How to be a Change Superhero

The business toolkit to help you to 'do' change better

Lucinda Carney

• Publisher: Practical Inspiration Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781788601597
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Most of us have experiencedchange being 'done' to us – badly. It really doesn't have to be that way!

This book is for managers whohave tried to deliver business change but felt frustrated and disempowered bythe experience. It is for people who want to stand up and make a difference ignitingand inspiring successful change but don't know where to start. This book is a completetoolkit for aspiring Change Superheroes!

Lucinda Carney C.Psychol usesher decades of business experience to:

· explain the repeated, human causes of failed change

· uncover the secrets to delivering sustainable change

· provide prospective Change Superheroes with theconfidence to deliver their own successful business change

· share case studies; downloadable tools and real-lifeexamples of successful change.

Let's change the way we doChange!

PART I

The five Superpowers of a Change Superhero

Do you sometimes feel that you need to possess Superpowers to deliver change in your organization? If you felt like a Change Superhero, how much easier would it be to deliver results both human and organizational? I had some reservations about using this analogy at first because of the risk of suggesting that we simply swoop in, deliver a bit of change and then disappear, leaving the hard work of actually ‘doing change’ still to be done. The reverse is intended because this breed of Change Superhero sticks around to see the job through. True Change Superheroes instinctively understand the Peter Senge quote above: that people don’t resist change for the sake of it – they resist having change ‘done’ to them. However, the reality is that change needs to be ‘done’ in organizations worldwide, daily; that’s why I use the term ‘do’ change differently as our guiding principle.

Change Superheroes are brave and prepared to stand up and be counted. They are also humble with genuine depth of character; they understand and are true to their values and are committed to getting the job done – properly. This means that they have an armoury of additional skills, such as emotional intelligence, the ability to both lead and follow, as well as a flexibility of communication style that can be adapted to the needs of the audience or situation.

The reality is that few of us are born with all of these natural strengths or ‘Superpowers’ and it’s highly unlikely that we have our own ‘Justice League’ to call upon to counteract our natural blind spots or development areas. It is down to us to develop a range of skills and some will come more easily to us than others. This means that we need to start with self-awareness about our natural strengths and preferences. Then we need to factor in our blind spots and have strategies to either overcome these or bring others in to support. It is all about flexibility and adapting our approach to the audience or environment, and any of us can do it if we try.

The first part of this book outlines the five Superpowers of a Change Superhero and how we can develop and master these, building a strong personal foundation to deliver sustainable business change. We start with courage, which is about emotional intelligence: understanding ourselves before trying to lead others. Connecting with strategy is our second ‘Superpower’, which is about our ability to create a vision and rationale for change that overcomes resistance and inspires people to follow. Once people understand the vision, they may still require corroboration or evidence that the change is worthwhile to them or people that they care about. These first three Superpowers are about the Change Agent personally and these need to be mastered or clarified before we interact with others. Chapters 4 and 5 are about communication and collaboration respectively, which involve other people, because change cannot be achieved in a vacuum. Ideas on how to communicate effectively to build a successful league of like-minded Change Agents and the techniques for close collaboration will close out the first part of this book. Everyone is different and some of us will find it easier to demonstrate one Change Superpower over another. You can download our simple ‘Five Superpowers of a Change Superhero’ quiz at www.changesuperhero.com to analyze your own natural strengths and get tips on how to develop others.

CHAPTER 1

Courage

Why do we start with courage? Well for me this is the foundation of any successful Change Agent’s skillset, as delivering change is rarely easy. As Winston Churchill’s quotation suggests, courage doesn’t have to be just on the battlefield; it starts with our psychology, knowing when to speak and when to listen. We need to develop the courage to understand and lead ourselves psychologically before being ready to lead others. As budding Change Agents, we need to be prepared to develop psychological courage, facing our fears a bit like the Lion in The Wizard of Oz. We may have to ‘stand up and be counted’ against the tide of opinion or find ourselves in conflict with others. We might find ourselves in a situation where we are asked to lead a project on behalf of the business yet find that some of the key opposition comes from the most senior people in the organization. There is no doubt that we need courage to politely challenge the resistance of those senior to us, given that it could be seen to be career-limiting.

This chapter is fundamentally about psychological courage. First, we will explore the challenge of standing up to senior colleagues before going on to explore the broader subject of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. To be true Change Superheroes we need to be courageous enough to get to know and master our own emotions and behaviours. This chapter starts to show us how to do this. It will give us the foundation to understand how to connect with the corporate strategy and appreciate when and how to engage in persuasion, communication and collaboration – all key Superpowers that our Change Superheroes will need to deploy for success.

‘Well that’s never going to work’: challenging resistance from senior colleagues

My personal experience of needing to summon up courage was when I was involved in delivering an organizational change programme requiring the whole business to get on board. I had been tasked with driving the project by the board, with the full support of the CEO and most board members. This should have been enough to get the project signed off and sponsored. However, I knew that the director of operations was cynical about the potential benefits of the change within his area, which made up a third of the business. My concern was that this individual would undermine the initiative covertly. He was senior to me and I had never found him easy to get on with, so as you can imagine I wasn’t enthusiastic about having to deal with him personally. However, I also knew that it was unlikely that the project would succeed fully if we didn’t have his support.

So, I summoned up my courage and booked a one-to-one meeting with him. In this meeting I shared the vision for the project and asked for his feedback. I listened to his opinion, acknowledged any concerns and made a few small tweaks to the proposal in line with his feedback. What sticks in my mind is how minor most of his suggested changes were. Most notable was a request to simply change the direction of an arrow on an image of the overall vision. It didn’t significantly change the vision or the meaning, but that was all it took to get his buy-in. A couple of weeks later, I presented the overall proposal for final board approval and was able to reference his adjustments, displaying his endorsement, which paved the way to a straightforward board sign-off.

This individual was known to be difficult and cynical but, whatever my opinion about his motives, he may still have had genuine concerns. By summoning up the courage to listen to his concerns I was able to make some minor adjustments and get his support. It was almost as if he didn’t actually have any real objections but just wanted to be consulted (I have subsequently found that this is surprisingly common). So, it was important for me to sit down on a personal level with him to ensure that he wouldn’t undermine the project. If I’m honest, I wouldn’t say he was ever a champion, but he didn’t become a blocker either.

So, to be an effective Change Agent we need to have the courage to talk to people on a personal level, whatever their level of seniority. We can’t be intimidated by status because sponsors can make or break a change initiative, sometimes unintentionally. I once witnessed this during an important technology change programme for a small media firm. It had been a significant investment and the CEO was taking part in the system training along with a range of delegates from all over his business. He wasn’t particularly technical and suddenly blurted out: ‘Well, that’s never going to work!’

I don’t think he realized the extent to which his throwaway comment potentially undermined the entire investment and programme success. We often hear that technology investments fail due to people issues and it is easy to see how easily this can happen if role models who should be sponsoring a programme are overheard making comments that undermine it. Of course, we must remember that they are human too and will also have natural responses to any change. A courageous Change Agent needs to pre-empt this from happening, particularly with key sponsors or other highly visible or influential individuals. This may mean personally making contact at an early stage to explain the change or agreeing the key messages and gaining explicit commitment for their reinforcement. Having gained explicit commitment from someone to support the messages makes it far easier for us to politely provide feedback if they then behave differently. Everyone is human, but it still takes Superhero levels of courage and subtlety to challenge those senior to us in a positive fashion.

Throughout this book, we will consider the wide variety of ways in which people view the world and communicate, which means that one style will never suit everyone or every purpose. This provides us, as budding Change Superheroes, with the almost paradoxical requirement to learn to wear multiple hats without being seen to be ‘faking it’. This requires us to be highly self-aware and flexible. You might even say that we need to be our own ‘Change League’, all wrapped up within one Superhero cape. We will need to draw on the skills of others later in the process, but psychological courage, personal leadership and flexibility are the first key skills for us to hone.

By psychological courage, I mean being brave enough to really understand our own motivations and behaviours and to take responsibility for how they impact on others. This is quite different from physical courage. As we improve our self-awareness, we have more choices about how we behave making us more flexible. If we want to deliver change successfully, we need to be flexible enough to both lead and follow. We may have to be diplomatic and challenging, or open yet restrained. This requires high levels of self-awareness and self-control, sometimes referred to as emotional intelligence, which is a great concept for us to use as the basis for understanding how to develop psychological courage.

Emotional intelligence

The term emotional intelligence (EI) is most well known through the work of American psychologist Daniel Goleman (1996). His work identified five different aspects of EI, all of which can be used to underpin this concept of psychological courage when delivering change. These are described as self-awareness; self-control; self-motivation; empathy and social skills.

Self-awareness

This is our own understanding of ‘what makes us tick’, including what motivates us, our personality and the way in which we typically react to situations or how we come across to others. In the context of this book, it is particularly valuable for us to know how we personally react to change as well as how people react to our typical communication style. An example of self-awareness might be my knowledge that I have a natural tendency to talk quickly. Through feedback, I also understand that this can give the impression to others that I am nervous or excited. This may or may not be a true reflection of my emotions, but what is important is the fact that I know that I can unintentionally negatively portray the message by speaking at my natural pace, whether it is true or not. Clearly, if I am communicating information surrounding a change, appearing to be nervous or excited may well be inappropriate, so I can use this self-awareness and choose to speak more slowly.

In Chapters 7 and 10, we will look at individual differences in terms of personality types and the roles we prefer to play in teams. Separately, in Chapter 4 we will consider motivational differences and how we like to take in and process information. This is not to put ourselves or others into a ‘box’, but to appreciate our habitual preferences and behaviours and how they may impact on others during change. It also puts us in a stronger position to be able to communicate effectively and be understood by others. This self-awareness, coupled with the courage to exercise self-control in terms of our interactions with others, is a vital attribute of a successful Change Agent.

Self-control

This is sometimes referred to as self-regulation. Essentially, it is about us understanding our natural impulses and personality traits and choosing the most appropriate response for a given situation – as opposed to our automatic one. It may involve self-restraint, perhaps from our default response, or it may be about flexing our behavioural response away from our habitual one. Examples might be empathizing with the views of others rather than blindly defending our case, or challenging the status quo rather than sitting back and waiting.

Self-control is something that can be learned; it is a bit like a muscle that can benefit from exercise. However, we need both self-awareness and motivation if we are to change our habitual behaviours. Understanding that certain behaviours te...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the author
• Introduction
• Part I The five Superpowers of a Change Superhero
• Part II Change Challenges
• Part III Building a Change Master Plan
• Conclusion
• Works cited