What’s the one thing you can do as a leader to affect the success of your team and ultimately your business? Be really good at change leadership and then develop your organization to do the same. This is true of change leadership at all levels throughout your career and your organization. The C-suite is bombarded with leadership philosophies to focus on to drive communication, collaboration, innovation, efficiency, etc. Effective leaders know the way to success is to focus on a singular purpose.
It’s my mission to be the voice saying ‘leading change’ is that singular purpose.
Change has been a constant forever in business but recently the pace of change has gone into overdrive. Everything from accelerated digital transformations to the personalization of the customer experience. Combined with economic and supply chain insecurities, the discomfort, stress and frustration around change have skyrocketed.
Each specific change event comes with unique skills to learn. However, the approach, best practices and behaviors to be successful leading change are consistent. One example is how much word matter. The words you choose will guide your vision and the implementation of a change initiative. Words are tied to personal experiences, a shared understanding, and our emotional reactions to what we do.
This is why Rebel Success for Leaders intentionally focuses on leading change vs managing change. Managing change has a heavy focus on Gannt charts, processes and tools – the stuff of change. While leading change incorporates a critical element of inspiring people to follow a shared vision, especially one that’s challenging. In studies across many different industries of what went wrong with change initiatives, lack of attention to the people elements of change are often found to be the culprit.
Change leadership includes human and cultural aspects as well as process details.
FAQ
Does a focus on change leadership diminish the importance of change management?
This isn’t an either-or scenario. Organizations still need tools to manage the stuff of change and most of them are pretty good at the tools. Once they understand how to harness the key pillars of leading change successfully, they find themselves leading a motivated group vs one that’s resistant.
Most people find change unpleasant, how do I get my team interested?
The majority of people resist change thrust upon them and the business environment today provides a lot of reasons for companies to pivot and change quickly. As a leader you need to provide the tools your team needs to come with you and create the environment for them to contribute to building the path for the journey.
If leading change well is the ‘one thing’, how important are communication and influence for leaders to be successful?
The clarity to focus on one thing for success in business today is so important. Leaders who build the competency of change leadership in themselves and elevate those capabilities in their organizations are the ones who are successful at communication and influence.
Don’t I need to be a subject matter expert to lead a change initiative successfully?
It’s absolutely critical to have strong team members with a diverse set of expertise and experience. Subject matter expertise needs to be on the team. There’s a gap globally of leaders who are successful at leading change. That’s the capability that needs to be built for organizations to be successful.
