Part of my Change Management work focuses on helping senior leadership become better ‘change leaders’ and giving them the skills to help them fulfill this role. It is clear that successful, sustained organizational change is driven by leadership.
I argue that leaders are not the only ‘change agents’ in an organization. I frequently ask leaders: Do you want your employees to understand that their jobs go beyond making a product or delivering a service and that being proactive in looking for ways to improve that product or service is also critical part of their work? The response I commonly receive is a resounding “YES”.
In the same way that leaders invest in themselves to evolve into change leaders, the same investment must be made in the work force. Strengthening interpersonal communication skills, learning about the elements and strategies of effective change management are the initial steps for turning employees into ‘change leaders.’
The next step is for leadership to create a ‘change leadership culture’ inside the organization. This culture is shaped by modeling what it means to be a ‘change leader’, providing the opportunities to initiate change efforts, supporting these efforts with resources and coaching, acknowledging successes and maintaining expectation and deadline flexibility.
One of the beneficial byproducts of developing a change leadership mind set among employees is the reduction of the resistance to change. Two of the leading contributors to resistance are the perceived sense of loss of control and lack of engagement in change implementation. When employees are engaged and become skilled at implementing change, their overall resistance to change diminishes.
Leading and managing change is, in my opinion, everyone’s responsibility and those leaders who are committed to and invest in this belief, will ultimately create a workforce that embraces change because it is the workforce that is initiating change.