Leading Through Transitions Participant Workbook One-Day Workshop

Kerry A. Bunker, Michael Wakefield

• Publisher: CCL Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781604918953
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Liderazgo

The Leading Through Transitions workshop and accompanying Participant Workbook provide you with the important information and tools needed to developthe key leadership skills that are so critical while facing unrelenting change.

Tips for Finding Balance on the Wheel

Optimism and Realism/Openness

Leadership has a key role to play in maintaining hope and commitment in the face of difficult transitions. When people are stressed by a crisis or major upheaval, they look to their leaders for positive energy and confidence. But this hopefulness and optimism must be grounded in reality and validated by openness, candor, and credibility. It is critically important to be honest and trustworthy. Trust can be undermined by a failure to be realistic, genuine, and candid.

Managers should consider the following:

• Energy and optimism are contagious. Rather than telling people that they should be positive and optimistic about the future, strive to be open and visible in modeling optimism for them. Walking the talk speaks more powerfully than setting policy or making pronouncements. If you are honest and sincere in your commitment to the future, people will read it on your face and observe it in your approach. Unfortunately, you can’t fake it. If you aren’t truly committed to where you are going, people will most likely read that from your face and your behavior—and they may not share that feedback with you.

• Maintain open channels of communication. Although your instinct may be to retreat with your trusted advisors to devise a recovery plan, you need to make a conscious effort to stay visibly connected to a broader circle of people. Make it clear that you want employees to share their concerns as well as their constructive ideas with you.

• Trust people to be capable of handling the truth. Tell them what you know and own up to what you don’t know. Most people understand that complex challenges don’t come wrapped in simple solutions. They don’t expect their leaders to be superhuman, emotionless, or infallible. Indeed, they will be skeptical and cynical if you wear a mask and try to pretend to be something that you are not.

• Be realistic. Don’t overdo optimism and self-confidence to the point of not recognizing or not sharing genuine barriers, obstacles, limitations, or mistakes. Use candor and honesty as vehicles for cultivating a higher level of trust and respect. Sharing the truth often provides a springboard for generating creative strategies and renewed energy.

• Don’t try to bury or deny your own human reactions to ongoing events. Powerful transitions trigger real emotions and feelings of loss and grieving in all of us. People pay close attention to their leaders in such times and are looking for indications that they are real people who are capable of having human emotions like their own. They also look to you for validation that these emotional reactions are normal and acceptable. Sharing honestly and from the heart will allow the grieving process to proceed in a more predictable fashion that will facilitate organizational healing in the longer term.

• Plan time in your schedule to simply dialogue with people. Make those times meaningful and special by being fully present as a listener, even if only for a few moments. Sharing some of you can go a long way toward stimulating the healing process.

• Do as much of your communication face-to-face as possible. In times of transition, people are sensitive to the loss of the human touch. Small investments in face time can yield enormous benefits in renewing trust and commitment.

• Avoid blowing smoke or putting a false positive spin on decisions or events that are inherently negative or difficult to handle. People will see through these attempts and add personal resentment to the dislike they may already be feeling about the transition process.

Self-Reliance and Trusting Others

This pair of leadership attributes is among the most difficult to balance. Our historical image of leadership tends to reinforce the notion of the heroic leader who is always strong, courageous, and self-reliant—the strong, silent type with superhuman skills and a capacity to stand alone in the face of demands that might overwhelm us mere mo...