If your team is navigating change, what actually helps is not a corporate playbook version or something you get from AI. You have to be real with people.
1. Communicate as much information as possible, even without full answers. When there are gaps in the information, then the troops will come up with their own answers. Sometimes the ringleader gives them a biased version of events, and sometimes their minds will fill in the gaps with what they fear the most. Fill it with the truth instead.
2. Identify the constants. When you introduce change, or you're going through a transition period, it's important to emphasize the fact that most of what they are used to is going to stay the same. People are creatures of habit, and they like to know what to expect. If you are only tweaking a few things, then it's not going to fundamentally change their work environment. They need to know that from you.
3. There will be temporary incompetence. If you introduce a new process or method for the work that they do, it creates anxiety. It's like “yesterday I knew how to do my job, and today I'm uncomfortable because you changed what I have to do at work”. There will be an emotional adjustment to the new task that is relieved when your people have experience and comfort with the new way of doing things.
4. Model the behavior that you want others to emulate. Calmness and self-control are contagious. So is anxiety and chaos. Choose which one you’re spreading.
Change management can be done in a way that is graceful, kind, and empathetic. You must be flexible and agile when it comes to objections, but that doesn’t mean that you are trying to please everyone.
Get ready to be ready!
Coach Ghaz