Are you prepared to meet the next challenge with your head held high, guiding yourself, your team, or your whole company through anticipated or unexpected change? These strategies brought to us by the experts will help everyone come out the other side feeling included, energized, and prepared for what lies ahead.
Communicate your mission
Managers and workplace leaders have an additional responsibility: to ensure that employees adapt well to unexpected changes (such as a recession) and those anticipated (such as a merger or acquisition). “If you want to function adequately as an organization, as an employer, you have to build an environment in which change will not end up altering the lives of employees and hurting the business in the long term,” she says. “Even if you’re changing in a positive direction, you’re going to want everyone on the same page because if you accidentally end up creating high levels of stress and mistrust, it could backfire on the changes you’re promoting.”
It will never be too much that you can communicate about the changes’ benefits. Craig Schneider, the founder of Nectar Sleep, tells us about his experience moving his company from We Work 524 Broadway in New York to a company-owned building that will be operated by We Work. “We are working on making people understand how wonderful the space is, that it is located in an incredible area of the city,” he says. “And there will also be personalized follow-ups once the collaborators get there, to make sure energy levels are high; we’ll host parties and celebrations and highlight new ways the space can be used.”
Senior Director of People Operations at Sonos, Liz Welch (a member of the We Work Holyoke Building in Seattle, US), says there are reservations about sharing more, not less, information. “We tell teams, ‘This is what I know, this is what I don’t know, and at that point, you’ll have more information.’ “We are more likely to exchange information earlier and in a less complete state, merely because we believe that people need to know as soon as possible about things that may affect them,” she says.
It assumes that people react differently to change
Welch discovered that people continually react to change and that there is no right or wrong way to do it. “There are people who have a great drive, who adapt quickly,” he explains. “They are innately excited about change and can quickly translate it into opportunity, innovation, and optimism.” Then some like the position quo. “Many people get that knot in their stomach, that gut feeling that says, ‘I don’t know, this is kind of scary, I don’t like it.’ Who is in the middle? The rest of us. “Most people have some reservations about any change, even if it looks like a good thing on the surface,” he says.
When trying to navigate any change effectively, it is essential to know your reaction to it and the reaction of the people on your team. “Leaders who are architects of change have to be attentive to all the people throughout that process and leave no one behind,” he maintains.
Don’t rule out those who are slow to adapt
“It’s comfortable for anyone to judge people moving more slowly towards the acceptance end of the process and think they seem like a complainer,” says Welch. “But these people carry an enormous force correlated with a feeling of strong distaste for ambiguity or change. They can be deeply convinced and deeply loyal, and both are positive characteristics. You never want to lose certain people just because it took them longer to adjust to change,” she says. “It’s better to adapt as an organization around those people, rather than rush them or lose them.”
It is undeniable: when something changes, it is because the reality we used to know will no longer be the same. Faced with the certainty of what we cannot control, the advice of these experts can help you focus on what you can measure and predict. And do not forget, as, in many other situations in life, the first step is introspection to be able to register first what happens within ourselves.
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