The Harassed Manager’s Guide to Change
This is an extract from a small book I wrote for participants when running change workshops for managers. I hope you find it useful. It’s a short, light hearted and practical look at managing staff through change, with practical, down to earth exercises that work – and no jargon!
The book is dedicated to all of those front line managers and small business owners faced with an organisational or business change to implement. Whether it’s of your making or not you will have to take the flak, even when you’re feeling as fed up as everyone else. Read this when you are expected to know all the answers, when you must look in control, even when you’re screaming inside; this is your book!
CHAPTER ONE
‘Cometh the hour cometh the man’…or woman… or anyone, please?
OK, so the powers that be have just told you about their latest initiative and how wonderful the world will be once their new plan/reorganisation/merger/ acquisition is put into place. You front line managers, they tell you, have nothing to worry about because a team of consultants are coming in to manage the change and you will get all the information you need as and when. Just go back and let your team know that change is afoot, oh and by the way, don’t let productivity fall off and keep everyone happy, absence levels down and all the staff on board with the new plan!
Or maybe you are the owner of a small business and have just announced some significant changes to your business like relocation, or a new customer care system. At this stage you may know where you want to get to but not be entirely sure of the route. And your employees are looking at you for answers…
Of course, this being the real world your team or employees probably already knows that something is afoot and will have been discussing it amongst themselves for ages. Already the rumour mill will have been grinding on.
It is really important that you set the right tone right from the beginning even if you may think there is nothing you can usefully say at the moment. But can you just say you don’t know yet?
No Creative Speechifying
Well, yes you can actually. If you start with the ‘creative speechifying’ now you will only tie yourself up in knots later on when it becomes obvious that you don’t know. It is really important at this early stage to establish your credibility so I suggest the following:
Actions
1) Get everyone together as soon as you can. Whenever it is at all possible do difficult communication face to face, or rather your face to their faces. E mail is cowardly and open to misinterpretation, doctoring, and can be sent across the world in the blink of an eye. Don’t do it.
2) It is important now to establish the tone for all future discussions so be as honest as you are can. Tell them that you will meet with them regularly to update them and take questions (because you will, won’t you) and as far as you are able you will tell them everything you can. Tell them that you will invite questions both now and after they have had time to absorb the information.
3) If they are very quiet at this stage don’t be misled. They are probably in shock and have not yet fully absorbed what they have been told. When you leave the room you will probably hear a lot of discussion immediately strike up behind you but don’t take it personally. Never take it personally. You are the immediate face of management and their representative on earth so you will get some flak, but don’t take it personally. This will require some practice….
4) While you still have some energy set up your own support network. You will need it, preferably with some managers or business owners in the same position. Make spaces in your diary now and commit to getting together regularly to share information, coping strategies and handkerchiefs. Go to that next business/management networking event and find someone with experience of this. Or use formal support like a coach.
5) Look up the details of any staff counselling/welfare service or anything offered locally. Even if you don’t need it someone will soon. You might even give them a call to check that someone has remembered to warn them of the likely increase in calls to their service. Maybe even arrange a date to get them in to tell your team what they can offer? If you run a small business try your local support group or Business Link to see if they can offer anything.
6). Go home. You’ve had a tiring day.
Change – How to Survive Tip 7
All change means a loss of some sort. Yet often we are exhorted by those implementing the change to embrace it, get on with it, stop resisting! Resistance is seen as negative and disloyal.
Yet a certain amount of natural resistance is entirely natural, possibly inevitable. None of us reacts the same way to change and if we’ve had a lot of personal change, this may just be a step too far.
So my advice is, recognise what loss the change means to you and honour and acknowledge it. If it’s loss of colleagues, make sure you have a proper farewell. Ditto with a change of environment. This may be a communal activity like an office party or it may be something private, like a simple ritual of your own.
Whatever you choose to do, mark the change from one state to another in some way. It helps!
What sorts of things do you do to mark changes in your life?
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Change – How to Survive Tip 6
Are you a Magical Thinker?
Actually, you probably are; we all do it to an extent! But we tend to do it most when change is on the cards, a change or period of uncertainty over which we have no control.
What is Magical Thinking?
I first learned of the term magical thinking when working with young children undergoing trauma in their lives. At one stage, it was received wisdom that children shouldn’t be told what was happening if it was considered bad or negative.
This proved to be singularly unhelpful to children and their chances in later life, as they then resorted to magical thinking. They filled the gaps in their knowledge with stories of their own.
And invariably these stories (magical thinking) made the children themselves somehow responsible for what was happening. In the absence of information sensitively and appropriately given they imagined the worse and even made themselves culpable.
Adults Use Magic Too…
When I went on to work with adults experiencing change and periods of uncertainty I realised that we all do it. In the absence of concrete, trustworthy information we make sense of the bits we do have by stringing together a story, usually with ourselves being worse off in some way. (see tip 5) And these stories can get passed around an organisation and come to be accepted as a universal truth.
If there is a gap in your knowledge of any impending change, beware of your magical thinking tendencies and try and get some straightforward information. Check out your sources! There’s no point in worrying unnecessarily!
For details of my next change seminar please click here. And if you have some examples of magical thinking in your organisation, please do share with us!
Change – How to Survive Tip 5
When you hear a change outside of your control is on the cards, what are your automatic thoughts? Do you think:
“Oh great, this’ll be good for me!”
or
“Oh no, this will be terrible!”
Most of us tend towards the second response precisely because we have no control. But take a few moments now to think back over actual changes outside of your control, and what the outcomes for you were.
Was it all bad or have you benefited from unplanned changes in the past? Please do share.
Details about my change seminars are available by clicking here!
Change – How To Survive Tip 4
What is your attitude to change? Can you change your attitude to change….?
Before you can do the latter you need to be clear about what you think. Ponder these questions:
Change Questions
- How do you feel about change?
- Do you regularly initiate new things, have new thoughts on old subjects?
- What’s your instinctive reaction when you hear something is changing?
- How do you feel when you visit an old haunt where all has changed?
- How do you feel if the office furniture gets moved?
- What things in your life do you believe to be sacrosanct i.e. must never be tampered with?
- What things can you let go off easily?
- What changes can you see on your horizon over next 6 months?
- How does thinking about future changes that make you feel?
Now write a paragraph to yourself describing how you feel about change- it’s just for your eyes! Did anything surprise you?What changes (if any) would you like to make in your response to change?
This is part of a series on managing change. If you want to be certain of getting every post you can sign up for them simply by putting your email address in box at top of this page. And of course you can unsubscribe at any time.
Change – How to Survive Tip 2
The first casualty of change is truth.
If you are in an organisation undergoing major change you will know that communication is vital. All organisations know this and every single book on managing change tells managers to communicate, communicate and communicate!
And in my experience, all organisations start off with good intentions but become lapsed communicators somewhere along the way.
The reasons are many. Maybe the person in charge of communications suddenly finds their own job at risk and goes to ground. Maybe the project is floundering and no one wants to say so openly. But more often it’s because for long periods of time there is no real change. And organisations make the huge mistake of saying nothing.
And we know what happens to a vacuum? Someone helpfully fills it.
Managing Change Tip
Always try to distinguish between you know what as fact, actual fact from a reliable source, and what is conjecture, rumour, speculation and gossip. If you hear something about the process try and check it out. Try not to get drawn into discussions of how awful everything will be because actually, that makes you feel awful! It’s fine to let off steam now and again but endless discussion of how bad it all is will really bring you down and limit your ability to cope.
Details of my change seminars can be found here.
