Leadership style during change is so important, you might tell people what is happening, but will it change their attitude and therefore change their behaviour? In my experience which is across many sectors, industries, professional roles and all types of change programmes I have to say no. And this is the problem, when a CEO and senior executive team think "change" will happen because they have hired someone to communicate the changes taking place and then when there is no impact on the business or the outcomes they were looking for they are disappointed.
Information is important and provides the support that employees need to find out what is happening. Think of it this way. Smokers buy a packet of cigarettes, the health warnings are featured on the packet and yet we see intelligent, literate people continue to smoke, packet after packet. The only time they truly become engaged in changing their attitude toward smoking and therefore behaviour is when they are in the doctors office and are personally facing a health risk. And then Aha! they finally get it.
So how do we communicate change to employees so that all employees understand what it means for them? Let's look at this example.
An organization wants to communicate the financial results to employees and the usual approach is to post the employee annual report on the intranet. But this time they need to do something different, they want employees to understand why the company needs to improve and what shareholders base their decisions on. So they decided to run free lunchtime information sessions for their employees on how to invest in the share market and held them for one hour each week for four weeks.
The topics progressed from understanding the share market, categories of companies listed etc till the final week they examined annual reports. So in this final session they were reviewing annual reports and came to the last one for the session and after reading through the data the question was asked of employees, so who would invest in this company, few put their hands up. And you guessed it, the company was their company and with a collective Aha! the employees finally got the message.
The most successful aspect of this approach to change was that other areas of the organization were involved in designing the strategy.
The most significant aspect of any change program is to remember that information is very important to let employees and managers and leaders know what is happening, when and why. However it is more significant to design strategies that involve employees and demonstrate what those changes will mean for them. Aha! moments are the most important considerations here.
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Orignal From: Leadership Communication And Transformational Leadership
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