of support, then you do not have the luxury of postponing difficult conversations to a later time when you might feel like it. Deal with it now, but follow the advice below.
Tip
Praises in public. Problems in private.
2.6 Body language
It needs addressing. It is 80 per cent of communication, after all.
Whatever your preferred style, be it slouchy or military, make a conscious effort to stand tall and confident and positive at all times during this change stage. It will make you feel better and it will make the team feel better.
Make a team joke of this, if you like. You may want to look up Amy Cuddy’s TED talk on ‘power poses’on YouTube, for example.
ASSESS YOURSELF
Find a quiet place and review the six tips from step 2. How would you rate your confidence in your ability to communicate positively?
Step 3: Management
Objective
- To master six applications of your management skills that will help your team cope with change.
The leadership theme here is that you are helping your team to cope. You are trying to remove barriers where they exist and create support where it is needed. And you will need to support yourself.
The marketing director of a huge FMCG company admitted that he liked to adopt a particular personal mantra to keep him grounded during challenging times.
His favourite? ‘Keep on swimming’ from Finding Nemo.
These tips will help you and your team ‘keep on swimming’.
3.1 Fill the gap
Back to the definition of coping – the unspoken fear in the team that demands may outweigh resources – what resources are needed? Are they physical? Are they technical? Are they social? Make a list of any aspect of the team’s life and workplace situation that suggests a gap between what is expected of everyone and what is available to them to fulfil this. Step by step, fill this gap, and be known for doing so.
Tip
Become the person who knows what the team needs and gets it.
3.2 Training and education
Does your team (do you) have the skills required for the changes that are being introduced? Face this honestly. It is an extremely uncomfortable situation to be in a place with new demands and to be ill-equipped or unprepared. A formal management provision of the required skills training is crucial and it is a team leader responsibility.
You can also use the team’s own skills and resources to train themselves.
The management technique at work here is powerful. You are activating and supporting professional growth and training.
It is known that helping others generates positive feelings. What is less well used in the business environment is the opportunity for team members to find out about and value other colleagues’ skills. Teaching each other fosters collaboration and support.
But this sort of, ‘Sam will take anyone through how to use the new expense system this lunchtime,’ or ‘Robin will take anyone through the stories uncovered in the latest round of consumer research this evening,’ initiative withers quickly if not supported and encouraged by the team leader.
Participate and get the ball rolling.
Run a lunchtime session teaching the guitar, if that is your thing.
Tip
Take a few minutes to think about training opportunities for your team. Start and support a mutual skills exchange.
3.3 Empire building
Less building, more decoration.
Rudolf Steiner established over 100 years ago that the physical environment affects childhood development profoundly. It affects us when we are grown up, too. It influences not only our optimism and effectiveness and output, but our very health.
What does the physical area where your team works feel like? Plenty of space and light? Great colours? Thought not.
Some management effort on your part to champion the physical environment will pay dividends. Perhaps this is seen as trivial within the culture of the company. To get senior management commitment and buy-in, refer back to learning from the Olympics training programmes. The director of marginal improvement of the cycling team, for example. The cumulative effect of many minor improvements in the environment of a high-performing team made the difference between a medal or no place at all.
Use the company language to improve the environment for you and your team.
To echo a previous technique, try, ‘I have noticed that…’ (the sentence finishes with examples of improved team performance when in better surroundings) as an opener when suggesting refurbishments, more investment, more space, etc.
Tip
People feel better in a good physical work environment. Do not forget to make where your team works work better.
3.4 Justice and fairness
We know change is not easy.
Your business is being brave in implementing a change programme. Your team is being brave.
In every society, group or family, some behaviours that would usually be repressed may emerge. One such pattern, familiar to many, is a tendency to stop supporting weaker members and to dominate those who cannot stand up for themselves. This can be a difficult area for team leadership, but it is an important one. Ensure that high standards of justice and fairness are maintained within your team. A team that becomes proud of, and secure in, operating fairly will always go the extra mile.
3.5 All for one and one for all
Helping your team cope with change includes helping each individual team member cope with change. This is a key management skill. A chain is as strong as its weakest link. A team’s ability to cope with change really is driven by the team member struggling the hardest with it. But the management skills required here are straightforward.
Ensure that each team member is clear about their value and why they are needed, clear about their role in the change process and clear about how that is accomplished.
Ensure that each individual has a specific goal within the whole team’s delivery.
Help individuals develop their individual strengths and become aware of their individual weaknesses.
Offer your time. The offer carries huge significance, even if team members do not take you up on it.
Tip
Check now that you have a view on the development needs of each team member.
Keep an individual development plan for each individual in your team. Help everyone stay on track individually.
3.6 Alliances and collaboration
Support your team by extending the web of commitment and support more widely through the business. This means using the presence you have as a team leader to make connections with other colleagues and with other stakeholders. Make allies on your team’s behalf.
A mental model of this is to imagine an informal group of advisors throughout the business. Because positivity accrues, you will generate a swell of support for your team from surprising places.
Tip
Forge alliances around the business on behalf of your team. Imagine you are creating your team’s own advisory board.
Success
Do you feel better equipped to help your team cope with change? Can you imagine using the two change response models if you find yourself working with a new team in a high stakes change situation? How might they be adapted?
Think of different measures of success for your team. A combination of tips and ideas and techniques certainly will reduce anxiety within the team. Some of that anxiety reduction will also create the conditions for increased creativity.
Here, for example, are some other ways to think about success:
- Absence (of extreme stress symptoms). If anxiety has reduced, you will see some team performance improvement.
- As your communication skills improve you will see increased responsiveness and collaboration between team members.
- You will see a more fluid team dynamic at work, with conflict handled more constructively.
- You will see team creativity and initiative-taking improve.
- You will see the quality of contact and communication between team members and between the team and the rest of the business improve.
ASSESS YOURSELF
Thinking through the areas of mind, message and management, how would you rate your confidence now in your knowledge and ability in identifying and delivering the support your team might need during times of business change?
Checklist
The summary reprises the theory models and derived tips, and 22 tips and techniques from the three steps presented here: mind, message and management.
Change Curve model: three-stage
Stage 1: Shock or surprise and denial: keep communication constant, keep information updated and available, reassure and communicate all the time.
Stage 2: Anger or hostility and (possibly) depression: avoid partisan blame, reinforce ‘we are all in this together’, keep sharing information.
Stage 3: Acceptance and integration: ramp up support (do not get complacent), be specific and clear about individuals’ roles and responsibilities.
Change response typologies
The five typologies are: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards.
ASSESS YOURSELF
Do you understand the stages in the simplified Change Curve model that people move through when accepting change? Click here to review.
Do you understand the five typologies of change response? Click here to review.
Step 1: Mind – ten positive techniques
- Volunteer to be in the heart of change (from escape to control).
- Do not forget the obvious, i.e. what you would do in your own life.
- Ask the team, use their intelligence, do not assume.
- Use creativity trigger questions.
- Self-support – keep a practical record.
- Adopt a thriver’s mantra – e.g., ‘confidence, curiosity, collaboration’.
- Use positive emotional contagion – be cheerful and positive.
- Mindfulness.
- Lose habitual internal critic vocabulary and phrases to change thinking.
- Look after your body in order to look after your mind (take exercise).
Do you feel confident about using positive thinking techniques to support your team? Click here to review.
Step 2: Message – six positive techniques
- Start a question habit, e.g., ‘ Have you noticed that…’
- Use the active tense and language that is energetic.
- There is no such thing as over-communicating.
- Interpret and explain the changes – constantly – for the team.
- Be tough when needed.
- Be what you want to communicate – watch body language.
Do you feel confident about using positive communication techniques to support your team? Click here to review.
Step 3: Management – six positive techniques
- Identify and provide the resources the team needs.
- Ensure training and skills development are in place.
- Make the environment as good as it can be.
- Fly the flag for justice and fairness, even in the midst of chaos.
- Plan for individuals’ development as well as for the team as a unit.
- Build a team support network across the business.
Do you feel confident about using positive management techniques to support your team? Click here to review
Enjoy the ride, and the dance.