Leadership Symptoms Analyzed (6)

Editor’s note:

This post is inspired by a discussion that happened on the Leader’s Cafe Foundation Forum in LinkedIn. The forum can be found here: Link To LinkedIn Forum. And the specific discussion can be found here: Specific Discussion.

Dear Managers and Leaders!

In my six previous posts, I first listed 6 symptoms that leaders should take really seriously and then analyzed the first five symptoms: "A team member does not produce what the leader was expecting", "Team members are not coming up with new ideas" and ""Team members are unwilling to push their boundaries", "Team is operating from fear", and "No one seems to know what is urgent, crucial, or at which point we are right now". Today, we come to a conclusion with our analysis and tackle the sixth and last symptom: Resistance to change.

“Change is constant, direct, and temporary, for once things change, you can bet they are going to change again. Learning to thrive on constant change is the next frontier.”

-- Michael Dell, Direct from Dell

When I started to reflect on leadership, it struck me how leaders must be initiators of change. They must constantly be on the look out to find ways to improve the performance of their team and then implement these changes to ensure their team is always running at its peak performance. Without this constant search for improvement, the team can have good performance, but will never strive and will eventually lose momentum. That means that on top of improving the product that the team produces, a good leader always works on his team, trying to perfect every aspect of it.

What that constant search for better performance means to the team is that it will often, if not always, be in a state of change. Improving team performance means changing something to make the team better. So change needs to become a second nature, a part of the team’s everyday life.

You can see how a leader’s success is closely tight to his ability to successfully implement change in his organization. Without this capacity, a leader cannot improve the team’s situation or performance and will slowly but surely lose his leadership. The team will not follow him for a long time if he constantly fails at implementing change. So, as we can see, change management is very crucial to leadership!

For a leader, if team members or the entire team resist change, it is a serious condition that must be dealt with promptly. When you feel the team is not engaged or energized by a proposed change, then you need to investigate and correct the situation rapidly.

Causes

So, what can cause people to resist change? Here is a list of potential causes of resistance to change.

• People disagree with the change – If people think that the change will not bring them to a better situation or that the improvement is not worth it, then they will not accept the pain of changing easily.

• Too many changes, too rapidly – As a leader, you must know your team enough to understand their acceptable “change pace”, the pace at which they can accept change. If you go beyond the change pace of a team, you risk losing people, driving people to burn out, or de-motivating your team members.

• Fear they are unable to adapt – Change actually means that something needs to ... change! People will have to adapt to a new situation. Resistance can be triggered if people are afraid that they will not be able to adapt to the change. For instance, if someone has never used a computer and the change requires her to use a computer, then the difficulty to adapt will be seen as really high and will trigger fear and resistance.

• Threat to their security – We have already talked about security being the second level of the Maslow pyramid. If people feel that the introduced change is a threat to their sense of security, they will definitely resist change. For instance, if the change consisted of using a computer to do a task that someone was actually doing manually in the past, that person might resist change because she feels it is a job security threat.

• Dear-to-heart changes – It is possible that you are trying to change something that is important for the team. Maybe the team is proud of what it accomplished in the past using their old way of doing things. Maybe they are not ready to change because the old way is their branding so to speak.

• Failure of past change initiatives – Maybe people resist the current change because of a bad history with change. Maybe the previous initiatives were failures or did not bring the promised improvements.

Solutions

To help limit the resistance to change in your team, I would offer the following strategies to guide you in your implementation of change initiatives.

• Listen – You first need to listen carefully to your team members and understand all their concerns, fears, and objections. Don’t see them as negative; see them as different points of view that will allow you to refine your ideas, to improve your plans.

• Communicate – You need to be totally transparent with your team members if you want your change initiatives to be successful. You need to explain to them why you think that this change is required and what improvement it will bring to the team. Always talk about the positive and negative impacts that a change will have on the team members themselves and link them to the importance the change has for the team and the rest of the organization. You need to calm people and make them feel secure. Ensure that you understand the possible threats that a change can represent and the fears that your team members could have facing the proposed change and address them right from the start.

• Validate – You should always validate your change initiative ideas with at least some people on your team to ensure you are going in the right direction. You do that before going public with your idea so you have time to refine the initiatives.

• Engage – The easiest way to ensure there will be no resistance to change is when the change initiative comes from your team members themselves. In that case, people will immediately feel compelled by the change, understand why it is required, and they will be willing and eager to implement it.

What about you dear leader, do you see a lot of resistance to change in your team? Also, if you see other causes or other solutions, please share them with this group by adding a comment below so that everyone can benefit from your experience!

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: InnovaChron offers a series of workshops and programs that help teams work together to create their vision, solve their problems, and improve their performance. To find out how to generate change initiatives from your team, please visit InnovaChron's web site or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

PPS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit InnovaChron's web site or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

Leadership Symptoms Analyzed (4)

Editor’s note:

This post is inspired by a discussion that happened on the Leader’s Cafe Foundation Forum in LinkedIn. The forum can be found here: Link To LinkedIn Forum. And the specific discussion can be found here: Specific Discussion.

Dear Managers and Leaders!

In my four previous posts, I listed 6 symptoms that leaders should take really seriously and analyzed the first three symptoms: "A team member does not produce what the leader was expecting", "Team members are not coming up with new ideas" and ""Team members are unwilling to push their boundaries". Today, we will continue our analysis and tackle the forth symptom: Team is operating from fear.

For your team to function at its full capacity, it needs to feel safe to take risks and work at its limits. It needs to operate through synergy and collaboration to go beyond what each individual can achieve. A team operating from fear will not have the right environment and confidence to push its limits, transcend its capacity, and deliver on their promises.

Detecting that a team is operating from fear is probably tougher than detecting the symptoms that we discussed in earlier posts because it involves feelings. We will try below to help you detect this situation with more accuracy and then we will discuss how to turn the situation around.

What type of fear?

I am not a psychologist so I cannot give you an authoritative list of fears that people can have in the workplace. However, here is a list of what I consider when I think about fear in the workplace:

• Fear of losing a job (the number one fear, especially in the current economic climate)
• Fear of losing a position
• Fear of being embarrassed in public
• Fear of being hurt emotionally
• Fear of impacting one’s family (if working too much or losing a salary for instance)

How to Detect Fear?

Here are a number of things to check when you are wondering whether your team is operating from fear.

• Lack of Sharing – When people on your team keep information to themselves or refuse to help each other, then there might be fear involved. It is possible that the people keeping information for themselves want to avoid being surpassed in skills by others which would mean a fear of losing one’s job, or at least losing the capacity to advance in one’s career. Information is power and sharing information could mean losing some power over the others in the minds of those protecting information.

• Yes Sir! mentality – When your team never questions your decisions, when you are alone at the top making all the calls and never encountering any criticisms, voiced opinions, or positive feedback, then it is possible that your people fear the consequences of speaking up.

• Finger pointing – When a problem occurs and people immediately try to find the culprit rather than focusing on solving the problems, then you most likely have a fear issue to deal with. It is necessary to find the root cause of a problem, but not in terms of finding the culprit. If your team is in that mode, then you should definitely look into this as a serious symptom that will generate more and more problems down the line.

• Protect-your-back mentality – This often goes hand-in-hand with the finger pointing. If your organization is caught up in a finger pointing match every time a problem occurs, obviously, people will do everything they can to protect their back so that fingers will point in other directions should problems occur. When team members have a protect-your-back mentality, they will not want to push their limits and operate at full capacity. They will also lose a lot of time just protecting their back instead of doing productive work!

• Risk avoidance – If people on your team avoid risks, it likely means that they do not feel safe in their environment as we already discussed in yesterday’s post.

• Mania to have everything in writing – When people ask that everything be captured in writing, it means that there is lack of trust and fear that things can turn bad. This is why people who do not know each other well will sign contracts to close their deals while family and friends might just talk about doing things together. The level of trust is higher. If people on your team constantly ask that things be written down, you should consider that a serious symptom that is likely related to fear or lack of trust.

What Should You Do?

So what should you do if you detect that your people are operating from fear? First, I’d say that you need to discover the root cause of their fear and eradicate it. If the fear is not grounded in reality, then you need to tell your team clearly that there are no reasons to be afraid. For instance, if people are afraid of losing their job because of the economic climate and you do not see any potential layoffs in the making, then you must reassure your team. On the other hand, if their fear is real, then you need to work differently and minimize the impact of their fear.

Second, as a general rule, you must create a safe working environment for your team. Your team needs to be a place where people don’t feel threatened to lose their job at the slightest mistake. It needs to be a place where people are not judged or found culprit but rather a place where they can learn and experience more and more things, where they can be recognized for the risks they are taking and praised for their ideas. Your team must be a cauldron where the magic potion of trust and coaching will drive your people to develop and produce more than the sum of what each team member would have done alone.

What about you dear leader, have you ever felt that your team was driven by fear? Have you ever found yourself protecting your back or finger pointing every time a problem occurs? Please help me complete the picture by adding your comments!

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.