Change management. It’s a key corporate phrase. I myself have used it a lot. In fact, I used it just the other day in thanking my team for their transformation work. In addition, I talk to a lot of friends and colleagues about change management, we often use it to describe challenges in making progress.
Change management, simply put, is aligning your organization to a new direction. It could be new ways of working, higher goals, diversification. It could be…well, you get the idea, it could be a lot of things.
This week, as I was pondering change management, and the challenge and opportunity it brings, I was reminded of the Harvard Business Review article, “Change Management Requires a Change Mindset” from earlier this year by April Rinne.
If you are leading change management right now, or experiencing change management right now, here were my key take-aways from re-reading this article.
Key take-aways from “Change Management Requires a Change Mindset”:
- We’re not good at “being” with unknowns: A lot of times, we don’t like gray areas. We like to know certainties, “if this, then that”, thinking. The ambiguity of the gray is a cause for anxiety. Anxious people will challenge change.
- If you’re leading change, make the shift from change management to a change mindset: Manage means a sense of control. And this was one of my favorite take-aways from this article. It reminded me, it’s human nature to want control. And when we are leading transformation, we are removing a sense of control. Mindset on the other hand is a concept of endure or encounter. This idea of shifting the expectations helps us as humans shift our approach. Think about it. When we want control we manage, we fight, we dig in. When we want to endure something, we band together as a team, we support, we help, we find a way forward.
- Good change mindset is taking the time for human emotions: When leading change, we must not forget all the human emotions that come with it. And, we must allow time throughout the change process to ask about those emotions. One of my favorite exercises and trainings I did with one of my companies was emotion training. Giving names to our emotions. Are we happy, sad, mad, glad, scared etc. When we’re leading change, we need to give our teams time and space to identify, and express their emotions. It could be as simple as this:
- This week, with our goals on this project I am feeling <fill in blank>.
- This emotion is going to strengthen our objective or challenge our objective
- I will use this emotion this week to my benefit to <fill in blank>.
- See, when we call out the emotion and give it space to “be” with us, we can do the work to celebrate it and its positive impacts, or, as a team, say I see you and we’re going to work together to mitigate you. Now the emotion has power…but power for positive momentum.
Let’s talk your change
Change is inevitable. Our companies thrive with change – and helping lead change can positively position you as a leader.
Cheers to the New Year and change mindsets that help us grow personally, professionally and lead success for our companies.
Please tell me more about your change mindset, what have you seen work and what have been your learnings? Are you in a change right now, what is exhilarating about it and what is frustrating about it?
