Discussions about teamwork in the workplace often revolve around a few central topics: effective communication, sharing a common goal, and solving problems. While each of these are absolutely essential in strong teams, one key often seems to be missing – Leadership.

We think of teams as highly democratic entities where everyone contributes equally to complete a project. However, just like the Presidents and Prime Ministers that guide the world’s great democracies, a leader is essential to team success. In fact, the team at Eagle’s Flight considers leadership one of the seven cornerstones of teamwork. Without a clearly defined leader, the whole team foundation will crumble. Here’s why teamwork in the workplace must start with strong leadership:

1. Team Leaders Keep the Team Accountable

It’s far too easy to dodge responsibility in a team setting, since you can “hide” among your sea of colleagues. That’s where a leader comes in. In a team setting, a true team leader takes full responsibility for the team’s final results. Since a leader has so much on the line, he or she is extremely motivated to keep team members accountable for the work.

2. Team Leaders Empower Team Members

Being a leader on a team isn’t about concentrating power — it’s about giving away power. Yes, team leaders are responsible for assigning tasks to the team. Even more importantly, leaders must trust the skills and expertise of other team members. Through trust, leaders empower teams to carry out assigned tasks in the way that they see fit.

Why is trust so important? When other team members see that the leader has put his or her trust in a colleague, they won’t try to undermine or question that colleague. Plus, studies show that employee engagement is closely tied to the level of freedom and ownership that individuals are given. If you want team members to be engaged and excited about the project, leaders must empower members by easing up the reins.

3. Team Leaders Simplify and Streamline the Decision-making Process

Teams can avoid the power struggles commonly found in “equitable” teams with leaders in place. In these “equitable” or “leaderless” teams, members actually compete to gain authority and assert dominance.
Team leaders also make the decision-making process far more streamlined, since they have the final say. Leaderless teams may get stuck on making tough calls when members can’t come to a consensus and there’s no “tie-breaker” to turn to. In the meantime, the entire project — and even teamwork in the workplace overall — stalls. Having a clear-headed colleague who’s clearly in charge simply makes teams simpler.

4. Team Leaders Keep Projects Moving Forward

It’s hard to keep a group of people focused, so having someone make it their mission to do so is crucial to team success. A designated leader will move past any hiccups by initiating conversations about potential problems and steering the team back on track during meetings that start to go off the rails.

How do leaders keep projects moving forward? They will:

• Ensure all team members understand the project goal
• Establish clear deadlines
• Clearly define roles within the team
• Describe how each role contributes to the project goal
• Remind the team of the shared goal to keep the project on task

When members understand that the part they play on the team is critical to achieving the goal, they’re more motivated and engaged.

Team leaders are typically individuals who know the most about the project — which means they might not have extensive experience with leading. They might not even be the person with the most “senior” rank in the room. That’s why building in leadership skills exercises into your training on teamwork in the workplace is so important.

The strategies and behaviors of a manager can impact the performance and productivity of a team, and therefore the whole organization. Most would agree that managers who effectively leverage employee strengths and rally individuals around team goals will achieve a more favorable performance outcome than those who withhold feedback or provide little support to team members. A person’s management style can also impact overall employee engagement. According to Gallup research, managers account for 70 percent of the variance in employee engagement, and can adversely or positively impact employees’ commitment to their work and the company.

While one kind of management style may work better in certain work environments than others, managers often rely on a mix of styles, depending on the situation and circumstances. Here are four examples of different management styles and how they affect the workplace:

Authoritarian Management Style

An authoritarian management style is one that relies on an individual’s position of authority in the organizational structure. Managers who lead with authority typically assign tasks and deliverables with little room for debate or questioning, which, if not done in the right situations, can lead employees to feel micromanaged, undervalued, and replaceable. Authoritarian management can also negatively impact employee behavior. One research study found that an authoritarian leader in a manufacturing environment contributed to higher incidents of negative employee behavior such as theft, personal internet surfing, and misuse of overtime.

While an authoritarian work style may negatively impact employee productivity and engagement, there are times when it is necessary. Environments that frequently deal with emergencies or equipment failures—for example, hospital emergency rooms or power plant facilities—require strict adherence to management directives. In those environments, an authoritarian style can help ensure staff consistently follow required procedures and protocol.

Laissez-Faire Management Style

At the other end of the spectrum is one style that is far more hands-off. A leader who employs the laissez-faire management style empowers employees and trusts that they have the adequate skills, knowledge, and judgment to execute goals without much direct oversight. Self-reliant teams and individuals who prefer to work with a lot of freedom typically respond well to this type of leader.

While this management style leaves a lot of leeway for employees to be creative, collaborate, and take risks, it can also have a negative impact in the workplace when used inconsistently or in an environment where teams need close supervision. Employees who are new to their role or accustomed to more hands-on management may feel abandoned and unsupported by a manager using a laissez-faire approach.

Coaching Management Style

A coaching management style focuses more on employee learning and creating opportunities for individuals to perform to their full potential. Leaders who coach their employees to improve their performance provide necessary support, encouragement, and guidance. Leaders that act as coaches use their one-on-one time with employees to give praise, deliver feedback, and brainstorm ways to improve, which can help employees develop a sense of trust and loyalty.

While this style is very beneficial, it comes with its own unique set of challenges. Leaders need to manage day-to-day operations, which can sometimes limit opportunities and time for coaching. It’s a fantastic way to manage, if you are intentional about it! Also, keep in mind that coaching employees requires first making a connection with employees, so that the coaching isn’t confused with criticism or condescension.

Collaborative Management Style

A collaborative management style focuses on encouraging the free exchange of ideas within and between teams. Since collaboration in the workplace can have many positive benefits, including increased innovation and the break down of organizational silos, a collaborative management style can be invaluable to helping to build a high-performance culture and a workforce that embraces change. A collaborative manager listens to employees’ ideas and suggestions before making a final decision independently, but also relies on consensus decision-making, which gives employees a voice of influence and a sense of empowerment.

While a collaborative management style can bring employees together and help to establish a strong sense of team in the workplace, it can also sometimes lengthen the time it takes to make decisions. This style may even negatively impact productivity during times of crisis when quick, decisive leadership from one individual may be more appropriate.

Depending on the workplace culture, company goals, and the roles and experience of employees, the use of different combinations of management styles can be effective at different times. Leaders can be most effective when they understand that they can employ a unique mix of styles to use in a range of scenarios in the workplace. A good first step in helping to expand leaders’ knowledge and skills is leadership development that helps them discover the many ways they can motivate, coach, and support employees to perform to their maximum potential.

Organizational change is inevitable. According to research by Gartner, a typical organization today has undertaken at least five major organizational changes in the past three years. During times of change, effective leadership is especially critical to organizational success. Every organization needs leaders who can successfully navigate the waters of change.

Whether change is driven by shifts in customer demands, increased competition, or the introduction of new technology, organizations must be able to upgrade or re-engineer processes and ensure employees adapt and grow to meet organizational needs. People are at the heart of any effort to bring about organizational change, and they require strong leaders who, through their actions and words, can set the tone for how employees should approach change. Here are four ways to provide strong leadership in times of change:

Set and Communicate the Vision

Whether dealing with one significant change or a climate of continuous change, it’s important to establish and communicate a vision early. The vision for change helps employees understand why change is occurring, what the desired end result is, and how the organization will look once change has been achieved. When people understand the vision, there’s a greater chance of allaying the anxieties they may have about how change will affect them. But establishing the vision doesn’t stop with the initial communication; the vision must then be communicated often, and in different forums, so that employees have many chances to encounter and connect with it.

Model Expected Behaviors

An IBM study found that the top factor reported by organizations for successfully leading change was having leaders who act as role models and communicate the case for change. When leaders model desired behaviors, they show how to develop a positive attitude about change and approach it with confidence. Leaders can model expected behaviors by:

• Asking thoughtful questions when unclear about how change will impact certain processes
• Sharing advice and insights with the team about what they’ve learned when undergoing certain kinds of change
• Displaying a healthy sense of humor, which helps others feel encouraged rather than discouraged
• Showing a willingness to try new things and adjust processes to accommodate organizational change

Support Employees

Strong leaders are able to support employees who are dealing with fear, confusion, or resistance to change. In fact, when individuals feel supported by their leaders and see that they’re not alone or ignored, they become more receptive to change. Leaders can support employees by:

• Regularly sharing information about the status, timeline, and impact of change on people and key processes
• Showing empathy and expressing a desire to understand how change affects each of the people on their team
• Providing opportunities for employees to share their frustrations, concerns, and successes in dealing with change
• Providing employees with learning opportunities to adjust their mindset and acquire new skills for managing change

Recognize Successes

Leaders can encourage positive behavior and a healthy attitude about change by recognizing behaviors that demonstrate support of change. There are a variety of ways to recognize employees, including via email, in team meetings, and one on one. During times of change, it can be easy to get caught up in ever-changing activities and processes, but recognizing and celebrating successes along the way helps everyone see the progress made. In addition, by recognizing employee actions taken in support of the change or changes that are occurring, leaders reinforce positive behaviors and show others what they can do to be recognized and rewarded.

To lead change successfully, leaders must communicate the vision for and details of change early and often and show through their actions how to approach change. When leaders remain a constant source of information and support, employees don’t just understand the vision for change; they embrace it.

All leaders, regardless of their origins, agree that certain leadership skills must be learned thus all leaders can benefit from leadership training. However, not all leadership training programs will deliver the long-term results you desire. When choosing a program to train your leaders, make sure it includes the following vital skill sets.

1. Empowering Others

A leader’s ability to empower will have a significant impact on driving business results. The best leader knows how to make staff shine, by delegating responsibilities according to each staff member’s strengths and weaknesses. An effective delegation model exists and can be taught. Other aspects of delegation can be taught during training as well, including how to:

• Empower with clarity
• Define span of freedom and responsibility in executing tasks for direct reports
• Ensure staff take personal ownership for delivering on commitments

The key takeaway from this leadership training topic is that leaders will know how to best nudge their staff to get results.

2. Leading Meetings

This may seem like a superficial skill to focus on, but leading effective and productive meetings is one of the most important skills a leader needs to have. Consider how many meetings are run daily in an organization – almost all meetings will be run by someone in a leadership role. You need to step back and consider how effectively organized those meetings are and look at the productive outcome. Training on how to lead meetings include skills building in:

• Getting everyone involved and participating in the meeting topic
• Managing meetings effectively, so each member is heard
• Getting to the main meeting points quickly
• Staying on time and on task
• Focusing on core objectives and limiting distractions
• Generating actionable results

3. Managing People

Managing people is part of leadership, but it’s a part that may not come naturally to leaders. In almost every job, people skills are every bit as important as technical, or hard skills. Luckily, people management is another skill that can be taught. The first step is being open to training itself. The next is to practice what is learned. Through training, leaders learn to:

• Manage and overcome interpersonal conflict
• Help staff with their own goal setting, time management, and collaboration challenges
• Encourage staff to diagnose their own performance
• Garner a culture of accountability for their team

4. Soft Skills

While we spend large portions of our careers learning the hard skills required to completing tasks and doing our jobs, it is essential that leaders also have training in “soft skill” areas. When seeking leadership training, ensure the curriculum has components targeted specifically to personal and soft skills building for leaders. While technical skills are important, soft skills are crucial to career success as a leader. Soft skills building for leadership training should cover:

• Building effective relationships
• Communicating clearly
• Listening actively
• Thinking creatively

5. Specific Skills Training for the Needs of Your Organization

While you can’t know exactly what the future will bring, there is one thing you can train leaders to face: Change. Even seasoned leaders can benefit from training for change management. Even if you’re not undergoing a complete culture transformation, leading through change is still important even for smaller initiatives like changes to software and systems.  Training here will include:

• Best ways to educate others about a change
• How to choose whether to try a different change tactic
• How to assess your own impact toward change
• Methods for providing constructive feedback

Leadership training topics and programs vary; make sure your leaders are receiving the best leadership skills training by looking at the training topics included within the curriculum.

Contents

• Teamwork and Collaboration
• Ethics and Integrity
• Adaptability
• Innovation and Continuous Learning
• Communication
• Emotional Intelligence
• Leadership

Introduction

Today’s business challenges compel organizations to identify new, more creative ways to enhance shareholder value and the customer experience. As a member of the C-suite, you bear considerable responsibility for building a productive workforce and high-performance culture. Moreover, you want that accountability to go beyond the C-suite and filter through the rest of the organization. In the PWC 2017 CEO Survey on Global Talent, 77 percent of CEOs expressed concern about the availability of core competencies such as creativity and innovation among their workforces. You don’t have to be among them. A focus on the development of seven core competencies can ensure you are building a workforce that possesses the skills you need for short- and long-term success.

1. Teamwork and Collaboration

You probably already recognize that collaboration among employees yields high idea generation and more efficient problem-solving. Tools such as Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud technology provide more seamless ways for employees to collaborate and leverage each other’s strengths. Other solutions that will drive productive teamwork throughout your organization and go beyond technology include training initiatives that help you identify and duplicate the qualities of your existing high-performance teams. Furthermore, you can support employee teamwork and collaboration by building a culture that not only places value on effective teamwork, but also trains employees to be better problem-solvers and communicators within a team environment.

2. Ethics and Integrity

A recent study of ethical trends among CEOs noted increased public scrutiny of C-suite executives and their ethical (or not) behavior. You want your employees and your customers to know that you are committed to doing the right thing, whether it’s in how you approach new business opportunities or how you treat employees. Therefore, ethics and integrity should be woven into your culture and reinforced with coaching and training that helps every individual understand your commitment to ethical behavior.

3.  Adaptability

In today’s ever-changing business landscape, individuals who can shift their behaviors and mindset to align with changes in work culture and environment are more valuable than ever. As your organization grows, your systems and processes will advance in complexity as well. You need your workforce to not only adapt to those changes but in some cases lead the change. As new technologies such as big data, AI, and robotics continue to change the way people work and interact, your workforce will benefit from tailored employee development experiences that will strengthen their change management capabilities and provide the tools needed to adapt to shifts in their work environment.

4. Innovation and Continuous Learning

Organizational growth is the outcome of innovation and a commitment to doing things faster, more efficiently, and with greater value to the customer. When a business challenge requires an innovative solution, you expect employees to consider new processes or technology and be willing to step into the unfamiliar. But can innovation and creative thinking be taught? The answer is yes—with the right tools and environment, you can transform your workforce into a powerful hub for innovation.

5. Communication

The perennial employee development challenge is how to help managers and employees communicate better, with greater clarity, honesty, and effectiveness. Individuals can become better performers if they know how to actively listen to understand colleagues and customers better. Also, people managers need to develop strong communication skills in order to convey performance expectations and solicit and deliver feedback effectively. As a leadership team, you can make communication skills training a key component of your employee development efforts.

6. Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 co-author Travis Bradberry found that 90 percent of high performers exhibit high emotional intelligence. You may have seen within your own workforce how individuals with a high EQ (emotional quotient) are able to overcome difficult personalities, and seem to effortlessly guide the behavior of others without ruffling feathers or aggravating egos. These are the types of behaviors that employees can learn to emulate as they engage in activities that challenge them to practice empathy and patience with coworkers.

7. Leadership

You are likely already aware that perhaps the single most important employee development area that supports organizational capability is effective leadership. Strong leaders empower others to be effective collaborators, communicators, and decision-makers, which will, in turn, provide you with a competitive advantage in times of growth and change. When you partner with HR and a trusted leadership development partner, you can provide leadership development experiences and training that will help to build strong leaders at every level of the organization.

Use Experiential Learning to Address Key Areas of Employee Development

These seven employee development areas can be targeted through a practical competency framework, and aligned with an experiential training program that will help individuals learn by doing. Strong leaders aren’t created by accident but through relevant experiences delivered in a context that encourages learning and further development. With experiential training, your employees engage in employee development that drives lasting behavior change and sets the organization on a course for success and further growth.

Being a good leader requires more than being a high performer yourself. You must also be able to motivate others to achieve their greatest potential by empowering them and holding them accountable for their responsibilities.

Gallup’s Re-Engineering Performance Management report indicates that employees in the U.S. who are either not engaged or are actively disengaged cost companies between $960 billion and $1.2 trillion per year, demonstrating that a lack of motivation among employees means money lost for your organization. The report also says that only two out of every ten employees strongly agree that their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work. This is a strong indicator that leaders need to do better. Additionally, only 21 percent of employees strongly agree that their pay and incentives motivate them to achieve their goals. Increasing pay is a quick answer, not a long-term solution.

What is critical thinking? Critical thinking is a process of objective evaluation of facts and the consideration of possible solutions to problems. According to the Foundation for Critical Thinking, the concept dates back to early methods of questioning to achieve knowledge practiced by the Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates. Today, organizations value critical thinking as a means to greater innovation and improved problem-solving. In fact, the skill is deemed so important that a survey of leading chief human resource officers conducted by the World Economic Forum found that critical thinking will be the second most important skill in the workplace by 2020, second only to complex problem-solving skills.

Critical thinking is important because it helps individuals and teams more effectively diagnose problems and identify possible solutions that aren’t entirely obvious at first. In addition, critical thinking can help resolve conflicts in the workplace. When individuals consider a range of possible approaches to solving a problem rather than relying on bias or snap judgments, they are more likely to arrive at a better solution.

Ways to Promote Critical Thinking in the Workplace

Some ways you can promote critical thinking in the workplace involve making changes in your workplace culture; others involve training. Here are five ways to encourage critical thinking in your organization.

1. Hire and Promote Critical Thinkers

An important first step to building organizational strength in critical thinking is to hire individuals who are already strong in that area. Behavioral interviewing is an effective way to gauge a candidate’s strengths in critical evaluation and analysis. In addition, when you make critical thinking a desired competency for leadership and promotion, you begin to build a pipeline of talented critical thinkers.

2. Build a Culture of Learning

It’s critical to create an environment where the behaviors related to critical thinking are a natural part of your company culture. Some of the ways you can build and support  a culture that stimulates critical, objective analysis include:

• Incorporating “lessons learned” discussions after the conclusion of important projects, during which employees have the opportunity to look back on areas where more critical thinking might have been helpful in improving a project’s outcome
• Creating an environment where tough questions are welcomed and employees are encouraged to talk through alternatives openly
• Developing a routine or protocol for decision-making that encourages critical-thinking behaviors such as exploring possible solutions to a problem, exploring bias, and considering the consequences of different proposed solutions

3. Avoid Jumping to Conclusions

Another way to promote critical thinking in the workplace is to avoid jumping to conclusions. Instead, approach a problem by first developing a common understanding of the challenges it presents. According to a recent helpful article, these are a few ways to accomplish this:

• Ask questions about the origin of a problem and how it evolved
• Define the desired outcome before settling on a solution to the problem
• Avoid overthinking possible solutions, which can slow down the problem-solving process and undermine disciplined thinking

4. Create Internal Forums

Sometimes the simple act of talking things out can help to spur the critical, objective analysis of problems. When individuals have a forum for addressing and discussing one big problem or a series of related problems, they generate new ideas, share pros and cons of certain solutions, and take advantage of opportunities to collaborate with coworkers on creative solutions to workplace problems.

5. Teach and Train

Leadership development and teamwork-skills training can help build employees’ critical thinking strengths by encouraging a mind-set and skill-set change. As individuals learn new behaviors, they begin to see broader problems and solutions that exist beyond their individual roles and consider the larger picture when looking at a problem.

Experiential learning  works particularly well in promoting critical thinking because learning by doing encourages a critical skill set. The immersive nature of an experiential approach keeps employees fully engaged so that they continually use their critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.

Build Critical Thinking in the Whole Organization

Critical thinking is more than a desirable soft skill; it’s a valuable competency that is the basis for innovation and problem-solving. When properly cultivated in the workplace, critical thinking can help individuals and teams overcome challenges and meet business goals. Although there’s no magic bullet that will increase critical thinking in the workplace, a variety of activities in combination can effectively promote it. When you build a culture that promotes and values critical thinking, your organization as a whole will see greater results and outcomes.

Meetings are an important way to keep your team in sync and your initiatives running smoothly. Whether you need to share information, gather feedback, or make decisions, there are a plethora of positive effects of having weekly staff meetings.

So, what makes a meeting effective? According to a leadership lesson presented by the Association of American Medical Colleges, “Effective meetings allow for open conversation that draws upon each members’ knowledge, skills, and perspectives to solve problems and to support one another in achieving the collective goals.” This may seem like a simple definition, but it takes skill to consistently run meetings that fit that description. The better your leaders are at running effective meetings, the more you will witness the following four benefits within your organization.

1. Increased Engagement and Collaboration

When led well, meetings offer each person the opportunity to participate and provide input. To engage each individual, effective facilitators focus on asking questions and guiding the conversation so that everyone understands that their perspectives and ideas are valued. These discussions can even spark collaborative brainstorming sessions that produce new ideas and creative solutions.

Practical Tip

When preparing for a meeting, create a list of questions that will help stimulate discussion. If there are particular people who don’t regularly speak up, ask them to share their input with the group.  

2. Increased Accountability

A good meeting leader is skilled at creating an environment in which everybody feels that their contribution is valued. This helps make participants feel more comfortable taking on assignments and makes it clear that every task has an impact on the project as a whole. Committing to a task in a meeting often has more weight than doing so in a one-on-one situation or via email. When saying “yes” to an assignment in a meeting, individuals feel more accountable to the group and are more motivated to complete their piece of the project. Capturing action items and responsibilities in the meeting also increases personal accountability because the team will be able to review the task assignments in the meeting notes.

Practical Tip

Conclude every meeting by summarizing the list of action items, including who is responsible for them and when the tasks are due. After the meeting, follow up via email or your project management tool to reinforce the commitments that were made.

3. A Shared Sense of Purpose

Clearly stating the purpose of the meeting and providing an agenda in advance ensures that everybody is on the same page about why it is being held and what they need to do to come prepared. A skilled leader then uses the agenda to keep the discussion moving in the direction of the team’s goals. Sharing the agenda and goals with the team provides a shared sense of purpose because everyone understands the importance of the meeting and why they have been included. This shared purpose is motivating both during the meeting and after, when the team disperses to work on their individual action items.

Practical Tip

When inviting people to a meeting, provide an agenda within the invite that clearly defines the meeting objectives. During the meeting, if the conversation starts to wander, circle back to those objectives to keep the meeting on track.

4. Opportunities for Personal Growth

A truly effective meeting creates opportunities for each person to develop important skills. The facilitator is refining their leadership skills by practicing effective communication techniques and motivating the group to be accountable for their commitments. Participants are able to witness the benefits of a well-run meeting and adopt the skills and behaviors modeled by the leader. An effective meeting also enables participants to challenge themselves and try something new. When tasks are being discussed and assigned, participants can volunteer to take on the work that interests them most. Even if they have limited knowledge or experience, they can join a group that will allow them to learn and develop their skills in that area.

Practical Tip

To help individuals learn new skills, pair newer employees up with more experienced team members and give them a challenging task to complete as a team. This enables the less experienced individuals to learn from the expertise of their partners and gain new skills in a supportive and productive way.

Conclusion

While this is not an exhaustive list of all the positive effects of having weekly staff meetings, it does give you a clear indication there are many. In addition to keeping everyone on the same page, well-run meetings also help increase engagement, collaboration, accountability, and personal development. However, not all leaders possess the necessary skill set to run an effective meeting. Fortunately, this can be taught and honed through training and practice. To learn more about planning and running meetings in your organization, download our free guide, A Guide to Running Effective Meetings.

Effective leadership demands interacting with people in a way that motivates and energizes them. This requires communicating in a manner that goes beyond just relaying information. The most successful leaders inspire others, build connections between people, and create alignment throughout the organization.

Leaders and managers play a unique role in organizational change. They act as champions for change, as supporters of employees, and in reinforcing change after it has taken root. Despite the many studies that show the high failure rate of change management initiatives, one study of more than 56 companies found that a key characteristic of successful change efforts was the involvement of managers who are able to act as levers of change at all levels of the organization. Given that leaders are involved in the daily work routines of all employees, it is of the utmost importance that they implement the following five change management strategies to increase the chances of success:

1. Establish a Clear Vision

Effective change leadership requires a clear vision that is shared with employees in a way that is both understandable and inspiring. The shared vision should outline what will change and what will remain the same for the organization, the team, and individuals. Beyond hearing or reading about the vision, employees need to understand it. Therefore, communicating the vision many times and in various mediums will ensure your employees have a clear understanding of the planned change and the reasons behind it. Here are a few things you can do as a leader to establish a clear vision:

• Create a clear picture of the organizational goals, how the change initiative will help to achieve those goals, and how it will affect employees on an individual level.
• Regularly discuss the vision in meetings, on the company intranet, and in town-hall gatherings.
• Talk with your employees individually, formally and informally, about the change and, more specifically, about how it is going for them personally.

2. Leverage the Change Management Timeline

Organizational change is a journey that requires a strategy before, during, and after implementation. As a leader, you can take the following steps throughout the timeline:

• Before the change: Begin to ask questions to determine employee readiness for change; surveys are one way to do this. Set and communicate employee goals that relate directly to the change initiative.
• During the change: Recognize milestones and employee actions in support of change. This is a great way to keep change efforts alive. During meetings, emphasize items that have been crossed off to-do lists and praise the team’s progress and continued commitment.
• After the change: Reinforce the goal of the initiative with the help of surveys or questionnaires that assess the degree to which the transformation has been successful. Use the responses to determine if further action needs to be taken.

3. Support Your Employees

New MRI technology is able to show what happens to our brains when we are faced with major organizational change, giving us a better understanding of the feelings that change can evoke in us, including fear, anxiety, anger, and fatigue. To gain the support and commitment of your employees, try using change-management strategies to mitigate emotions like fear and resistance. The following are some actions you can take to support your employees during times of change:

• Create varied learning opportunities to help your employees handle workplace changes; for example, experiential training sessions can encourage individuals to test out new skills and behaviors associated with change in a risk-free environment that allows them to practice and better understand the outcomes.

• Be sympathetic to your employees’ emotions and address their concerns with honesty and optimism. Sometimes, working through emotions together—either one-on-one or as a team—helps individuals address their frustration and fear of change in a more constructive way.

4. Ensure Effective Two-Way Communication

Some people need to see and hear information many times to achieve sustainable behavior change. Furthermore, the chances of change-management success are greater when employees are given a variety of opportunities to communicate with one another. Here’s how you can support healthy two-way communication:

• Provide opportunities to discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with change in meetings, team off-site activities, and team-building sessions.
• Recognize the power of casual social interactions and how shared experiences help employees make sense of the change they are experiencing.
• Search for and address communication bottlenecks that may be standing in the way of change.

5. Focus on Skill Development

When your employees develop the communication, time management, and stress management skills that can help them handle change, they’ll be better equipped and will feel more confident. During times of change it may be necessary to provide change management training for both leaders and employees, as well as implement a reinforcement strategy that promotes real-time coaching and ongoing learning.

Effective change management requires the active participation of leadership and the implementation of the strategies above. While the actions leaders take to support change initiatives may vary depending on their role, function, or leadership style, the underlying commonality is their commitment to the change initiative and ensuring its success.