Welcome to the new Manager podcast.
I'm your host, Kim Nichol. Hello and welcome.
I'm glad you're here and I hope you're doing well.
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By telling a friend, by leaving a rating or a review, it really
does make a difference. Today's topic is influence and
facilitating change. This is something that will come
up in a few different ways in the workplace.
For example, you might have a change that is happening in your
upper management. Your leadership might create
some kind of change and you have no decision about it.
They didn't ask you, they decided this is what's going to
happen now. And now your role as the manager
is to communicate this to your team, get them on board, you
know, change course, help manage their, you know what's going on
with them so that you can facilitate that change happening
as easily and efficiently as possible.
And there will be other times when you in your role as a
manager will desire to facilitate change with your team
or a specific individual. It might come up around
performance reviews and you might have someone who's not
performing where you believe they should be or where they
agreed that they would be performing at.
And so you might need to have a conversation with the goal of
facilitating change and how they're performing.
So what I'm going to share with you today, I wanted to open with
that a little bit of context so you can be thinking of where can
you use these ideas? What kind of change are you
facing with your organization right now?
Is it something that you don't have a choice in that you simply
have to address and manage? Or is it a kind of change that
you are very clear you want to initiate and create this change?
So a couple of things to consider from the outset. 1 is
that anytime there is a change, the number one question on
people's mind is how does this affect me?
What does this change mean for me?
So as the manager, think about what is the meaning of this
change for that person or those people?
Not just what is the change, but what does it mean for them.
If you have clarity about that, communicate that.
People also have questions about timing.
When does this change happen? With people understand what the
timing is, they can feel better prepared for it.
They know when things are supposed to be different and
they can get ready for that. So consider what are the timing
implications of this change? When is it happening?
Is it happening in phases? Help people understand the
timing. 3rd is the context. Not just what is changing, but
why? Why is this change happening
now? And this goes into the question
of what does this mean? So, for example, if an
organization is laying people off, if they are reducing their
workforce, people will want to know first, does this affect me?
Will I either lose my job or will I have to take on more work
as other people leave? They're going to want to know
the timing. When is this happening?
And they want to know why? Why is this happening?
Did something happen in the market where suddenly we're
incorrectly staffed like we anticipated we would need this
many people in order to meet this market need and now that's
changed. Is something happening where
maybe our organization is not as stable or you know, kind of
robust, robust as we expected? Will will there be other
changes? And so being able to understand
why is this happening helps people move forward with
whatever change that is. If we don't understand why, we
will be generating our own ideas and comparing our notes and
thoughts with others. And to the extent possible, if
you want to reduce that conversation, and if you have an
environment where you really don't want to have a lot of
gossip, then if you address it from the outset, here's the
change that's happening. Here's what it means for you,
here's what it means for organization, here's the timing
of it, Here's what I can share about why it's happening.
And sometimes you either won't really know the full story of
why it's happening. And sometimes you will know and
you won't be at liberty to share all of the details, but expect
people to ask you why is this happening and think through what
can you tell them about the context of why this change is
happening. Now you realize that when you
facilitate change, there are four elements that you are
managing. The first element is you will
manage emotions, the second element you will manage
expectations, the third element you will manage attention, and
the fourth element you will manage actions.
So let's look at each one of these a little more closely.
When you're managing emotions, that means you're thinking about
how people will feel about what's happening.
We are humans. We have emotions.
They show up at work in all kinds of ways.
If you want people to feel motivated, that is an emotion.
That is a question of how do we understand what people are
feeling about what's happening and what energizes them towards
something. When there is change, you can
expect people to have emotions like fear, anger, grief,
frustration, sometimes enthusiasm and eagerness if it's
a change that feels really positive.
But very often if there's a change that people aren't
anticipating, it can bring up some of those feelings.
I worked in an organization once and there was a very, very much
beloved manager in a very high position.
And that person decided to move on.
And because they were leaving and so many people cared about
that leader, there was a lot of sadness, a lot of grief, like we
won't, you know, we won't get to work together.
We won't get to work and learn from this leader that we really
admire. There was also some frustration
and some anger. There were some people who felt
like the way that that transition was happening and why
it was happening, they weren't happy about.
So expect that there will be different emotions and be
mindful that it is part of managing change is managing and
being mindful of what are the emotions that are going to be
there. Managing expectations is about
understanding people will think and or have beliefs about what
will happen. And with managing expectations,
it's this idea that what can you convey in order to let what
people are thinking will happen match up as closely as possible
to what will accurately, accurately and actually happen.
So when our expectations are unclear, that can create
confusion and stress. When expectations are not met,
that can create disappointment and it can also undermine trust.
So be aware. What are the expectations going
forward? Are people clear about what
those are? Have expectations changed?
If so, address that, address the disappointment.
If you are able to speak to it directly, that allows people to
feel seen, recognized, and it will sometimes reduce some of
that back channel conversation if you're addressing it in the
beginning. If you don't, just realize
people will have their own ideas and their own beliefs, and that
will be driving people's behaviors whether or not you're
aware of it. The third one is managing
attention and that's about understanding what people are
focused on. So one of the hardest things
when there is a lot of change, is it so easy to become
distracted by the uncertainty or the fear or the frustration, All
of the, you know, the tumult of emotions or the uncertain
expectations, It can be very distracting and pull us away
from whatever it is that you want us to focus on.
So think in terms of what would you like folks to focus on?
Where do you want them to give their attention?
And that might be something you answer differently week to week
depending on where you are in the change cycle.
But just being mindful and thinking about it, you know,
sometimes it sounds like I have no idea exactly how it's all
going to play out, but I know for the near term, here's what
we will focus on. That can be both specific work
efforts or it can be around, you know, vision.
Like even if we don't know exactly what the details will
be, let's remember that our vision and our mission remains
the same. Simply the path week that we
take to get there, that's the part that we are going to
change. So think about that.
What do you want people to focus on?
That's where you begin to manage attention.
And then the 4th 1 is managing actions.
That's about how people behave, what they are doing, being
mindful of. You can't simply tell people
these are the actions I want you to take now.
But realizing like, OK, if I'm, if I'm managing change, there
might be some actions that I want people to take.
It might be something as simple as if you are doing a training
and you are training people on a new process or a new tool.
After the training, you probably want people to implement what
they learned in the training. You want them to implement the
new tool and to use the information that they gained
from that learning experience. So what can you do in order to
change the behaviors after that moment?
What is needed in order to get the actions in alignment with
the desired results? With that change, and depending
on the situation, depending on the people, there are different
ways that you can address that. The biggest mistake is just
assuming that if people have information, then the actions
will follow. But changing behavior is not
just about information. It's also about understanding
process, feeling clarity around success.
Like if I do this thing, will I be successful at it?
It's about creating new patterns and changing old ones.
So holding that in mind as something specific that you're
going to influence and make decisions around so that as you
are facilitating change, you're not simply assuming that you
will see the actions you want. You're actually being a bit more
planful and a bit more mindful about how you do that.
So then you know the, the seven components that we talked about
today. And again, this is under the
umbrella of how can you influence your team, your, your,
your folks, your staff to facilitate some kind of change.
First realizing everyone's to everyone wants to understand the
meaning. How does it affect them?
They want to understand the timing, when is this happening?
And they want to understand the context, what is changing and
why. Then to facilitate that change,
you're going to manage people's emotions, how they're feeling,
manage their expectations, what they're thinking will happen or
what they're believing is going to happen, managing attention,
what you want them to focus on, and managing actions.
How do you want people to behave?
What is it that you want them to do on the way to facilitating
this change? So that is what I wanted to
share with you today. This is actually something we
talk more about in my course on communication strategies for
managers. There's a lot that we do through
communication, including positioning you in a way to be
effective at facilitating change, whether it's change you
are initiating or change that is simply happening in your
organization that you now have to respond to.
So if you want to study this a little bit more and go a little
bit deeper, then make sure that you sign up for the next cohort
or if you're not sure if you're ready, then just or just sign up
to get notified for when the next cohort will run.
And I will put links in the show notes to that or go to my
website, kimnickel.com. You can find out how to work
with me and get private coaching or join one of my upcoming
courses. Thank you so much for listening.
It is not always easy being a manager.
So it really matters that you're here learning to be better.
Thanks for doing what you do. Thanks for listening and I will
talk to you next time. When you're more effective at
work, you're happier in your life, and when you're happier in
your life, you're more effective at work.
I can help. Go to my website, kimnickel.com
and sign up for a coaching consult.
It can get better.