All modern leaders should embrace change. It's a fact of life and not something that comes as a surprise to the modern leader. But how do you as a leader respond to change?
There are several ways to do this: at one end of the spectrum is the "This too shall pass approach", where you see change as something disruptive and transient that needs to be overcome in order to get back to everyday life. It is often in everyday life that you are rewarded for your leadership, both by your boss and by your employees. Because here you get "something done", and it may be less complex than the strategic change you also have to deal with.
On the other end of the spectrum is the "We're going to do it again and again" approach. But instead of "flying under the radar", I would encourage you to make sense of the change you're facing and ask the questions that your management colleagues are surely asking themselves: "Why do we need to do this now? And how do I make sense of this change for myself and my employees?"
Change management is modern management. The stable is change, and organizations are constantly slipping in and out of change. The attitude of leadership towards change is crucial to the ability and capacity to set the right goals and listen to the organization: is there room for change now? Do we have the skills? How do we connect it to the needs of the employees?
Bring the human - yourself - on board
At the heart of the way management handles change are the people - the employees - and yourself. The key for you as a management team is to prioritize so that you have the space and room to actually qualify the change, ask the right questions and be curious about the employees' perspective.
To succeed, leaders need to be a role model for emotional intelligence and ensure that the change is focused on the hard KPIs, as well as KBIs (Key Behavior Indicators) and KHIs (Key Human Indicators). As a manager, you have to listen to your employees - even about the small things that matter. If the leadership team fails to do this, they risk employees jumping ship - and the change.
The myth of "resistance to change" can be a simple "explanation" for failed change. But could the fault lie with the leadership team? Often the truth is that it's not the change that's resisted, but the way it's managed.
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