Leading Through Change: Strategies for Managing Team Transition

1. Leading your team through change Leonie Isaacson email: leonie.Isaacson@admin.cam.ac.uk

2. Objectives: • Understand the line manager’s role in managing change • Understand strategies for coping with change and building personal resilience in self and others • Develop techniques for handling reactions to change and overcome resistance • Manage individual and team performance through change • Develop plans for consolidating change and building teams

3. Managing change and transition • Change: • Change is a process and can be planned • Transition: • Managing yourself and others through change • Letting go of the past and taking up new behaviours or ways of thinking

4. Experience of change

5. Kotter’s 8 stage model for managing change effectively Implement and sustain Engage and enable Create climate for change

6. Line manager’s role, responsibilities and skills

7. You need to …. • Communicate • Empathise • Be an advocate • Coach • Liaise • Manage resistance • Follow through

8. Communicating with your team: What will they want? • To understand why the change and reasons behind change, why now • Opportunity to be consulted, ask questions, provide suggestions, be listened to • Their concerns to be listened to by management • Reassurance & clarification how the change will affect them personally • Clear direction and leadership • Sense that you empathise with their position; no sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’ • Honesty – truth is best even if it is bad news or if don’t know • Promise of regular updates • Manage expectations

9. ‘People will help support what they co-create.’ Marvin Weisbord, Productive Workplaces

10. Are you prepared for change? Your contribution depends on a combination of your:

11. Building personal resilience 7 characteristics of resilient people: • Realistic optimists • Emotionally aware • Empathetic • Risk takers • Effective problem solvers • Confident • Tolerate ambiguity Resilience - the ability to recover quickly from setbacks and adversity Free I-Resilience Report: www.robertsoncooper.com/iresilience

12. Strategies for coping with change • Take charge - of your own response and of your own role in the change • Talk! – to a range of people • Maintain a realistic outlook • Keep good lines of regular communication – avoid rumours • Use and develop coping skills • Exercise • Relaxation – body and mind • Do other things • Seek support if you need it

13. A manager’s insight Kirsty Allen, Chief Operating Officer, CUL, discusses her experience of leading change, including: • Key skills to lead change • Communicating change • What if you don’t agree with the change • Preparing your team • Managing resistance • Personal emotions • Maintaining energy and resilience • Embedding the new norm • Top tips

14. Change Curve • “It is the right thing to do” • “I want to be a part of it” Organisational Momentum • “What’s this?” • “The Company is taking a big step” Early Awareness Commitment COMMITMENT DENIAL • “What does this mean to me?” • “Why change now?” • “Just another initiative” Adaptation • “I think I can work with the changes” Denial and uncertainty Productivity Baseline • “It won’t work” • “I don’t trust my manager or the company” • “Maybe I should try to understand it a bit more” • It’s difficult but it can work” Fear and resistance Testing & acceptance EXPLORATION RESISTANCE Paralysis Withdrawal “I’ll do just enough to get by ” • “I can’t act because I don’t know what’s going on” “This is not something that I want to be a part of” Departure Time

15. What can I do to support my team through change? • Communication • Clarity of purpose • Milestones • Recognition • Opportunities • Commitment and involvement • Coaching

16. Fence-sitter • “Wait and see” What type are you? And others? HIGH Support LOW PASSIVE ACTIVE Reaction to change

17. Champion • Co-operator • Fence-sitter Spread of reactions • Cynic • Saboteur Number of people Will never change Only change when no other option Wait to see what happens Get included from the start Lead the change Actively resist change Actively welcome change Go with the flow

18. Spread of reactions: Preparation for this afternoon Will never change Only change when no other option Wait to see what happens Get included from the start Lead the change Actively resist change Actively welcome change Go with the flow

19. Dev • Excited by the prospect of change. • Been feeling in a rut • Ready for a new challenge

20. Polly • Pretty vocal • Number of objections and concerns. • Dismissive of Senior Management’s ability to make the right

21. Gina • Didn’t say much. • ‘I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens, won’t we?’

22. Chas • Lot of head-shaking and sighing • Tendency to be negative • ‘Just another pointless change.’

23. Supporting individuals • Invest time • Build trusting relationships • Listen • Acknowledge emotions • Provide reassurance and support • Be fair and consistent • Communicate clearly – be honest and don’t overpromise • Follow through – be reliable • …

24. Handling conversations A department has just moved offices to the outskirts of Cambridge. A manager meets with a member of staff who is unhappy about the move to see how it’s going… Bev Weston (Head of Estate Projects, EM) and Jane Rawlings (PPD)

25. Your chance to practise In pairs, use the preparation from last session • Brief your partner on situation and likely response • 5 minutes – have the discussion ‘in role’ • 5 minutes – discuss and feedback • Reverse and repeat

26. Kotter’s 8 stage model for managing change effectively Implement and sustain Engage and enable Create climate for change

27. Managing performance through change

28. Consolidating change • Ask yourself and your team: • What were the aims at the start? • How well did we achieve them? • What still needs to be achieved? • What have we learnt for next time?

29. Team changes

30. Stages of team development ‘Forming’ ‘Storming’ ‘Norming’ Tuckman ‘Performing’

31. Building your team • Develop team-working, cooperation, morale and team-spirit • Provide a collective sense of purpose • Anticipate and resolve group conflict, struggles or disagreements • Develop the collective maturity and capability of the group • Enable, facilitate and ensure effective internal and external group communications

32. Change – Making it happen • At the heart of any change in an organisation, are the people making it happen. People may respond to these changes very differently. • Factors which may influence an individual’s response to any change may be: • How it personally effects them • To what extent they were involved in the decision • How they may have to adapt to the change • Personality traits and perceptions

33. What will you… • Start to do more of? • Stop doing (or do less of)? • Continue to do? • Think it, ink it, do it, review it

34. The end