How to Manage the Pitfalls of Change Management
A discussion to highlight the importance of a leaders mindset and influence in a change-environment
When a transformation leader formulates a vision, defines the mission, embeds values in an organization and communicates this to employees the expectation is that change will occur.
This is almost never the case.
Followers may share the same goal as their leader, but followers have their own goals, those that must also be recognized.
Why people won't change
In a 2011 article published in HBR, “The Real Reason People Won’t Change”, Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey uncovered a psychological dynamic, they termed ‘competing-commitment’.
Kegan and Lahey noted that there are employees who just won’t change.
The obvious reasons are easy to see and address:
- Employee fears the unknown
- Afraid of new tasks
- Has little confidence in pushing themselves
But sometimes the reasons can be more difficult to uncover.
The good follower
Consider an otherwise good follower, someone who displays loyalty to the firm and its purpose. A person with the capacity to change yet strangely chooses not to.
Here, the employee may be unwittingly working against the leader in order to service a hidden competing commitment. Fuelled by a fear or a belief that they hold close, something in their subconscious, formed in their childhood.
When faced with this scenario, leaders must first guide their followers through a set of questions to reveal the competing commitment. Allowing followers the time to reflect and examine assumptions and then facilitating followers to implement change in the face of long-held beliefs.
This is a process that will only unfold over a period of time, one which involves meticulous and often painstaking reflection and questioning.
What must be highlighted to the follower, is that honest introspection and disclosure will not be used against them. rather it will form the foundation upon which future success will be built?
When honesty is used as a weapon it leads to a catastrophic destruction or trust, beyond repair.
It’s worth noting that introspection on the part of the leader is also vital in the modern business world. Leaders are not perfect, they’re human after all.
Mindset
Dweck (2006) discussed the opposing fixed and growth mindsets present in all of us. Exploring how leaders with a fixed mindset identify and develop a growth mindset, in order to improve, to be better placed to evoke change for organizational improvement.
Those with a fixed mindset believe that personality, intelligence and ability to be intractable, is present since birth.
Individuals with a growth mindset believe that all personal qualities are fluid therefore can be developed and improved with effort, experience, and intent.
“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.” — Bruce Lee
Fixed
Those with a fixed mindset fear risk. The view failure as a negative reflection of themselves, they have a negative attitude towards learning and view performance as a measurement of their overall intelligence.
In business, these leaders smother innovation. They cultivate environments that give rise to blind obedience. They laud natural talent within their ranks and often blinded by their egotistical, infallible visions of themselves.
Growth
Those with a growth mindset view failure as part of the learning process. Feedback. An opportunity. A guiding beacon to embrace, dictating the direction of their effort to invest in a particular task, objective or goal.
Growth mindset leaders are not just focused on personal and organizational growth. No. They’re committed to the development of each and every follower among their ranks.
Dweck asserts that the power to alter the beliefs that cause a leader to have a fixed mindset lies within. False or misguided beliefs can be altered with appropriate recognition and desire to do so. A will to change.
Influence
When a leader is in a position to unshackle followers from competing-commitment, and the leader has consciously adopted a growth mindset, influence is deployed more effectively as a result.
On that note, Cialdini (1984) identified six principles of influence:
- Reciprocity
- Commitment
- Social proof
- Liking
- Authority and
- Scarcity.
Effective leadership is beyond a simple acknowledgment of these principles. Effective leadership is determined by the application of said principles. This is what sets apart the “good to great” (Collins, 2001).
Final thoughts
Positional power may bring about desired results in the short-term, but “True Power” resides in influencing skills, not positional power (Lao Tzu).
Goldsmith (2007) proposed ten strategies for leaders tasked with influencing their group.
- When presenting ideas, realize it is your responsibility to sell, not their responsibility to buy.
- Focus on contribution to the larger good — not just the achievement of your objectives.
- Strive to win the big battles and don’t waste your energy on trivial points
- Present a realistic cost-benefit analysis of your ideas
- Challenge up on issues involving ethics or integrity
- Realize that your managers (followers) are as human as you are
- Treat managers (followers) with the same courtesy that you would treat partners or customers
- Support the final decision of your team
- Make a positive difference, don’t just try to ‘win’ or ‘be right’.
- Focus on the future, let go of the past.
Each approach proposed by Goldsmith echoes the value that followers bring to an organization. To summarise, I invite you to consider the words of Peter Drucker (2001), who said:
“The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.” (Drucker, 2001)
References
- Collins, J., 2001. Good To Great. London: Random House Business.
- Drucker, P., et al, 2001. Leading In A Time Of Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
- Dweck, C., 2006. Mindset. [Place of publication not identified]: Random House Publishing Group.
- Keegan, R., et al 2001. The Real Reason People Won’T Change. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at:
