BLT #14 | You can lead through change

Whether you're a leader, manager, or a culture carrier, you've probably had to help lead people through change at some point in your career. Doing so is no easy feat, but leading effectively through change impacts the trajectory of your team for the better.

WE BELIEVE:

During change, start with facts.

Imagine you're at work, and you get an email letting you know that the company will be switching from one email platform to another. Email is a big part of your work, and your immediate reaction is dread. A change of this magnitude is going to seriously impact how you work and will take a ton of time. You're frustrated. Maybe even angry.

Now imagine your team meeting is that day and your boss gets a question about this email change. They say something like: "This new email tool is really powerful, it's going to be great, I promise."

How does that response feel? Probably not great. Why? Because your boss essentially just invalidated your feelings of uncertainty and discomfort by trying to convince you that things will "be just fine" but didn't give you any data to support that claim.

If you're leading through change, start by responding with facts. Doing so gives people real, specific information to help them start to understand the change while still honoring their feelings in the moment. That might sound like this:

"Yes, we're moving from Outlook to GSuite. It is a big change. The IT team did a deep comparison of the features of both tools, and there are a few core collaborative features in Gsuite that we believe will help us work better asynchronously. We are also able to consolidate some other tools as a part of this change, so we're saving a good amount of money as a company. I know this change will take some time, but we anticipate that we'll be able to make the full transition in 3 months. The IT team has a lot of support resources they're putting together to help us all get through the transition."

Feels different, doesn't it?

SOMETHING WE LOVE:

"The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change [their] future by merely changing [their] attitude."

- Oprah Winfrey

YOU SHOULD TRY THIS:

Lead through change.

No matter your role, you can help lead people through change. Watch this week's Podcast for some easy tips on how to do it well.

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