Leading Through Change: How Good Leaders Turn Chaos Into Closer-Knit Teams

Organizations today make pretty constant changes to adjust to the dynamic workplace. But just because we get used to making all kinds of small adjustments doesn’t mean we are ready for large-scale change.

The truth is, most organizations are still pretty resistant to change. Large changes come with risk, and they require extra work and energy. But that entry-fee for a whole new level of innovation and improvement is well worth the potential gain—if you can pull it off.

Change management is often chaotic and complicated—it often necessitates a large commitment of organizational resources such as time, people and costs. Therefore, team leaders must have sound reasons for change that are clearly aligned with positive benefits or outcomes for the organization.

And they must have solid change management skills to make organization-wide transformations effective.

Why do organizations need change management?

No organization is the same, and there are many different reasons why an organization may seek change. Change might be related to processes, products, services, people or even systems. These changes may be focused on boosting employee productivity, creating a better customer experience to improve loyalty and satisfaction or any number of other factors.

These reasons for change can often be attributed to either internal or external origins—or even both.

Internal reasons to make a change

Internal reasons for change often take the form of individuals, processes or shared sentiments that exist within the organization or its members.

For example, an organization may seek change if there is poor leadership, inefficient organizational structure, toxic culture or low morale. These issues lie at the source of an organization’s functions and may limit its ability to achieve its mission.

External reasons to make a change

External reasons for change usually stem from changes in an organization’s specific industry—or even the world as a whole.

Changes in economy, technology, competition, culture or the legal/regulatory environment can necessitate change in organizations. Where internal changes can often be prevented with a little foresight or strategic thinking, external reasons for change are often unforeseeable.

Organizations have no control over changes in the external environment, but they must still adapt in order to maintain viability or success.

5 Ideas to prepare your organization for change

This is an aspect of change management that many leaders skip—to their detriment!

Just because you've identified a compelling reason for change doesn’t mean your organization is ready for the transformation. If you implement change before your company is ready, the attempted change may overwhelm everyone and cause more harm than good.

First, consider the current state of the company’s culture and morale. It can be extremely difficult to get a team to adopt change if they lack trust in their leaders or lack an overall positive workplace outlook.

So, before you try to make changes to the entire organization, do some groundwork to make sure those changes will hold.

Suggestion 1: Conduct surveys

Regular employee engagement or pulse surveys can be effective tools to assess employee satisfaction and how employees are currently feeling about their leadership and the organization's success as a whole.

However, engagement surveys can do more harm than good, if they are implemented, and the results and feedback are not acted upon. An employee might hope that senior leadership isn’t aware of poor leadership or the culture in organizational pockets; however, once they share that with leadership, if nothing is done this could reduce their engagement and satisfaction even more.

Suggestion 2: Ask your employees!

So much of change management comes down to active listening and effective communication. Many organizations are not in the habit of consulting employees for big decisions, but involving the everyday individual in the change process is critical.

By interviewing employees in employee focus groups, leaders can get direct feedback about their management and the overall state of the organization. Not only will you get relevant insights about your employee's readiness for change, you will also encourage their buy-in by helping them feel heard.

Even in a focus group, many employees will not speak candidly. Suggestion boxes are effective ways to get feedback without putting employees on the spot.

This way, employees feel more comfortable giving honest feedback to leadership. Don't look to these suggestion boxes for affirmations of what you’re doing well. Treat these valuable insights for what they are—a chance to get a deeper understanding of what is happening in your company.

Suggestion 3: Be realistic about implementing the change

Once leaders in an organization see the need for change, it's tempting to leap. But the transition to a successful change takes time. Don't move so quickly that you leave your employees (who will bear the responsibility of working inside the change) behind.

For example—say your company wants to roll out a new software system. You could probably get it running in as little as a day. But this doesn’t mean that the people in your organization will adjust that quickly. Create a process for each team member to understand the new software and give them time to adjust to using it.

When we talk about change management or leading change process, we often mean that people’s transition through change takes time and diligence. It's not so much the change itself.

Take the time to guide your employees through the prospective change, employ effective communication and be understanding about the difficulties individuals might face.

5 Steps in the change management process

Once you've prepared your company for change, you will be in a better position to make the change happen.

Change management can be challenging. It requires leaders to help everyone else navigate the change while they are (themselves) going through it for the first time. These steps can help ensure each team's success.

Step 1: Communicate the vision

Sometimes communicating the vision for the change requires better communication skills than leaders get by on when things are working as usual.

The leader must clearly explain the vision for the change to the entire team. What is the ideal future the change will lead to? For example, does the ideal future might include better employee engagement, customer experience, sustainability or all of the above?

Are there ways the potential change will also benefit your employees? To communicate effectively, you must understand what is important to your audience. (This is where those surveys come in handy). Present the goals of the change and emphasize how it might impact not only the company's success, but also your employees.

Employees will be much more likely to put effort into implementing this change if they understand the expected benefits. They may also consider their own professional development, and how they can further contribute to the overall vision.

Step 2: Choose an appropriate approach

There are numerous theories of change that you can draw on to inform your approach.

These models include...

• Lewin’s Change Management Model
• McKinsey^® 7-S Framework
• The ADKAR^® Theory
• Kotter’s Theory

Most organizations utilize these models verbatim or adapt a model for their organization. Choosing the change model carefully is important. Each model has a unique focus for processes and people. Choosing the approach that makes the most sense for the organization is essential for any change leader.

Step 3: Introducing the change

Leaders must monitor the early lifespan of the change to ensure its introduction doesn’t overwhelm the organization or its members.

This monitoring includes encouraging adoption of the change, celebrating its early successes, establishing systems for overcoming obstacles and addressing any resistance individuals may have to the change.

Step 4: Stabilizing the change

Just because a leader successfully introduces a change doesn’t mean their work is done.

Leaders must continue to oversee the late stages and aftermath of a change in order to overcome any unforeseen obstacles. This might require additional training programs, redirection in some areas or impromptu adjustments.

After a period of regular oversight, the change will hopefully stabilize, and people will become familiar with the transformation. This familiarity will create a sense of a new normal.

Step 5: Appraising the effectiveness of the change 

Once a change has been introduced and stabilized, leaders must be honest about its success.

If the change didn’t lead to the intended objectives or goals, leaders must be transparent and honest about that outcome. If you don't address the failure honestly, you risk losing the trust of your employees.

If the change was successful, leaders should make sure to celebrate this success and the role their team members had in its implementation. This is part of what it means to be a good leader. You should take on accountability for the change and its failures or problems, while giving credit to your teams when things go well.

(For more on what makes a good leader, check out Empowering Teams Should Be a Manager's Top Priority: Here's How to Do It).

Do you have what it takes to lead through change?

As you can see, making big changes in an organization goes way deeper than just hitting "go." Maybe you've seen what happens in companies when leaders don't take the steps to help their people navigate change. How much more productive, effective and painless could the process have been with better leadership?

But it's not easy. Successful leadership in change takes some serious skills

Leaders can support morale and even boost employee engagement during a chaotic time if they have the following skills.

Amazing communication

A leader of change must have clear, inspiring and transparent communication skills.

They must understand that change comes from the bottom up in an organization and communicate effectively. They must celebrate team successes and address missed goals while creating a safe space that encourages feedback.

When discussing change, using positive body language rather than negative body language can be another effective tool, as negative body language may make employees distrustful of your outlook or guidance. This is possible even in remote teams.

For more on the nuances of leading remotely, check out Your Action Plan For Remote Leadership Challenges.

High emotional intelligence

Key characteristics of emotional intelligence are empathy, compassion, patience and understanding--all of which leaders must demonstrate throughout the early phases of change implementation. 

A leader must understand that people will transition through change at different speeds. As long as people are moving in the right direction, leaders should show empathy and compassion for the challenges their employees face trying to meet their goals while subsequently adopting the change.

Steady resilience

Potential risks come with any change. And a change leader must be comfortable with taking those risks.

There is often no precedent for trying something new. This requires leaders to possess grit and resilience. You must expect both challenges and problems. If you lose your nerve when there's a setback, you won't be able to implement real change.

Inherently, when you take more risks, you will experience more failure. Change leaders must have the ability to bounce back and try again when new ideas fail.

Strategic thinking

Leaders of the change management process must be able to see the big picture. They must have an ability to conceptualize all aspects of the organization to see how parts fit together or could fit together for improvement.

Importantly, leaders must make and communicate strategic decisions in order to increase trust and buy-in.

Good leadership is worth investing in

The change management process is usually implemented in the name of improvement or innovation.

If leaders want to encourage new ideas to flow from all areas of the organization, it is important that they lead with appropriate communication skills and in a manner conducive to innovation.

The leader who makes decisions unilaterally and then expects employees to fall in line at the snap of a finger will be far less effective through change than a leader who plans, strategizes and communicates.

The leadership style most often associated with change is transformational leadership. This style is about challenging the status quo, constantly experimenting, valuing diversity and diverse thinking, leveraging the team for idea generation and decision-making, and being adaptable.

This means empowering employees by providing them with autonomy, flexibility, and independence, while also encouraging collaboration and providing opportunities for learning, development and cross-training. Most companies like the sound of that--but it's rarer than you might think!

Courses like Contemporary Leadership Challenges (MAN4143) in Rasmussen’s Human Resources and Organizational Leadership programs feature projects around real-life scenarios implementing change, facing barriers and more.

If this info about leading through change was interesting to you, you might genuinely love these kinds of projects.

Interested in getting deeper into the complexities of organizational change? Check out What is Organizational Change Theory, and How Can It Empower You?

McKinsey^® is a registered trademark of McKinsey Holdings, Inc.
ADKAR^® is a registered trademark of Prosci, Inc.