Support required

If you are leading a team through a period of change, you need to understand how everyone travels through this process, and work out how you need to support them differently during the various stages of the process. During the elation phase, you need to inspire change. Provide a vision for the future and give people a clear understanding of what the future will look like, what they will be doing, how the change will happen and when it will happen by. 

During the fear stage, you should spend time listening to the fears people express. It is easy to spend too much time talking and not enough listening. People create barriers in their minds that they need to express; these are often emotional rather than rational. Providing logical arguments without listening will not reduce those concerns. We have two ears and one mouth for a reason. 

During the depression phase, keep listening, clarify goals and build solutions to help meet milestones. Re-engage the team with the reason for the change and keep focusing on the benefits of the new state. 

To avoid getting into a hope/depression cycle, look for little successes and make the most of them, explaining how these are taking everyone towards the goal. These little chinks of light need to be magnified so that if things become difficult, everyone still feels they are moving forward. 

During the confidence stage, focus on the final push, identifying the last steps needed to complete the transition and refocusing again on the goal. Continue to focus on successes to maintain motivation towards the goal. 

The final stage is one we often forget. When you get to the satisfaction stage, celebrate your success. This helps to put a full stop after a period of change, and signals a move into a period of stability. Additionally, it helps to build confidence and commitment for future periods of change. Different members of the team will go through this process at different speeds. 

Allowing time 

You need time to digest a large meal. The same is true for change. The higher up people are in an organisation, the longer they have to think about it, process it and digest it. The further down the line of command we are, the less time we get to think about a change; those on the shop floor often get very little time at all. 

To make change happen successfully with the minimum of stress, and make it stick, plan in good time to allow people to feel happy with what they need to do, and why. This may feel like an unnecessary delay, but you cannot change in isolation. You need your team to be following; you do not want to be chasing them. 

We all know that when we feel we are a part of the change, we will be more motivated to make the change. But if we feel a change is being done to us, we tend to drag our heels. If you can find ways of involving people in decision-making, you will reduce resistance and improve engagement and motivation.