If senior leaders decide that a change must be made, how important is it, really, that employees buy into it?
If it’s mandatory, why pretend that employees have a say in it?
If the change is truly urgent, why slow things down to gain consensus?
If it’s a done deal, why bother offering a rationale?
Leading successful change is all about trust. If employees can’t count on their leaders to have their interests at heart or feel that decision-makers are out of touch, or if employees see this latest disruption as just another wrong-headed change de jour, good luck getting them to follow along, let alone enthusiastically embrace the change.
What do so many well-meaning change efforts get so wrong, and what does trust (or lack thereof) have to do with it? Those were the questions pondered by participants in my latest Insights Roundtable, Rebuilding Trust During Times of Change, co-hosted by my friend and colleague Michael Randel, president of Randel Consulting Associates.
In this edition of Communique, we focus on missteps leaders often make that breed distrust and disillusionment, making successful change nearly impossible.
Making decisions without input
- Decisions are often made by “experts” (senior leaders, sometimes with the help of external consultants), without involving affected employees. As a result, unrealistic systems, processes or structures can’t easily be put into place, sometimes ever.
- When leaders do solicit feedback from staff and line management, concerns are often brushed aside or dismissed, especially if feedback or ideas can’t easily or quickly be incorporated.
- Decision-making processes and accountabilities are often murky, leaving employees confused about whether they actually have a voice, a vote or a veto.
- There rarely seems to be agreement about what mechanisms and metrics will be used to assess the potential effectiveness of changes before they are implemented, making it almost impossible to know whether the resulting disruption will be worth it.
- In sum: Lack of early involvement can result in employee backlash, reduced participation, and lack of buy-in during implementation.
Ignoring the impact and implications
- Senior decision-makers often lack a deep understanding of on-the-ground issues, leading to assumptions rather than informed decisions. This kind of disconnect causes mistrust and undervalues employees’ expertise and experiences.
- Leaders are often out of touch with the everyday experiences of those who will need to adapt to the changes, minimizing or dismissing the real impact.
- Employees often feel overwhelmed and unequipped when faced with extreme, all-at-once changes, leading to burnout, resistance, and hesitancy to implement desired changes.
- Leaders often fail to empathize with the sense of grief and loss employees feel, especially when they believe their skills, contributions and achievements will be deemed irrelevant in the new world order, or when their colleagues have been laid off around them.
Communications misfires
- Communicating the why, what, when, and how of change initiatives is frequently treated as an afterthought rather than an ongoing conversation throughout the process.
- Senior leaders often assume that the benefits of proposed changes are clear to everyone, so they fail to communicate honestly how changes will impact employees.
- Leaders tend to rely on “trust us” messaging, even though they haven’t done the hard work to build trust to begin with.
- Employees aren’t given visibility into the broader context, business rationale, criteria or decision-making factors.
- Senior leaders tend to sugarcoat the real implications of the change and skirt difficult questions.
Botched implementation
- Implementation is often seen as all-or-nothing, with little freedom to experiment with smaller, incremental changes that may achieve the desired goals.
- Too many changes are often bundled together to avoid extending timelines, overwhelming those who must implement or adopt these changes.
- Changes are often rolled out without testing, validation or pilots, making it harder and more costly to make changes later on.
- There’s too much emphasis on making the intended changes appear attractive, rather than creating practical adoption strategies for different segments of the population.
- Important factors like legal, ethical, compliance, and workers council concerns, especially regarding rapidly-evolving technologies like AI, are frequently overlooked during change implementation.
An organization’s culture plays a crucial role in the success of change initiatives. A healthy culture, which supports trust, psychological safety and open dialogue, is essential for any change to live up to its promised benefits. In contrast, a poor culture can stifle communication and trust, making successful change more difficult.
Making difficult transitions would be a lot easier if those leading change initiatives consistently demonstrated that they are trustworthy, caring, sincere, reliable, and competent. Sadly, in many cases, leaders have done little to earn that trust. In fact, their behaviors and actions may have unwittingly eroded trust in ways that can be difficult to repair.
Empathy is the key to connection, trust and community. Please click on the links to some of our previous editions for tips to build trust during times of change.
Links
Downloadable resources from Guided Insights:
- New! Facilitation Skills Learning Community of Practice program offering – brochure describing what’s included, who it’s best for, and the role that both peers and managers play in making it easier to cultivate and practice new skills
- Team-Communications-Map_1022.pdf
- Creating and Adopting Norms for Your Virtual Team – Quick List
- Team_charter_questions_checklist.pdf
Articles from Guided Insights:
- Tips for Cultivating a Culture of Trust Across Hybrid Remote Teams
- Tips for Earning Trust During Times of Change
- Before Attempting Big Change, First, Root Out the Dysfunction
- To Build Trust Within Virtual Teams, Psychological Safety Is Everything
- Healthy Conversations Can Bring Virtual Teams Back To Life
- What? So What? Now What? – Today’s Workplace Trends and Why They Matter
Other resources:
- Thin Book of Trust by Charles Feltman, his newly-revised best-selling book
- Randel Consulting Associates, an organization that works with clients to create and sustain growth, especially during times of change
