The key to successful organisational change is engaging with your employees
As leaders, supporting your people through change can feel relentless. Here’s the solution.
“I don’t have time for this and I don’t do feelings,” Graeme, a leader in the water industry told me as we discussed an upcoming change in his team.
Graeme was frustrated that his people were distracted by the uncertainty the change was creating. “I just need them to focus on work, get the job done, and not get caught up in worrying about what they think is and isn’t going to happen,” he said.
Graeme’s response is not an isolated one. I’ve heard a version of this many times over the years, including from Melanie, a nurse unit manager in a large hospital.
“There should be no such thing as emotion in the workplace,” she said, deadpan. “If you have to deliver a hard message, stick to the facts and keep emotions out of it.”
That approach might work if only humans were not emotion-driven beings.
Whether you like it or not, emotions underpin and drive human behaviour. We like to think we’re rational beings who make rational decisions but we’re not, and the more we try to ignore or suppress our emotions, the worse the outcomes often are.
But I get it. As leaders, supporting your people through change can feel relentless. It is exhausting. It can be frustrating.
Sometimes you don’t feel like you’re leading at all, rather you feel like you’re dragging, pushing, pulling, cajoling and fighting tantruming toddlers. Or perhaps you feel like you’re stuck in one of those nightmares where you’re trying to move forward but your legs don’t work and you’re either stuck or being pulled backwards.
Leading through change IS hard and it can be tempting to just shout, “Bad luck! We just have to get on with it. Suck it up.” But while that might feel good in the moment, the simple fact is – it doesn’t work. People can’t simply ignore their emotions, fears and concerns, so as their leader you can’t either.
Change is challenging
There is no change without discomfort. Our brain is wired for comfort and certainty. We like routine, patterns, habits and shortcuts. Reacting to change with caution, apprehension and defensiveness is our normal protection mechanism to any perceived threat.
Understanding the basic neuroscience of how and why we react to and resist change can help us understand how to deal with it. The amygdala – the primitive reptilian part of our brain – interprets change as a threat to our safety and control, and puts us into fight, flight or freeze mode. Even small or positive change can send us off on a spiral – often when we least expect it.
In my workshops, I ask leaders to think about a time when they’ve been surprised by their own reaction, or that of their team, to a small or positive change. The relatively small changes they’ve described include things like a microwave or TV being taken from a brew room, desks being moved in an office, hard copy newsletters being replaced with electronic noticeboards, and hot desking instead of having a set desk (although many would argue this is big change).
Positive changes that sparked unexpected responses included marriage, new babies, job promotions, moving house, moving in with a partner, separating from a partner, and even divorce. One leader told me how she had been surprised by her feelings after ending an unhappy marriage. “I was relieved and happy to finally be out of it and knew it was absolutely the right call, but I was still hit with fear and grief after the separation that caught me completely off guard,” she said. “At first I couldn’t understand it but then I realised it was because the change, although positive, brought with it uncertainty.”
Although humans are actually highly adaptive and good at adjusting to change over time or when we have to (hello evolution and our response to the COVID pandemic), there are some basic needs we cling to that change can threaten.
These needs were highlighted in my work with leaders at a Latrobe Valley power station that had been given a closure date of 2028. My role was to run initial training to help them understand the impacts of change on themselves and their people, and teach them the foundations to steer their people through the storm of what was set to be a long transition.
In those sessions, we discussed how change can impact our basic human needs, using Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs, illustrated below, to identify how big an impact the change was likely to have on people.
We didn’t get very far. For there, on the second rung, Safety, was employment, resources, personal security and property. For some people, the loss of their job would threaten this basic need for safety. They were worried whether they would find work post-closure and if they did, whether it would pay anywhere near what their current jobs did. They were worried about the big mortgage they had on their homes, their children’s education, the cost of living and their family’s future.
The way the hierarchy works, from bottom to top, is that once you hit the level at which your needs are threatened, you can’t go any further. So, for those employees who felt their Safety needs were unsteady, this is where they were stuck.
The next rung above Safety is Love and Belonging. This basic need could be threatened for employees with the closure. Some people had worked at the site for their entire 30 or 40-year career. Their colleagues were like family and they couldn’t comprehend a life without the daily connection with work friends.
Above that is Esteem. Those at the power station who were confident of finding future employment and not worried about losing their basic Safety needs could get wobbly at the Esteem rung. There is status, recognition, respect and freedom in working a power station job in the Latrobe Valley. The jobs are incredibly well paid and competition to get them is fierce. The loss of this job for some may threaten their sense of Esteem.
Talking through the basic needs we have as humans opened the leaders’ eyes to the significance of the change they were facing. They knew it was big and would have a massive impact, but to see these basic human needs outlined brought the magnitude home.
Resistance is real and has reasons
It’s easy to dismiss those who resist change as just choosing to be difficult, particularly if they’re in a well-paid job with good conditions. And sure, occasionally that’s true. But in most cases, once you get past the initial fight, flight or freeze response, you’ll see that people resist change for a reason.
In her fantastic book Transforming Norm: Leading the Change to a Mentally Healthy Workforce, Tanya Heaney-Voogt outlines eight reasons people resist change. I’ve added a ninth
They are:
- They disagree there is a need for change.
- They agree on the need for change but not on the solution.
- They resist the sender of the message.
- They are uncertain of the implications of the change and what it means for them.
- They fear loss.
- They resist because they can, it’s “fun”, and they’re jaded.
- They were told, not consulted.
- They have change fatigue or work overload and don’t feel they have capacity to take on anything else.
- They have experienced poor change before and don’t trust that it will be done differently this time.
One of these reasons is enough for people to rebel against a change, but if you hit on multiple points because your change has been poorly communicated and led, expect high emotion and potential conflict.
At the secondary school where Emily worked, the principal dropped the news on the last day of a stressful term that all staff had to move staffrooms that day. She gave no explanation of why or what for. This meant staff had to shift all their possessions, resources, desks and furniture before the early finish at 1.30pm.
“She just dropped the bomb at the morning all-staff meeting and was then surprised that it blew up in her face. She announced the news at the very end of the meeting with no discussion or question time available, and then got annoyed that staff were upset later that day. She genuinely couldn’t see what she’d done wrong,” Emily said.
The principal’s bulldozer approach gave staff reasons 2, 3, 7 and 8 on the list.
Understanding why people are resistant to a particular change will help you to be able to lead them through it and determine the messaging that will best resonate.
Not sure why your people are resisting? Don’t be afraid to ask them outright. Their response may give you valuable insight and you may then be able to involve them in resolving the concerns.
Command and control should be a last resort
“What if they’re not on board?” Sally asked her boss in their leadership meeting to discuss new reporting lines being introduced across her organisation. “I can see there being a lot of resistance to these changes.” Sally knew she was going to have a hard time convincing her 10 staff members that a split in reporting lines within the team was a good idea. In fact, she knew they would hate it.
Sally’s manager, a man in his mid-50s who was used to getting his own way without questions asked, hiked his eyebrows, looked at Sally incredulously and said: “If they don’t like it, they can leave.”
Sally recounted this story to me later with a shake of her head. “Never mind there’s a massive skills shortage, these guys are good workers, they’ve been with us for years, and just getting people to apply for government jobs is a challenge because of the lower wages we can offer… His answer to dealing with people who don’t like the change is to tell them to leave. If I do that I’ll end up with no staff!”
Sadly, this old-school command-and-control dictatorial style of management still exists.
Forcing change with a steamroller approach can feel fast and effective but it will cost you dearly and can have significant unintended consequences such as:
- high turnover of staff
- people off on sick and stress leave
- HR complaints
- poor culture
- low morale
- high conflict
- safety failures
- low productivity.
It may also come at a high personal cost. Battling against a resistant team is a killer for your stress levels and mental health. You feel like you’re going to war rather than work and are always on high alert waiting for the next attack, gotcha moment or booby trap. You don’t sleep, your tolerance is shot, and you’re probably not much fun to be around – at work or at home.
It can be tempting though – particularly if there is resistance to the change – because emotions are tricky and you just want to get the job done. You’re frustrated, time-poor and probably also being pressured by above to implement the change and get results. But as Brent Gleeson and Mark Owen write in their book TakingPoint: A Navy SEAL’s 10 Fail Safe Principles for Leading Through Change, “…most organisational change efforts fail because they happen in overmanaged, under-led command-and-control environments”.
Strongarming change with a “tell” approach without dealing with the legitimate concerns, questions and feelings of your people will not get you the results you need. Sure, at a surface level it might look like you’ve had success. The structure might have changed on paper and the reporting lines are technically different. But if Sally and her boss didn’t explain the reasons behind the decision and listen to the worries of staff, the change was unlikely to be successful. People find ways to work around changes that are forced upon them like this. Those workarounds can be well-intentioned
to make the best of it, or they can be a form of white-anting, of undermining the change because they didn’t want it or didn’t feel listened to in the first place.
People don’t like being told what to do and when they are, they resist. That doesn’t mean there aren’t times when a more forceful “tell” approach is required. Consider emergency responses or the restrictions and mandates implemented during the height of the COVID pandemic. In those situations, you do sometimes need to command and control to respond quickly and keep people safe. But even in the midst of a crisis, you can still empathise.
Avoidance makes problems grow
While a command and control “tell” approach should be a last resort when leading through change, avoiding leadership all together by sticking your head in the sand and pretending the change is not happening can be even more damaging. When you avoid the elephant in the room, or shirk your responsibility as a people leader by leaving it up to others to be the messenger, the problems don’t magically disappear. In fact, they often grow in size. What starts out as a few quiet rumblings and niggles about the impending change can quickly escalate into whopping great issues that are even harder to deal with as the emotion is heightened.
So why do some leaders, particularly those who did not instigate the change, avoid taking an active role in leading their people through it? Here are my top three reasons:
They don’t see it as their role.
It’s not their change so why get involved any more than they have to? These “leaders” don’t understand the difference between leadership and management. They figure they’re not a psychologist or counsellor so dealing with the emotions of people is surely outside their remit.
They don’t know how to do it.
They don’t feel they have the skills to have hard conversations under pressure or deal with the feelings that are coming up for their people. They don’t know where to start and are struggling to process their own emotions let alone someone else’s – so they do nothing and pretend like the problem doesn’t exist.
They don’t want to do it.
Afterall, it’s not their change. Why stick your own neck out and risk getting your team offside if you don’t have to? Surely it’s better to stay quiet and let others sort it out (or stuff it up).
I get it. Sometimes it’s tempting to shirk responsibility for delivering a difficult change message or dealing with the complex people part of leadership. You just want your people to turn up, leave life at home and get the job done. But avoiding dealing with the feelings of your people or suppressing your own is not healthy and will not end well. While someone may be able to keep their fear, anger and frustration at bay for a little while, that pent up feeling has to go somewhere and often explodes spectacularly. You end up with an even bigger problem than you would have faced if you’d had the courage to deal with and work through people’s emotions head on.
The other consequence of avoidance is losing the trust and respect of your people. If your people feel like you don’t care about them (apathy) or that you’ve just thrown your hands in the air, given up and are avoiding dealing with the hard conversations, they are likely to give up as well.
Organisations don’t change, people do
In their book TakingPoint, Brent Gleeson and Mark Owen wrote: “In any transformation, mindsets and behaviours must first change in order for the culture to begin shifting in the needed direction.”
Organisational change won’t stick unless your people change.
Steer Through the Storm: How to Communicate and Lead Courageously Through Change by Leah Mether. Source: Supplied
Even if you change processes, structure, policies and tasks within your business, if your people are not on board they will revert to their old habits. If you don’t slow down, get your messaging right and engage with your people first, they’ll fall back on what they know.
This is important to understand as sometimes, in the frustration of wanting to make a change quickly, it can be tempting to jump over the slower process of engaging staff and simply make the change with the hope that they’ll eventually come around. While this approach might be necessary in emergency situations, it should not be a default strategy.
When you try to push a change through too fast, without bringing your people along with it, you’ll actually slow down the process rather than speed it up, because implementation and acceptance will be slower.
Investing the time upfront will almost always save you time by minimising resistance and people problems later on.
Let me put my own hand up and make a confession: I’m crap at slowing down. I’m a high-action, “get the job done” person, possibly like you. I’m as tempted to skip over this part as you are. But that would be skipping vital information. You see, being a high-action leader will help you in many ways throughout your career, but in this context it can hold you back. You might personally adapt to the change and lead yourself through it, but when you look over your shoulder to check that your team is with you, they’ll be nowhere to be seen.
I see this play out frequently in well-meaning organisations with good intentions, such as organisations where leaders are trying to change embedded toxic cultures or get rid of gender bias and increase diversity. These are wonderful changes to strive for, but changing the organisation’s hiring practices on their own, without working on shifting the mindsets, attitudes and beliefs of your people, risks the change being tokenistic, and in some cases even dangerous. Imagine being a young female, hired into a male-dominated, blokey-bloke organisation as part of a diversity and inclusion program, only to be bullied, discriminated against and belittled by your colleagues in underhanded ways? How much damage could that well-intentioned action do to the person you’re trying to promote? It might sound extreme but I have seen this happen.
Changing systems on their own is not enough. You have to take time to engage with your people and their complex emotions, feelings and beliefs through change if you want it to be successful.
This article is an extract from the book Steer Through the Storm: How to Communicate and Lead Courageously Through Change by Leah Mether.
