Why is employee engagement such an important topic?

By Elisabeth Goodman

My blog on employee engagement (Employee engagement – some interesting data and perspectives for Lean and Six Sigma practitioners) is, of all the blogs that I have written since 2009), the one that has attracted the most attention.  I wrote it in response to an article I read in the business section of the Sunday Observer¹ – a very informative study that the Observer had commissioned, rich in case studies and data from FTSE 100 companies.  So why has this blog attracted so much attention?

Employee engagement is the key to organisational and team effectiveness

The Observer article caught my attention because employee engagement, or involvement is intrinsic to business process improvement through such techniques as Lean and Six Sigma.  If people are not engaged, they won’t be committed to the organisation’s goals, won’t be able to communicate those goals as part of building strong customer relations, and won’t be looking for ways to achieve those goals through efficient internal processes.

People also need to be engaged in order to achieve effective business change.  Participants in my Change Management courses sometimes find it a revelation to hear that resistance from those experiencing change is a good thing, something to be welcomed.  Resistance is an indication that people are actually beginning to engage with a change:  that they are considering what the impact will be on them, rather than oblivious to or ignoring it.

And without engagement, people will find it impossible to identify and share the learning and insights, which are essential to healthy and thriving teams and organisations if they are to learn from their mistakes and build on their successes.

As I wrote in the December 2011 version of my RiverRhee Newsletter, “The answer comes from within… with the help of others”, it’s only possible to have an effective team or organisation if people are engaged.  Employees have the key!

‘Empowerment’ and ‘Intrapreneurs’

One of the big themes in my life as a corporate employee was ‘empowerment’: encouraging employees to appreciate and act upon the idea that they had ‘the power’ to make decisions and carry them out without necessarily referring to their managers.

As someone who is now self-employed and runs my own business, the idea of acting otherwise makes no sense at all!  I work in teams in an associate relationship, and we collaborate in our decision-making and actions.  I meet a lot of entrepreneurs, and have often wondered what it would be like if people took an ‘intrapreneurial’ approach to working within organisations.  In a 2010 newsletter (‘Finding our voice’ – a route to greater employee engagement and empowerment?), I suggested that what might help people to do this is to take a more active perspective of their careers – so that they view their current job as one that they have chosen, and are in control of, rather than something that they are being subjected to (to put it a bit bluntly!).

What if there weren’t any managers?!

I really enjoyed reading the case study of Morning Star in the December 2011 edition of Harvard Business Review.²   Gary Hamel describes a leading food processor, with revenues of over $700 million and 400 full-time employees, which functions entirely around the principles of self-management.

At Morning Star, no-one has a manager, each employee negotiates responsibilities with their peers and is responsible for finding the tools that they need for their work, everyone can spend the company money, there are no job titles or promotions, and compensation is decided between peers. The only ‘boss’ is the overall mission of the company.

This model works at Morning Star because it combines an individuals’ responsibility (and freedom) for managing their work within the context of the overall mission, and collaboration between peers to define and review individual roles and expected performance.

The article goes into a lot more detail, but one of the many interesting aspects of this model is that engagement and empowerment are not issues at all in this kind of scenario.  As a result of this approach, every individual inevitably has to:

1. Use their initiative
2. Continuously develop their skills to enhance the quality of their work
3. Display flexibility to respond to the changing environment of the organisation
4. Work in a collegiate way to fulfill their role in relation to their peers
5. Make decisions that directly affect their work

These are wonderful illustrations of process improvement / Lean and Six Sigma (1,2,4,5), Change Management (3), and Knowledge Management (2, 4) in practice.

Some final thoughts about thriving

I love my work, and welcome Monday mornings as the start of another week of new discoveries, opportunities to work with others and practice and develop my skills.  I meet many others running their own business that feel the same.  It sounds like the employees at Morning Star may also feel like this.

Another Harvard Business Review article³ suggests that giving employees a chance to learn and grow will help them and the organisation to thrive.  This time the managers are in charge again, but some of the themes re-occur:

1. Providing employees with the discretion to make decisions directly affecting their work
2. Ensuring that people have the information they need to understand how their work relates to the organisation’s mission and strategy
3. Encouraging good (civil) behaviour – positive relationships
4. Offering performance feedback

The authors suggest that these 4 mechanisms will foster vitality (or energy in individuals and in those with whom they interact), and learning (or growth from new knowledge and skills).

Conclusion

It seems that, unless people are running their own business or are self-managing themselves in an organisation such as Morning Star, employers need to study and support the mechanisms that will enable employee engagement and so help individuals and the organisation to thrive.  We’re obviously not there yet.

Why are you interested in employee engagement? It would be great to read your comments.

Notes

1. Are more firms listening to their staff or are they just paying lip service? Observer, 22 August 2010, pp38-39
2. Gary Hamel.  First, let’s fire all the managers. Harvard Business Review, December 2011, pp49-60
3. Gretchen Spreitzer and Christine Porath.  Creating sustainable performance.  Harvard Business Review, January-February 2012, pp93-99

Elisabeth Goodmanis the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that helps business teams to enhance their effectiveness for greater productivity and improved team morale. Elisabeth has 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry where she has held line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting Information Management and other business teams on a global basis.  Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and in Lean Sigma and is a member of CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals), and APM (Association for Project Management).

What can Lean and Six Sigma and Dilts’ Logical Levels of Change bring to effective change management?

By Elisabeth Goodman and Lucy Loh

This is the fifth and last blog in our series on “Enhancing Team Effectiveness in a time of change” based on our recent publication in Business Information Review⁽¹⁾, and other publications and seminars in progress.  We explore two last tools: Lean and Six Sigma in Change Management and Dilts’ Logical Levels of Change.  We also suggest some next steps for you to practice what you will have learnt, and ask whether you would be interested in some follow-up support, and if so, what form that might take.

In case you missed them, this is what we covered in our previous blogs

In our first blog (Enhancing team effectiveness in a time of change – an introduction), we described the challenges being faced by organisations, teams and individuals and the impact that these changes have on them.

Our second blog (Recognising reactions to change, and responding to them) explored how people (either as individuals or teams) respond to change and how to help them through their journeys in a positive way.

Our third blog (Tools for supporting teams during their journeys through change) introduced five more specific tools for supporting teams during their journeys through change.

Our fourth blog (Team development, pre-requisites for success and temperature checks: tools for effective change management) explored three of the tools: team development, pre-requisites for success and team temperature checks in more detail.

Lean / Six Sigma

The Lean and Six Sigma process improvement philosophies and tools can be extremely useful to a team undergoing change.  We have worked with organisations to help them develop strategies and implement change in an approach analogous to that described by Steven Spear⁽²⁾:

1. Identify the value to be delivered, and your team’s goals, in the context of your customers’ and other stakeholders’ expectations
2. Adopt an end-to-end (cross-organisation) process orientation i.e. going beyond traditional silos to explore how to deliver customer value most effectively and efficiently
3. Commit to identifying, solving and learning from problems
4. Build capability within the team to perpetuate a culture of continuous improvement

Even short workshops around any one of these steps with a team undergoing change can already help them to be better equipped to deal with it.  We have worked with an academic library team preparing to centralise processes for books and periodicals that were previously decentralized across several college libraries.  An engagement with a pharmaceutical contract research organisation (CRO) has enabled it to engage people across the whole of its organisation, deliver real savings in cost and time, and embed this approach as a sustainable way of working.  You can read more about these case studies on our web site (RiverRhee Consulting case studies).

Dilts – Logical Levels of Change

This tool is one that can be used both as a diagnostic, and as a planning tool in a time of change.

Robert Dilts is a leading figure in the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) who recognised that it is important for team leaders to act at multiple levels to achieve change.  He developed the Logical Levels of change model, as a helpful way of understanding the elements of effective team performance⁽³⁾.

Logical levels of change

Environment

The ‘Environment’ is outside the team: the place and time where and when the team works, the team’s customers or stakeholders, the physical layout of the work area.

Behaviour and capabilities

‘Behaviour’ consists of specific actions: what each team member does, says and thinks.  This will be the outward display of having successfully introduced new working practices and so it will also be useful to define the key expected behaviours for implementing a particular change.

‘Capabilities’  (or ‘competencies’) are skills, qualities and strategies, such as flexibility and adaptability.  They are consistent, automatic and habitual, are how work gets done in the team and will often need to be defined, taught and practiced in order to support change.

Performance management is an established process for managing goals for Behaviours and Capabilities in most organisations.

Values and beliefs

‘Values’ are what an individual or team holds to be important.  They act as the ‘why’: the emotional drivers for what a team member or the overall team does.  ‘Beliefs’ are what an individual or team holds to be true, and so influences how the person or team acts.

Values are critical: for most of us, they are key, unconscious influences on how we act.  The values demonstrated by the team leader are particularly important.  For example, a team leader who values harmony could act to reduce tension in the team.  In some circumstances, it could be more important that the team leader values achievement, and temporarily ‘parks’ an issue of tension in order to meet an important deadline.

Within the team, it is vital that the team leader manages a sensitive debate on the values which will be important for future team success, meeting the needs of its customers and stakeholders – not necessarily the values which the individual team members hold most strongly.

At a time of change, it is helpful for the team leader to ask all the members of the team to state their Beliefs about working in the team – and to facilitate a healthy debate about these.

Identity and purpose

‘Identity’ is how a team thinks about itself, the core beliefs and values that define it, and provide a sense of ‘who the team is’.  Healthcare professionals could have an identity as nurses, for example.

‘Purpose’ refers to the larger organisation of which the team is part.  It connects to a wider purpose – ‘for whom?’ or ‘what else?’  For healthcare professionals, their purpose could be to alleviate suffering or to provide care.

Using the Dilts model

The model helps the team to understand its status, and to make choices about what to do.  It has a natural hierarchy, and indicates where change is required in the team, to assist its effectiveness in the wider organisation.  Where the nature of the wider organisation has changed, and the role of the team has changed within it, then the team would work through all of the levels, from identity downwards, to consider what has changed and to redefine itself.

When introducing change in an organisation: our first thought might be to put up posters, or run training courses.  To achieve change, it’s tempting to focus activities on the lower levels of Dilts’ pyramid, because they are more ‘visible’, and easier to act on.  Organisation change, for example, (changing the organisation chart, reporting lines, which skills are located in which team), affecting the bottom three levels of the pyramid.  But change at these lower levels will not necessarily affect the higher levels, and we can both identify examples where large amounts of energy went into these activities at the lower levels but little into the identify and values of the new organisation, with poor results.

We can create more lasting and sustainable change, by working on purpose, identity, values and beliefs.  These higher levels in the pyramid are generally more ‘invisible’, harder to change and harder to assess because they address the thoughts and emotions of individuals. For lasting and sustainable change, we therefore need to consider the new purpose of the team, what the new identity would look, feel, and sound like, and what the values and beliefs would be to sustain that new purpose and identity.

It is worth significant effort to engage the organisation and its teams in this as much as is practically possible.  This is the way to change those thoughts and emotions, which will then motivate changes in capabilities and behaviours.   Training courses and posters could be developed which re-emphasised the changes in identity and values, while also developing the capabilities and behaviours needed.  Development of the environment to support the change would also honour the new identity and values.

Conclusions and suggested next steps for you & for further support

There are many drivers for change in today’s business world, and change brings challenges to teams, who are delivering services today and need to evolve to deliver differently tomorrow.

Fortunately, there are many well-established methods of assessing and developing team effectiveness, and our series of 5 blogs has covered several of them.

Now that you’ve read this, and perhaps some of our other blogs, what might you do differently?  Here are some suggestions:

1. Think about the changes that you are experiencing, either at work or at home.  Where are you on the change curve in relation to these?  What action(s) could you take to help you move through the change curve?
2. If you are responsible for initiating or driving change, think about your personal or organisational context for change.  Is there a way of better articulating the associated purpose, identify, values and beliefs (i.e. as in the Dilts’ model)?
3. If the change you are involved in has an impact on others, think about what they may be experiencing in the change curve and what might help them through it; use Lean and Six Sigma techniques (in this blog) to identify and engage all the stakeholders involved in an end-to-end perspective of the process
4. If you are leading a team, or would like to support the team leader, consider the status of the team in terms of team development, and the prerequisites for team success, and engage the team members in building the (new) team
5. Review the list of tools for organisational change and team effectiveness, and try at least one of them.

And finally, these blogs on organisational change and team effectiveness have achieved a record level of readership.  We’d like to offer further support and are considering webinars, e-books / workbooks, training courses additional to those that we already offer (see RiverRhee Consulting training and development).

Would you be interested in some further support?  What form would you like this support to take? Do let us know!

Notes

1. Goodman, E and Loh, L. (2011) Organisational change: a critical challenge for team effectiveness.  Business Information Review, 28(4) 242-250
2. Spear, Steven (2009) Chasing the Rabbit. How market leaders outdistance the competition and how great companies can catch up and win.  McGraw Hill
3. O’Connor, Joseph (2001) NLP workbook.  London : Element

Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that helps business teams to enhance their effectiveness for greater productivity and improved team morale. Elisabeth has 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry where she has held line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting Information Management and other business teams on a global basis.  Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and in Lean Sigma and is a member of CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals), and APM (Association for Project Management).

Lucy Loh is the Owner and Principal Consultant at Lucy Loh Consulting, a consultancy that helps businesses and organisations develop their business plans, and manage change in their organisations and teams to be able to deliver those plans.  She is also a RiverRhee Consulting Associate.  Lucy has 25 years’ experience in BioPharma, where she has held management roles in strategy development and all aspects of performance management, as well as extensive internal consulting.  Lucy has expertise and experience in organisation development, benefits management and in designing and leading business change. She is a certified Master Practitioner of NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP), which enhances her work in change management and individual coaching.  She is also an accredited trainer with the Institute of Leadership and Management for Strategic Leadership.

Team development, pre-requisites for success and temperature checks: tools for effective change management

By Elisabeth Goodman and Lucy Loh

This is the fourth in our series of blogs on “Enhancing Team Effectiveness in a time of change” based on our recent publication in Business Information Review⁽¹⁾, and other publications and seminars in progress.

In our first blog (Enhancing team effectiveness in a time of change – an introduction), we described the challenges being faced by organisations, teams and individuals and the impact that these changes have on them.

Our second blog (Recognising reactions to change, and responding to them) explored how people (either as individuals or teams) respond to change and how to help them through their journeys in a positive way.

Our third blog (Tools for supporting teams during their journeys through change) introduced five more specific tools for supporting teams during their journeys through change.

This fourth blog explores three of the tools: team development, pre-requisites for success and team temperature checks in more detail. Our next and final blog in this series will explore the other two tools: Lean and Six Sigma in Change Management and Dilts’ Logical Levels of Change.  We will also prompt you to reflect on the series of blogs on this topic, and initiate some activity to review and enhance the effectiveness of the teams you belong to.

Using a team development model to progress towards and sustain a ‘high performance’ team

We have used a version of the Tuckman⁽²⁾ and Hersey-Blanchard⁽³⁾  team development models with teams that are just starting up, as well as with already established teams.  It helps leaders and team members to understand where the team is in its evolution, and what they could do to help it develop towards a stage of ‘high performance’.

The renewing (also sometimes referred to as ‘mourning’) and forming stages are the ones that will happen most frequently at a time of change for the team.  These are the ones that require the most ‘hands-on’ and directive attention from the leader.  For a team going through change and renewal, it is important for the team leader and members to celebrate the successes of the past (as previously mentioned), and to take note of what made them successful.

Team leaders and members may fear and try to avoid the storming stage but this is an important time for people to air their views openly and share their ideas constructively in order to make the team stronger.

In fact the team leader needs to play a different role at different stages: one-on-one interactions with team members are especially valuable in the storming stage and a focus outwards to stakeholders in the high performing stage.  Through awareness of these different stages, team members can also support the team leader and other team members, as well as ensure that they are fully developing their role within the team.

Structured learning techniques such as discussing other teams’ experiences in ‘Peer Assists’ at the start of a team’s life, conducting ‘After Action Reviews’ (timely debriefs on lessons learnt) at key milestones, and holding in-depth ‘Learning Retrospects’ at the end of a team’s life can be particularly useful to capture and share lessons learnt between existing and new team members and others outside of the team^(4).

Identifying and agreeing on best practices as pre-requisites for success

We have coached team leaders in using variations of a list of prerequisites as a checklist for effectiveness.  Team members can help to identify, prioritise and explore best practices for check-lists such as the following:

• Clear purpose & goals
• Trust & support each other
• Open communication
• Clear roles
• Diversity
• Task / Relationship Balance
• Decision Making
• Meeting management
• Information Management

Using team temperature checks to monitor and enhance team effectiveness

We use team temperature checks as a diagnostic with the previous prerequisites, at a time of change, to determine the status of the team, and to actively engage team members on the priorities to be addressed going forward.

The relative importance of each prerequisite will change during the life of the team, as will the team’s perception of how well they are performing.  Rather than dwell retrospectively on everything that is not working, the team should focus on the biggest gaps between importance and performance of a prerequisite, and explore the suggestions for improvement in order to move forward in a constructive way.

At the request of team leaders, we have polled members individually to obtain ratings of the perceived importance and performance against each prerequisite, and to encourage them to make suggestions for improvement to bring back to a team workshop.  Using an external objective facilitator can help with this, although in the long-term teams could manage this themselves e.g. by doing periodic ‘After Action Reviews’ in team meetings, or at key milestones.

In a time of change it may also be appropriate to involve customers, suppliers and other stakeholders in this process.  This will deliver two benefits: getting some external input, and also building relationships with people of importance to the team either during or after the change.

Notes

1. Goodman, E and Loh, L. (2011) Organisational change: a critical challenge for team effectiveness.  Business Information Review, 28(4) 242-250
2. Tuckman, B. and Jensen, M. (1977) Stages of small group development revisited, Group and Organizational Studies, 419-27
3. Hersey, P and Blanchard, K Situational Leadership.  See for example : www.12manage.com
4. Collison, Chris and Parnell, Geoff (2004) Learning to Fly: Practical Knowledge Management from Leading and Learning Organizations. Capstone; 2^nd Edition

Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that helps business teams to enhance their effectiveness for greater productivity and improved team morale. Elisabeth has 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry where she has held line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting Information Management and other business teams on a global basis.  Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and in Lean Sigma and is a member of CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals), and APM (Association for Project Management).

Lucy Loh is the Owner and Principal Consultant at Lucy Loh Consulting, a consultancy that helps businesses and organisations develop their business plans, and manage change in their organisations and teams to be able to deliver those plans.  She is also a RiverRhee Consulting Associate.  Lucy has 25 years’ experience in BioPharma, where she has held management roles in strategy development and all aspects of performance management, as well as extensive internal consulting.  Lucy has expertise and experience in organisation development, benefits management and in designing and leading business change. She is a certified Master Practitioner of NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP), which enhances her work in change management and individual coaching.  She is also an accredited trainer with the Institute of Leadership and Management for Strategic Leadership.

Tools for supporting teams during their journeys through change

By Elisabeth Goodman and Lucy Loh

This is the third in our series of blogs on “Enhancing Team Effectiveness in a time of change” based on our forthcoming publication in Business Information Review, and other publications and seminars in progress.

In our first blog (Enhancing team effectiveness in a time of change – an introduction), we described the challenges being faced by organisations, teams and individuals and the impact that these changes have on them.

Our second blog (Recognising reactions to change, and responding to them) explored how people (either as individuals or teams respond to change and how to help them through their journeys in a positive way.

This third blog in the series will introduce five more specific tools for supporting teams during their journeys through change.  As it will take some time to describe each of the tools, we will just summarise them here, and hope that you will come back to find out more about them in our future blogs. (Of course if you’d like to find out more sooner, do please let us know.)

It’s natural for teams to go through a ‘storming’ phase to get to ‘high performance’

Tuckman⁽¹⁾ and Hersey-Blanchard⁽²⁾ amongst others have developed models for describing the stages that teams go through in their development. We have used a version of their team development models with teams that are just starting up, as well as with already established teams.  It helps leaders and team members to understand where the team is in its evolution, and what they could do to help it develop towards a stage of ‘high performance’. Teams are often relieved to realise that it is natural and in fact desirable to go through a ‘storming’ stage in order to get to high performance.

There are check-lists of activities that teams can use as pre-requisites for success

We have coached team leaders in using variations of a list of prerequisites as a checklist for effectiveness.  We have encouraged them to involve members of the team in its success, through workshops that explore best practices from other teams that they have been involved in.

Team temperature checks are a great way to monitor and enhance team effectiveness

We use team temperature checks as a diagnostic tool combined with the list of pre-requisites, at a time of change (including team start-up).  It helps teams to determine their status, and to actively engage all their members in a discussion on the priorities to be addressed going forward.

The relative importance of each prerequisite will change during the life of the team, as will the team members’ perception of how well they are performing and of what they can do to improve their performance.

Lean and Six Sigma tie in with change management

The Lean and Six Sigma process improvement philosophies and tools will trigger off change for teams and organisations, but can also be an extremely useful support for a team undergoing change.

Many organisations now use a combination of both Lean and Six Sigma tailored to their own culture and needs, and we have worked with some of them to develop strategies and implement change for continuous improvement.

Dilts’ “Logical Levels of Change” can also be a useful support for change

This last team tool is one that can be used both as a diagnostic, and as a planning tool in a time of change.  Robert Dilts is a leading figure in the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) who recognised that it is important for team leaders to address multiple levels to achieve change.  He developed the Logical Levels of Change model, as a helpful way of understanding the elements of effective team performance⁽³⁾ and so we can and do use this too to help teams and the individuals within them through change.

Our next blogs in this series will explore each of these five tools for supporting teams during their journeys of change in more detail.

Notes

1. Tuckman, B. and Jensen, M. (1977) Stages of small group development revisited, Group and Organizational Studies, 419-27
2. Hersey, P and Blanchard, K Situational Leadership.  See for example : www.12manage.com
3. O’Connor, Joseph (2001) NLP workbook.  London : Element

Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that helps business teams to enhance their effectiveness for greater productivity and improved team morale. Elisabeth has 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry where she has held line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting Information Management and other business teams on a global basis.  Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and in Lean Sigma and is a member of CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals), and APM (Association for Project Management).

Lucy Loh is the Owner and Principal Consultant at Lucy Loh Consulting, a consultancy that helps businesses and organisations develop their business plans, and manage change in their organisations and teams to be able to deliver those plans.  She is also a RiverRhee Consulting Associate.  Lucy has 25 years’ experience in BioPharma, where she has held management roles in strategy development and all aspects of performance management, as well as extensive internal consulting.  Lucy has expertise and experience in organisation development, benefits management and in designing and leading business change. She is a certified Master Practitioner of NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP), which enhances her work in change management and individual coaching.  She is also an accredited trainer with the Institute of Leadership and Management for Strategic Leadership.

Top Tips for Motivating Teams

By Sue Parsons¹

When times are tough, some teams sink into lethargy, feeling anxious about the future. Alternatively, the business may have been restructured or downsized, with the remaining team members feeling vulnerable for their own positions. Whatever the cause, it’s exactly at these times, that teams need to feel valued and motivated.

There are some simple things business owners and leaders can do to improve team motivation, and therefore business performance:

1. Create an atmosphere of trust

Trust enables people to admit to weaknesses and ask for help. Leaders can create this atmosphere by being open and honest with them, and not “punishing” weaknesses or mistakes.

Encourage team members to share with each other.

2. Involve the team in your planning

Talk to your team members about your business plans. Ask for their ideas, what they believe the key issues are, and how they can be solved.

This will also help build that atmosphere of trust.

3. Set clear realistic goals

The goals will come out of the planning. There will be goals for the team as a whole, but each team member should have their own set of objectives, which will feed into the team goal. Make sure the goals are “ SMART² ”.

4. Get to know your team members as individuals

Spend time talking to each of your team members. Find out what’s important to them, both inside and outside work. Get to know their individual strengths, and their preferred way of working.

5. Recognise your team members individually

Having got to know your team members as individuals, use this knowledge. Everybody likes to be valued and recognised for their contribution. Give praise where it’s due.

6. Make sure each individual knows the part they play

Once goals have been agreed, then ensure progress is reviewed.

7. Seek feedback from team members

There are a number of ways of achieving this, during reviews with individuals, through regular team meetings, or on an ad hoc basis.

8. Concentrate on strengths

We all do better when we’re doing things we’re good at! You’ll get a better performance from a round pin in a round hole, rather than complaining that the square pin doesn’t fit!

9. Communicate, communicate, communicate!

Keep your team informed. Consider how you make sure your team knows what’s happening. A daily or weekly briefing is a good starting point. And the best communication is always two-way! So make sure there’s opportunity for the team to contribute.

10. Make time to have fun!!

A happy team is a motivated team! “Fun” means different things to different people, so it might be about friendly competition – meeting targets. Or it might be taking time out to have a chat about non-work stuff. It doesn’t necessarily mean going for a drink after work.

Notes

1. Sue Parsons is owner and principal trainer at Vámonos Training & Development, a training organisation specialising in team and leadership development. Sue has over 25 years experience in retail in management and training roles, and wide experience in the third sector, as volunteer, trustee and paid member of staff. She is a qualified MBTI Step 1 practitioner, and an associate member of the CIPD.
2. SMART  goals or objectives are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic / Relevant, Time bound
3. Editor’s note: as Sue says, maintaining motivation is essential when times are tough, in times of change, and indeed throughout the life of a team.  Although motivation is not a main offering of my company, RiverRhee Consulting, it is one that comes into a lot of the work that we get involved in, in enhancing team effectiveness.  So it’s great to have the opportunity to host this blog from Sue on this theme alone.  Our latest RiverRhee Consulting Newsletter made several references to individual motivation and the role it plays in enhancing team performance, and a previous blog on employee engagement, may also be of interest to readers.

Enhancing Team Effectiveness in a Time of Change – an introduction

By Elisabeth Goodman and Lucy Loh

Lucy Loh and Elisabeth Goodman have been preparing a few publications and seminars that deal with enhancing team effectiveness, strategies for personal and organisational change, and team development in the context of project management.  We thought it would therefore be timely to write a series of blogs picking up on some of our thinking in these areas.

All organisations, whether in the public, third or private sector, are continuing to experience organisational change on a large scale.  Whether this involves reshaping, redefinition of roles or just addressing internal efficiencies, all of these bring huge challenges.

At the same time, teams within these organisations must continue to deliver today as well as achieve changes to their own roles and services for delivery tomorrow.

Challenges facing today’s teams

As we write, in the second half of 2011, many global economies, including the UK’s, are undergoing unprecedented change.  These macroeconomic changes are triggering change at all levels in the public, private and third sectors.  The public sector faces the challenge of having to do ‘more with less’.  The private sector is seeking increased efficiencies and effectiveness, and is looking at innovation of products, services and the ways in which it does business.  The third sector has the opportunity, and challenge, to take on activities previously performed by the public sector.

Although today’s wave of change has been primarily created by economic conditions, change is now a constant, so this series of blogs is relevant whatever the trigger for change.

Impact on organisations

The economic conditions have created a scale and rate of change to challenge organisations, and the teams within them, as never before.  Within organisations, some teams are being downsized, with difficult choices to make about which people to retain and which to let go.  Often, a team is in the position of waiting and watching as the change ripples down the organisational layers towards them.  Some teams are being reorganised, revising their priorities, or making a case for their survival.  Teams are being asked to be more effective than ever, at a time when they are under more pressure than ever.

Impact on individuals and teams

It is important to recognise that all change involves people: what they do, and / or how they do it.  Many people in today’s organisations have spent their working lives in a period of relative stability.  Their expectations about the emotional ‘contract’ with the organisation (their future, their working style, and terms and conditions) may now be challenged, leading to a sense of uncertainty and instability.  Their job content (what a job comprises, how it is to be done, and how performance is assessed) may have been stable for years.

For many individuals, change is demanding, personally and emotionally, as things that were important in the past are put aside, and new ways of working take their place.  But change also offers an opportunity for renewal: to look again at what each team does, and to reposition the team to meet the voice of its customers.

To sustain team effectiveness during change, engagement of the team throughout the process is crucial.  As Peter Senge said, “People don’t resist change.  They resist being changed”. We believe that it is the uncertainty associated with change that can be so difficult and painful to cope with, and that everyone needs to feel that they have some sort of control over their situation.  Team leaders should value expressions of resistance as an opening up of dialogue on what people are thinking and feeling, paving the way for constructive discussion on how best to go forward.

External and internal drivers of change

Some organisational change is driven by factors outside the organisation, to which it then has to react.  In other cases, an organisation can proactively choose to change, interpreting the changes in customers, services and demand likely in the future and reshaping itself accordingly.  In each case, a particular team may discover that its customers have changed, or the needs and wants of their existing customers have changed.  This means that the value which the team delivers to its customers must also change, which in turn alters the nature of the team itself, its roles, and what ‘good quality’ looks and feels like.

In addition, the team members will have a wider set of established stakeholders with whom they have a good relationship, and whose needs and styles of working they understand well.  As the organisation changes, the stakeholders for the team may change, bringing the need to build relationships with a new set of people.

The UK local government election in May 2011 offers a vivid example of change in organisational values.  A number of councils changed from leadership by one political party to leadership by another, with a substantial turnover in the Councillors themselves.  The incoming Councillors held different political views and values (political and other), and had different manifesto commitments to the outgoing Councillors.  Almost overnight, the local government officers needed to stop working with previous Councillors, and begin adapting to a new programme of work described in the manifesto.  This is change at its most radical: a new direction, new values, new stakeholders, a new programme of work, and new ways of working.  This is the ultimate requirement: sustain delivery to the team’s customers in parallel with evolving the team and its effectiveness.

Concluding comments

Jay Galbraith, a world leader on organisation and team development, tells us : “Every organisation is perfectly designed to get the results it’s currently achieving”.  We believe that it is critical for teams to design themselves for effectiveness, to manage the status quo and to increase their resilience for change.

In this series of blogs, we provide insights into the challenges for the effectiveness of teams when their organisations are changing, and practical tips and suggestions on how to lead and maintain a thriving team.

Our intention is to provide ideas and techniques that both leaders and members can use to improve the effectiveness of their team, whatever its sector or current level of performance.  We describe core principles and general approaches to team development (often initiated from inside the team) and show how to use these to address change from outside the team.  We share ideas on how to ‘diagnose’ the current state of the team, whether it is performing well and is strongly aligned with its customers, or less so.

Our next blog in this series will address: “Recognising reactions to change, and responding to them”.

Notes

Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that helps business teams to enhance their effectiveness for greater productivity and improved team morale.  Elisabeth has 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry where she has held line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting Information Management and other business teams on a global basis.  Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and in Lean Sigma and is a member of CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals), and APM (Association for Project Management).

Lucy Loh is the Owner and Principal Consultant at Lucy Loh Consulting, a consultancy that helps businesses and organisations develop their business plans, and manage change in their organisations and teams to be able to deliver those plans.  She is also a RiverRhee Consulting Associate.  Lucy has 25 years’ experience in BioPharma, where she has held management roles in strategy development and all aspects of performance management, as well as extensive internal consulting.  Lucy has expertise and experience in organisation development, benefits management and in designing and leading business change. She is a certified Master Practitioner of NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP), which enhances her work in change management and individual coaching.  She is also an accredited trainer with the Institute of Leadership and Management for Strategic Leadership.

 

NLP steps to success for individuals, teams and organisations

By Lucy Loh¹

NeuroLinguistic Programming – being and becoming excellent

You may already have heard about NeuroLinguistic Programming or NLP.  What is it all about, and what can it mean for you?  We introduce NLP here as it is an incredibly powerful vehicle for self development and change.  NLP looks at and models excellence and results – how outstanding people or outstanding organisations achieve their brilliance.  And once we understand how those excellent results are achieved, then those same methods can be taught to others – a process known as modelling.

NLP was originally created by John Grinder, a linguist, and Richard Bandler, a student of psychology, who modelled three extraordinarily effective therapists.  And using their understanding of how these three very successful individuals achieved their results, they built a very elegant model which can be used to enhance communication, assist personal change, accelerate learning, and (importantly!), increase enjoyment of life.

NLP comprises three elements

• The Neuro part is about our nervous system : all the information we receive from the outside world comes in through one of our five neurological senses (sight, touch, hearing, taste, smell).  We ‘make sense’ of the information and then act on it.  The Neuro of NLP also covers our mind and how we think, as well as our physiological reactions to ideas and events.
• The Linguistic part is about how we use language, to order our thoughts, to talk to ourselves and to communicate with others.
• The Programming part is about the sequence of our actions, the patterns we use to create our behaviours to achieve our outcomes.

Five NLP steps to success for individuals, teams and organisations

i.         Know your outcome.  When you can define the outcome you want in a positive way, then it becomes more achievable.

ii.         Have sensory acuity.  Be alert.  Have all your five senses open and aware, so that you notice what you are getting and what is happening around you.  Where are you placing your attention? How can you enlarge the ‘repertoire’ of what you notice, about yourself and about others?  Acuity helps you notice if whether what you are doing is getting you what you want.   In the words of Eden Phillpotts, ‘The universe is full of magical things waiting for our wits to get sharper’.

iii.         Have behavioural flexibility.  Be willing to change what you think and how you behave.  With enough rapport and enough behavioural flexibility, you can achieve your outcomes.

iv.         Operate from a physiology and psychology of success.  See the skills and capabilities of others, recognise and acknowledge your own.

v.         Take action!  Without action, there are no results … 

These apply equally to an individual, a team or a wider organisation.  Acuity for an individual in a conversation might involve carefully observing and listening to the other person.  Operating from a position of success for a team could be about the positive attitude and commitment to each other and to the outcome from all the team members.  Flexibility for an organisation could be monitoring progress towards the organisation’s goals, and re-planning when required.

Each individual is individual ….

Have you ever had the experience when you have spoken to someone, and discovered afterwards that you have each gone away with a different ideas and conclusions about that conversation?  Have you heard another person describe a meeting you were at, and found that it didn’t resemble your recollections at all?  The answer lies in how we receive, structure and give meaning to our own experience.

Each individual has preferences about how they acquire information – neurological senses.

We each have developed preferences of which neurological sense we use, to acquire information about the world.  If our strong preference is visual, our language will reveal that we think in pictures – “it looks right”.  If our strong preference is kinaesthetic, things will “feel right”.  If our strong preference is auditory, things will “sound right”.

Each individual has different ‘filters’, and has preferences about what information they gather and how it is represented and sorted.

As we receive information, it hits a set of filters.  These have been created from the experiences we have had, the beliefs we hold, what we value, what our attitudes are, the way we perceive language, and many other things.   We each also have different ways of dealing with information and ideas.  Some people have a preference to start with the ‘why’ or purpose of something (the ‘Big Picture’) and others prefer to begin with the detail (the ‘Little Chunk’).  Some people look for how new information is the same as things they already know, and others look for how it is different.  Some people motivate themselves by describing what they want, and others motivate themselves by describing what they don’t want.   So we have different preferences for the type of information we like to take in, and then we process and interpret it differently depending on a myriad factors and invisible thought processes.

Being an effective communicator

NLP has a number of central principles – its guiding philosophy.  They are not claimed to be true or universal.  Instead, they form a set of ethical principles, because you presuppose them to be true, and then act as though they are.  One of the presuppositions is particularly important here :

People respond to their experience, not to reality itself

So as we communicate with others, it’s important that we recognise their individuality, and each person involved in the communication will be creating different meaning from it.

Here’s another presupposition :

The meaning of the communication is not simply what you intend, but also the response you get

This means that you take responsibility to explain what you mean, and to pay attention to the effect your communication has on others – as they perceive it – and react to what you observe.  And as they communicate with you, acknowledge their good intentions.

NLP in personal and team development

NLP has so much to offer as a way to enhance individual understanding, and individual and team effectiveness.  It includes role modelling excellence, the study of subjective experience, a set of principles, a collection of presuppositions to act as ethical principles, a way of using language to influence ourselves and others.

Using the sensory preferences described earlier, NLP can be used to show people what to do, tell them how to do it, and enablethem to perform brilliantly

Notes

1. Lucy Loh is an ex-Associate with RiverRhee Consulting. She has 25 years’ experience in BioPharma, where she has held management roles in strategy development and all aspects of performance management, as well as extensive internal consulting. Lucy has expertise and experience in organisation development, benefits management and in designing and leading business change. She is a Master Practitioner of NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP), which enhances her work in change management and individual coaching.

2. RiverRhee Consulting enhances team effectiveness by helping established business teams to make the most of their time and expertise and so achieve greater productivity, quality and satisfaction in their work.  Our consultants are qualified in Lean and Six Sigma, Information Management, Project Management, Change Management, Myers Briggs (MBTI) and NeuroLinguistic Programming.

Personality Type and Project Management – with reference to MBTI

Having recently completed OPP’s Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Step 1 qualification, I was fascinated by Dr David Hillson’s letter¹ in this months’ APM Project Magazine Inbox, and Patrick Bird’s article in the previous issue on ‘Type Setting’², which prompted the letter.

Both the originating article and the responding letter refer to the ability to identify different character types, and the importance of understanding how these may then affect how people behave in projects.

Patrick Bird describes four character types:

• Analytical types – who value facts, accuracy, time, competency and logic and are often risk averse.  They like some independence of action but will build relationships over time and, providing trust has been earned will be cooperative, dedicated and loyal.
• Amiable types – whose priority is building relationships, and using personal opinions, understanding and mutual respect to reach decisions.  They will resist management by force and authority
• Expressive types – motivated by recognition, approval and prestige, are excited by big ideas, and often don’t commit to specific plans. They tend to be risk takers and take more stock of the opinions of prominent or successful people than logic or fact.
• Driver types – results oriented with a focus on efficiency or productivity rather than the development of relationships.  They are willing to accept risks but want to get to way the pros and cons and move quickly to decisions and results.

There are some parallels between these character types that Patrick Bird describes, and some of the personality types described by the Myers Briggs Type Indicator³.  The MBTI is based on the work of the Swiss Psychologist, Carl Jung, and is the result of 20+ years of research by Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isobel Myers, 40,000+ articles, and further work by OPP and others.

Unlike Patrick Bird, MBTI describes 16 personality types, and also stresses that these reflect how people prefer to behave, not necessarily how people actually behave.  Over time, and with the influence of their environment, people will learn to develop their behaviour so that they may act differently to their preferred profile.  Although, as Patrick Bird rightly points out in his reply⁴ to Dr David Hillson, they may fall back to their preferred types under stress.  However, under extreme stress, people may also display some quite opposite behaviour to their usual preferences!

The MBTI’s broader interpretation of type may address some of Dr David Hillson’s concerns: people will display some of the characteristics of all 4 character types described by Patrick Bird – given that there are potentially 12 more types than these.  Likewise, it is wrong to put people into boxes in this way.  Just because people may have a natural preference to behave in certain ways, it does not mean they will always behave in those ways.  People will learn to behave differently and, with self-awareness (also sometimes referred to as emotional intelligence), will choose how they behave too.

Finally, as Patrick Bird also points out in his reply to Dr David Hillson, the important thing in project management, and indeed in any aspect of our working or private lives, is to recognize that what we do is not only about the tasks, but about understanding the people involved and the relationships between them.  The MBTI’s 16 personality types, and Patrick Bird’s 4 character types, can provide us with tools for increased personal awareness and positive understanding of the differences between people.  The importance, as with any tool, is to use them with awareness, flexibility and care!

Notes

1. Dr David Hillson, “Type setting or type casting”, Project, March 2011, Inbox
2. Patrick Bird, “Type setting”, Project, February 2011, pp.34-35
3. Patrick Bird’s four ‘character types’ approximately relate to the following MBTI types respectively: ESTP, ISFP, ENFP, INTJ.  More experienced MBTI practitioners please feel free to add your own interpretations!
4. Patrick Bird, “In reply”, Project, March 2011, Inbox
5. OPP has published an entire booklet on project management: “Introduction to Type and Project Management”, by Jennifer Tucker, reference 6177, which I will be taking a look at, and possibly writing another blog on this topic.
6. Elisabeth Goodman is Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting: enhancing team effectiveness using process improvement, knowledge management and change management.  Follow the links to find out more about RiverRhee Consulting (http://www.riverrhee.com), and about Elisabeth Goodman

Using consultants with purpose

Jokes about consultants abound, and, like all good jokes, the experience that provoked them is not hard to discern.  An excellent one-liner, quoted by Parcell and Collison in their book ‘No more consultants’¹ is: “Consultants ask to borrow your watch to tell you the time, and then walk off with your watch!”²

As you would expect from a book written by consultants, despite the title, there is still a role for consultants, but the message is to use them with a clear purpose: when they can deliver real value that cannot be obtained in any other way.

A second message, reflected by most of the book’s content, is to focus on using and building internal capability, to increase an organisation’s self-sufficiency, and reduce its reliance on consultants.

As the owner of a business consultancy myself, RiverRhee Consulting³, this was a book that I had to read, and one whose two key messages I absolutely agree with.

First identify the issue

Although the authors don’t spend a lot of time on this point, it is something that organisations can struggle with.  I have helped clients to articulate their issue before even undertaking a piece of work with them.

This can result in them deciding that the issue is not as great, or of as high a priority as they thought, or that they can resolve it internally without the aid of a consultant after all.  In the long run such outcomes must be a good thing: leading to better use of an organisation’s time and money, and greater credibility of consultants.

When clients decide that the issue does still need the help of a consultant, they can then use the consultant more purposefully, with more clearly defined goals against which to monitor the progress and success of the resulting work.

Then assemble the internal expertise to analyse the issue

Parcell and Collison strongly advocate a workshop-based approach to addressing issues, with participants being closely associated with the work under review.  Not only will these people be the most knowledgeable about the issue and the opportunities for addressing it, but they will then be more likely to own and take a vested interest in implementing the solution.

This workshop-based approach and the close involvement of the people affected by an issue and its solutions, are at the core of effective process improvement techniques (such as Lean and Six Sigma) and business change management.

Again the role of the consultant in this situation needs to be assessed and, if used, clearly articulated.  It’s possible that the consultant is bringing some additional subject expertise, but only if this is lacking internally and cannot be found through some other form of external collaboration.   It’s more likely that the consultant is providing project management, methodologies that the internal team is not familiar with, or facilitation.

Build the internal capability

This is the piece that Parcell and Collison devote the most of their book to: how the internal team, and any external people involved, can define and build the competencies and knowledge needed to resolve this issue on a long-term basis.  They describe in more detail their “River Diagram” and “Stairs Diagram” knowledge sharing tools that they introduced in their previous book ‘Learning to Fly’.  They give poignant examples of how these approaches have been implemented all around the world.

Building internal capability is essential for embedding and sustaining any process improvement or business change activity.  A consultant could facilitate the definition and provide training in the development of capabilities, but an internal HR advisor might be able to do this, or the members of the team might be able to drive this themselves.

Implement and sustain the solution

This is often the point at which consultants leave their clients to struggle on their own, and it’s often the most difficult and time-consuming part of the whole process.  Parcell and Collison don’t say a lot about it, but they do suggest that a consultant could help if the team does not know how to go about this, or is short of resources.

Again, a good consultant will be working to mutually agreed, and clearly defined goals against which the progress and ultimate success of the work can be monitored.

A good consultant will help you to address the fundamental issue of why you were not able to read your watch yourself!

By working with you purposefully, a good consultant, rather than borrowing your watch to tell you the time, will help you to read it yourself, fix it, have your eye-sight checked, or swap it for a wall clock depending on the correct interpretation of the original issue that you initially approached them about!

Most importantly, a good consultant will leave you with a more effective team: one more capable of tackling future issues that arise, and better able to judge if and how to use a consultant again, with purpose.

Notes

1. Geoff Parcell and Chris Collison.  No More Consultants.  We know more than we think.  John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2009
2. Robert C. Townsend – author of: Up the Organization: How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits (J-B Warren Bennis Series), Jossey Bass; Commemorative Edition edition (1 Jun 2007)
3. Elisabeth Goodman is Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, enhancing team effectiveness through process improvement, knowledge and change management. Follow the links to find out about how Elisabeth Goodman and RiverRhee Consulting can help your team to work more effectively for greater productivity and improved team morale.  Read Elisabeth Goodman’s blog for more discussions on topics covered by this blog.
4. Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell.  Learning to Fly.  Practical Knowledge Management from Leading and Learning Organisations.  John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2^nd edition, 2004.

Communicating change – some practical procedural guidance

I’ve been on the look out for a good book on how to help teams develop their key messages for introducing change.  Whilst ‘Perfect Phrases for Communicating Change’ by Lawrence Polsky and Antoine Gershel¹, does indeed have a rich array of phrases to use in different situations, it still did not quite help me with the ‘how’ for developing them.  However what the book does have is some very useful perspectives on how to go about communicating change.  This is what I will summarise in this blog.

Different phases of change require different kinds of intervention

The authors describe 3 phases: launch, execution, sustain.  There is of course also ‘prepare’, but this is something that we change management practitioners already know a lot about!

1. Launch. This is the point at which it is essential that leaders communicate what is changing, and also what is not changing (this can give some sense of reassurance in an otherwise changing landscape.  Leader also need to consistently communicate the ‘why’ – something that sometimes gets left out of key messages.  I particularly like the authors’ suggestion that leaders practice being able to communicate the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ in 60 seconds to help people absorb and retain the information.  They also stress the importance of leaders being readily available to help answer the inevitable questions that those affected by the change will have.
2. Execution. Polsky and Gershel’s suggestions here come under 2 broad categories: performance management and teamwork.  Performance management involves the focus on desired new behaviours, what people need to learn to achieve them, having clear definitions of associated roles and responsibilities, defining and monitoring measures to know that the new ways of working are being achieved, and celebrating success!  Teamwork is about leaders working with their teams in multiple ways to secure their engagement and involvement. It includes 2-way dialogues for input and decision making, defining and sharing common goals and rewards, surfacing concerns and resistance, and above all cultivating trust through role modeling and acknowledging contributions.
3. Sustaining also involves continued acknowledgement of people’s efforts, positive attitudes and results.  It includes reviewing learnings about how the change was handled for the next time, and thinking about and articulating what the next change will be!

Different types of communication require different types of intervention

Polsky and Gershel distinguish between 1-way communications i.e.  broadcast communications with limited or no opportunities for dialogue e.g. town-hall presentations, voicemail messages, postings on the company intranet; and 2-way or multi-dimensional communications which allow for more dialogue.

They list a number of different communication objectives and suggest which method of communication would be best for each:

Type of communication	1-way communication	2-way or multi-dimensional
Announcing change	To get the facts out	With line managers, to get buy-in
Responding to questions	For more technical changes e.g. using FAQs	Where personal emotions are likely to be involved
Creating urgency	To communicate deadlines, to ensure line managers are informed	When wanting to make a personal impact
Clarifying roles and responsibilities	For initial information, and for final confirmation	When discussing personal implications
Communicating individual objectives	As above	To reach mutual agreement on what is involved
Empowering employees	Once what is involved has been understood	To set expectations and gain understanding
Keeping people motivated	To send reminders and for more routine congratulations	To acknowledge special achievements, and to address issues

They also cite the characteristics of communication that would be suited to 1-way vs. 2-way approaches:

1-way communication	2-way or multi-dimensional
Transactional	Relationship
Fact-based	Emotional
Sharing information	Collaborating on a piece of work
Repetitive (especially if previously successful)	Innovative
Maintaining a good relationship	Dealing with relationship issues
Structured information (roles, responsibilities, milestones)	Untructured
Simple	Complex (requiring thinking and discussion
Audience fairly uniform*	Audience very diverse*

(*I would not tend to use this particularly distinction as the individuals within an audience will invariably have their own ‘take’ on the communication and how it affects them personally.)

Best practices for communicating change (and for handling resistance)

The authors’ list of “do’s and don’t’s” really resonated with my own experience of managing change.  It included:

• Build trust before you actually need to introduce change
• Be direct (this is especially important when anticipating or managing resistance – see more on this below)
• Talk to people early!  Get news out fast to  minimise rumours and raising false expectations
• Adjust your communication style and messages to your audience (recognizing when 2-way communication is needed)
• Watch your body language: it can affect the credibility of what you are saying
• Find your own personal style (again, it will not only make you more comfortable in delivering your message, but aid in your credibility)
• Choose the right person to deliver the message (it may not be you)
• Don’t expect to have all the answers (and be prepared to acknowledge that you don’t)
• Don’t expect to have the ‘perfect phrase’ (but see the earlier comments about the launch phase of change)

Handling resistance. It is not only inevitable that people will demonstrate resistance during change, but something to be welcomed as an indication that people are paying attention to the change, and thinking about the implications for them.

Polsky and Gershel suggest 4 steps in handling resistance that may be heading in the wrong direction.

1. “Empathise” i.e. ensure you have rapport with the individuals concerned and that you understand, or at least acknowledge what they are going through emotionally
2. “Level” i.e. make it clear to them how you perceive their behaviour and what impact it may be having
3. “Listen” to their reactions to, and views about what you are saying
4. “Take a stand” to explain what they need to do in order to comply with the change, and what the consequences will be if they do not (making sure that you have checked with HR first).

In my, and RiverRhee Consulting’s² work with teams, we not only aim to surface resistance so at to take corrective action if needed, but also to help us review the communication and change management approach.  Insights gained from those affected by change could be an indication that we have not addressed everything we need to, but that we may need to do, or communicate things differently.

Notes

1. “Perfect Phrases for Communicating Change” by Lawrence Polsky and Antoine Gershel,

2. Elisabeth Goodman is Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, enhancing team effectiveness through process improvement, knowledge and change management. Follow the links to find out about how Elisabeth Goodman and RiverRhee Consulting can help your team to work more effectively for greater productivity and improved team morale.