Three Leadership Principles To Improve Change Management

As a leader, are you struggling to keep up with change yourself, not to mention leading change in your team or organization?

New research published in Training Magazine suggests that only 13% of HR leaders believe their leaders can anticipate and react to change well. This is down from 25% five years ago. This is not an indictment of leaders, it’s a reflection of the fact that change is accelerating at an alarming pace.

Compassionate Accountability Is The Foundation For Change

Managing change requires awareness of what’s going on, the ability to communicate effectively, skills to align people around a common goal, competence in addressing a variety of resistance factors, and a solid foundation of trust. So where do leaders start?

Compassionate Accountability offers a foundation for change management. Compassionate Accountability is the practice of demonstrating that people are valuable, capable, and responsible. Each supports change in its own way. All are necessary, but not sufficient by themselves.

These foundational principles can guide leaders on how to build conditions for healthy, effective change.

Managing Change Through Value, Capability, and Responsibility

We are Valuable

Each person is uniquely and inherently valuable. They matter at a human level. This means they are worthy of being seen, heard, affirmed, safe, invited, and included. This is especially true during change when we might wonder if we belong, or if anyone cares about how we are experiencing the disruption.

Here are some ways leaders can affirm human value during change.

• Ask people how they are feeling about the change, and listen to their answers.
• Don’t minimize or ignore people’s emotional experiences. These are the biggest drivers of change, or resistance.
• Create an emotionally safe place for people to be honest about how they are doing. This serves the dual purpose of helping them feel heard (which lowers resistance), and also surfaces valuable information that can help in the change process.
• Be transparent about how you are doing. You don’t need to have it all figured out or put on a bulletproof facade. Your people want to know you are human too.
• Be a role model for healthy vulnerability by asking for help and encouraging people to support each other.

Without feeling valuable, people won’t tell you what you really need to know, and they won’t take the risks you need them to take.

We are Capable

Each person can contribute positively and be part of the solution. Humans want to feel competent. They want to know that their contribution matters. During change, it is particularly important that people feel involved in the outcomes that impact them the most. I love Ken Blanchard’s famous quote about engagement, which applies so well to change; “Without weigh-in, there’s no buy-in.”

Here are some ways leaders can nurture capability during change.

• Ask for input, and take it seriously.
• Share as much information as you can so people are informed about what’s affecting them.
• Form work groups to brainstorm solutions and bring ideas to the team.
• Leverage the strengths on your team to help navigate change.
• Treat mistakes as learning opportunities.
• Encourage cross-departmental collaboration.
• Explore how others outside the organization have dealt with similar challenges.
• Role model an attitude of curiosity and open-minded exploration.
• Balance celebrating individual contribution with team effort.

Without truly being part of the process, employees will see change as something being done “to them” rather than “with them.” The origin of the word “compassion” is the Latin root meaning “to suffer with.” Real compassion doesn’t mean taking away the struggle. It means going through it together.

We are Responsible

Each person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors belong to them. We are all 100% responsible for ourselves and how we show up, and that matters. During change, more than any other time, people need to know the principles and boundaries that hold everything together. Without some sense of grounding, there is no anchor in the storm.  Likewise, they need to know that fairness will be upheld and accountability will happen.

Here are some ways leaders can encourage this during change.

• Focus on why. Get clear about the purpose for change and how it is consistent with your company’s values and priorities.
• Connect the dots. Help people see how their behaviors, attitudes, and choices impact success.
• Ask for commitments and follow through. Accountability must be handled fairly, equitably, and consistently.
• Don’t avoid hard conversations. Practice Compassionate Accountability to directly address conflict in a way that preserves dignity.
• Role model the behaviors you want to see on your team.

Without consistency around what matters most, people won’t take change seriously. You know you are succeeding with this when team members hold each other accountable to the behaviors supporting change.

Build A Compassionate Accountability Foundation for Change With Your Team

Whether you are in the middle of big change right now, or preparing for the next wave, this is the time to build the foundation. Here’s a four-step plan for implementing the three principles of Compassionate Accountability.

1. Share this post with your team and invite their reflections and impressions.
2. Meet with your team to evaluate how you are doing on the Compassionate Accountability principles. Solicit their candid feedback to rate you on each factor.
3. Facilitate discussion with your team on what you can do to improve your change leadership.
4. Engage the team to build shared rules of engagement for addressing all three principles. Change is a shared responsibility. What can each person do so that together the team can navigate change more productively?

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