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Tips, Tools & Tactics
Welcome to our newsletter! In this issue we're focusing on change -- how to cope with it and how to help employees through it. Please let us know what you'd like to read about and how the ideas here work for you. -Diana
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Helping Your Employees through Change:
6 Lessons I've Learned from My Clients
"How am I supposed to help my team deal with all this?" a manager asked me recently while talking about extensive changes in her organization. Like many of you in similar situations, she was not the one to initiate changes, yet she finds herself serving as a sort of conscripted cheerleader for the change initiative. After all, it's her job to be a good soldier.
I thought about my own efforts to help people adjust to change, and about the things I've seen my client companies do right-and wrong-as they tried to bring on new leadership or just make the painful adjustments that economic realities sometimes require. Here are six things I've seen people do that got great results:
1. Communicate, communicate, communicate.
Take your normal frequency of information output and multiply that times three--really. An information vacuum is highly anxiety-provoking for your staff. When people don't have the information they feel they need, they tend to invent it through the rumor mill. And virtually 100% of that "information" is negative, fear-feeding and incorrect. Take a little extra time to get out in front of the stories.
2. Listen more than you ordinarily do.
I watched one CEO spend a good part of every day for two months conducting an informal listening campaign. He'd walk around the company's facilities and talk with small groups, asking people what they wanted to know, what their concerns were, and what rumors they'd like to check out. He built a ton of trust that way, and caught rumors early before they had spread. He and his company are still reaping noticeable benefits from that listening investment.
3. Show patience for employees' varying speeds of adaptation to change.
If you are in management, you may have been hearing about upcoming changes for awhile, so you are less shocked by the news. Just in terms of personal style, you may also be more comfortable with change than some others are.
Read the rest of this article here.
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Leading Change in a World of Change
Click here to watch change consultant Randy Pennington share advice about leading change:
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And finally...
Diana Brooks Associates helps people and organizations improve leadership, communication and teamwork.
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