Let’s face it; organizational change and company transformations can be very challenging. These transitions can seem overwhelming as you implement major changes in your organization, especially when your team is accustomed to certain methods. However, the process of overcoming organizational change challenges doesn’t have to become a challenge in itself.
For the chosen ones responsible for leading these changes, this process can feel like wearing a straitjacket in a padded room. Overcoming organizational change challenges can be a leader’s greatest trial. Thankfully, it can also prove rewarding, leading to an organization’s greatest victories.
So how do change leaders handle the stress of leading major changes?
Tips for Overcoming Organizational Change Challenges
1. Executives need to make sure they support their change leaders. As a change leader, you need to coach your executives to provide their teams with the support, tools, resources, and coping strategies to weather the stormy seas of change. Executives need to sponsor the change, model the right behaviors, and provide the support change leaders need to navigate successful change implementation.
2. The change leaders need to put out a wide net of change champions in place. This will enable leaders to delegate and cascade communication to all impacted employees. Change leaders attend too many meetings and have too many one-off discussions about the change, which can cause them to become overwhelmed with staying on message, dealing with resistance, politics, and dynamics.
3. Consistently communicate realistic expectations and provide perspective to your impacted employees, your executives, and most importantly, yourself. Major organizational change initiatives often take longer than expected. This can require more resources than were allotted or less resistance than expected. So, it’s very important for change leaders to start a change initiative by communicating realistic expectations to all levels. Too many change initiatives put false, unnecessary, and extreme levels of stress on impacted individuals and change leaders because they feel they’re in a no-win situation right off the bat.
Realistic Expectations To Communicate To Employees
1. Talk about the change initiative as a journey and an iterative event that will be ongoing. Remind team members that you will all experience this change together. Don’t push it as a big bang event. That stresses people more.
2. Tell impacted employees up front that it will be challenging and somewhat stressful. Reassure them that leaders will be tolerant, patient, and understanding of the learning curve as the journey evolves. Employees will be allowed to make mistakes without repercussions.
3. Tell impacted employees there will be ambiguity for a while, and that change leaders and supervisors will not have all the answers for some time. This can be challenging. Employees like to have specific, detailed, and concise information. They will push for more details and more information. Employees may also be concerned that the absence of information means the change initiative must not be going well. It’s normal for employees to want a clear vision of what impacts to expect. You need to be consistent and tell them details will come as the journey continues. However, they need to expect some ambiguity in the beginning.
4. Ensure that all employees understand that everyone from top-level execs to front-line employees will be engaged and accountable for implementing the changes. Impacted employees and top-level execs often both assume the change team is responsible for the success of the change and tend to be passive. Everyone must actively participate.
5. Set up very specific two-way communication channels at the beginning of the change initiative and instruct all employees to actually use those channels. This helps reduce the amount of time they ask you for one-off conversations. As change leaders, you will automatically become counselors and mediators. This allows for open yet organized communication as you’re overcoming organization change challenges as a team.
Overcoming Organizational Change Challenges As a Change Leader
1. Make sure you control the messaging/narrative of the change. Keep a vigilant eye on the narrative that others try to put out there. When people receive little communication they will fill in the blanks with what one of my mentors called “the horror theater of the mind.” Be in front of and control the narrative, constantly assuring people you are following the plan and they need to trust the process.
2. As a change leader, make sure you take the approach that leading the change is a 9 to 5 role. You must turn it off and regroup at the end of each day. As a result, you can keep your perspective while instilling a proper perspective for your team. Remember, this a marathon, not a sprint. Take care of yourself in healthy ways.
Now you might say this post seems a little scary for change leaders. In reality, this content demonstrates that you’re working with human beings and therefore need to take a different approach when asking employees to change.
If you take a proactive, intentional approach to leading change and you have the right perspective, you will have greater control, be better prepared, and feel much less stress in the long run. It will be a challenge, but it will be a challenge you’re ready to face. The rewards for you and your company will prove well worth it!