Tweet

First Engage Your Team - Leading Change Effectively

Guest post by: Meridith Elliott Powell

Article Overview: Effectively leading change lies in your ability as a leader to implement. Your ability to motivate our employees to embrace the change and take action. Leaders who are highly skilled at change management understand that in the early stages their EQ (emotional intelligence) needs to be higher than their IQ.

First Engage Your Team - Leading Change Effectively

I met with two clients this past week both on the fast track to promotion and opportunity. They have used their talents and skills to navigate these waters of a shifting economy to create more opportunity and actually get ahead. Yeah! I love a great success story and the motivation I feel when I hear such positive news. Both are looking at positions that involve growing their divisions, reorganizing systems and in a nut shell making some serious change. They have the experience, talent and skills to ensure their ideas will lead to great solutions, however the real measure of success will come in their ability to implement effectively.

Even as I write that it makes me laugh, as it sounds as if effective implementation is something they can control. It is something they can heavily influence and manage, but not something they can control. That lesson - understanding and embracing it - is the difference between a leader who can effectively lead a team through change and one who cannot.

All the brilliant solutions, all the amazing new systems and processes, won't matter a bit if the team that needs to implement is not fully engaged, on board, and ready to make things happen.

That is why - the first step any leader takes when navigating the team through change is to focus on the power of the word "why"! To stop and think through every step of the process, every new idea, and answer a few simple questions:

1. Why does this change need to be made?

2. Why would my team want to do this?

3. Why is it beneficial to them as individuals to do this?

4. Why do I need their help and support to make this happen?

Effective change leadership focuses first on the answers to these questions. New strategies, techniques and company direction need to then be communicated and delivered in a manner that first (and continuously) answer these questions.

I fundamentally believe that people want to do a good job, and they want to help their teammates and their company grow. However, we as human beings are hard wired to resist change, and more so change that is "pushed" upon us. Change leads us into the unknown, and there is fear and uncertainty there, making resistance a natural reaction.

As leaders, when we first answer the question why for our employees, we create understanding in our employees and understanding is soothing and calming. Employees relax their natural resistance, and as leaders we are then free to implement the next steps of change.

I have long believed that first answering the question why is the most valuable tool you have for implementing change. Are you required to do this for you team - No! Do you owe them an explanation - No! But, stopping long enough to relax their natural resistance will make your job as a leader so much easier and so much more effective.

Related Articles
  Managing Change - Keep Focus on the Day Job
  Reminders on Engaging Employees in Change
  Managing Change: Engage people to implement change
  How Can I Find Independent Sales Reps or Sales Agencies?
  How to Lead a Transformation of Your Team
  Sales Training, without supporting Sales Management Training,
  Virtual Collaboration is Not For Everyone: The Characteristics of Top Performing Virtual Leaders and Team Members
  Leadership Ten Ways To Be Better At Leading Teams
  Steering the Organizational Change Process
  Entrepreneur Mindset for Business Success
  The Need to Achieve
  People Are Not the Problem: Eight Tips to Effectively Manage Change
  Time Management Tips for Entrepreneurs – How to boost your personal productivity
  Aberdeen Retail Leadership Summit
  Change is a Fact of Life --- Six Keys That Make a Difference
  What’s Your Compelling Purpose?
  Powerful Questions to Impact Change
  How to Use A Strategic Thinking Approach to Confirm That NOW is the Time For You to Engage and Benefit from a Business Coach
  The 5 Major Skills you need to become a Great Manager
  Trust – The glue that holds a team together

Article Tags: change management, emotional intelligence, eq, getting employees to buyin and embrace change motivating employees to implement change, iq, leading change



Related Forum Posts
Re: Anyone Uses Elance.com? Guru.com? Rentacoder.com? - I've had quite a bit of success on oDesk.com. I've never used Elance so I can't compare. I like oDesk.com 'cos I get to sort thru people (e.g. within a certain bid range) with a single click. I find their help response very quick and I like the oDesk Team software that "providers" must install. This gives me the Buyer more insight as to what I am paying for. The Team software takes screenshots of the Providers screen on 10 min increments so I can see that the person is infact doing work for me.
Re: How to Promote a MLM Business? - I have to agree with several of the previous posts here. Having your own site so that you can get it ranked is a big one. Also, as stated above, using a "passive" recruiting style works really well. Leading by example, people will naturally want to follow you over time if you prove yourself a leader. Bottom line, if you are promoting your opportunity or products, you are losing sales. About 85% of the population hates to be sold. Promote YOU, build relationships and let the business fall in place after that. Bill
Re: Social Media Effectively? - Thanks for your feedback. I am currently reevaluating my use of Twitter as I am the other major networks. Seems that while I have focused on social business networks and have a good presence there, I have not been using Social Media Effectively with the big networks. Some of the better site tools include theses networks in evaluating your marketing strategy. While I don't care for the Twitter limits, I can see that just by cleaning up my following's to focus more on business connections will help
Connecting with Influential People - Thanks Martin! In "The Little Black Book of Connections", Jeffrey Gitomer suggests the following ways to connect with influential people (page 106): -Third-party introductions (best method). -Writing and publishing content. -Giving seminars/speeches so you can be perceived as an expert in your field and leader. -Attend social and business events. -Say or ask something powerful by doing research ahead of time. -Engage them by offering something of value first. Gitomer also stresses the importance of making more friends as well.
Re: Spellcheck? - [quote="TheAnonymousMan":2f894q6j]When discussing the majority of people I would definitely say that most people hit the "Change" or "Ignore" button without thinking too much about the correct spelling of a word. All bosses are concerned about is getting the report to the Directors meeting on time.[/quote:2f894q6j] That probably depends on what the "majority" are trying to accomplish. I have word set to alert me about misspellings and grammatical problems, so I fix most as I go. But I also add names etc to the dictionary because I get tired of seeing the red and green squiggles when I know the info is right. If you're only going to click "Change" or "Ignore" then why bother to take the time to use spell check????? Business people that I work for want the info compiled in a timely manner and they want it right - which is fine because that's the way I strive to do any project. Sending out a memo, letter, report etc with obvious spelling and grammatical mistakes makes the person and the company look bad as far as I'm concerned. Shri


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Leading with Discernment

Are You My Mentor

The Pure FUN of Learning & Using NLP

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.