🎯The Four Skills Leaders Need to Effectively Lead Change

Leadership is not what it used to be. Gone are the days of command-and-control, top-down, hierarchical structures. In today’s highly distributed, tech-driven workplace, leaders face new challenges and opportunities that require new skills and competencies. They need to adapt and evolve their approaches to be effective in this new reality, which includes being able to motivate and influence people during business transformations and organizational change.

Today's leaders must be able to inspire their peers and colleagues to think, act and behave in ways that are aligned with the goals and objectives of the organization. They must be able to enable forward progress not because of their title and authority or their technical expertise, but because they model the way forward, setting a standard for performance that others want to replicate.

The problem is that organizations continue to put the "wrong" people into leadership roles during business transformations and change. There is a disconnect between the skills that are valued and prioritized in organizations - analytical skills and the ability to use AI and other digital tools, for example - and the skills that make someone truly effective as a leader and sponsor of organizational change.

So, what skills do leaders need to develop to effectively lead change? The four key skills are: 

#1. The ability to build meaningful connections with peers and colleagues. Connection describes the ability to build trusted, meaningful relationships. Connection is critical to employee engagement and organizational change success. When co-workers feel connected, they work together differently. They feel safe talking through problems and solutions, bouncing ideas off each other, and sharing information. This creates a feeling of community and caring that is beneficial to everyone, especially during periods of change and disruption.

Trust and meaningful connection can't be forced. It requires caring about people beyond the value they bring to the organization, being curious about their lives, and being willing to share details about one's own life, too. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." This is still true today. 

#2. The ability to communicate effectively one-on-one and in groups. Communication describes the ability to successfully exchange ideas and information with others in the workplace. Communication is what builds bridges and connects people in a powerful way. When leaders get their point across in a kind and objective manner, stakeholders are more likely to hear what they are saying and consider their perspective, which helps them to experience their own shifts in perception.

Listening is another important aspect of communication, and unfortunately the absence of real listening is prevalent at work. Judith Glaser, the author of Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results, explains that leaders can create thriving environments where people feel safe, connected, and open to change simply by listening at a higher level.

#3. The ability to collaborate with people across the enterprise. For organizational change to succeed, stakeholders must have a sense of ownership and collaboration. Collaboration describes the ability to work well with others and see issues from multiple angles. It is common for decision-makers to fear being overwhelmed by feedback early in the change process, and thus wait to solicit input from stakeholders until after all the big decisions have been made. But solicitation is not collaboration; collaboration is when people co-create both the solution and the plans to implement the changes.   

When stakeholders are left out of the process until it’s time to roll out the changes, the emotional curve people experience is far steeper and can last longer. People don’t resist being changed, they resist when they feel like they don’t have a voice or say in the matter.

#4. The ability to be compassionate with themselves and others. Studies on organizational change show if you want to lead a successful transformation, compassion is critical. Being compassionate means that you acknowledge the challenges people may be facing and you do something about it. What that “something” is does not have to be transformative in itself; what people really want, and need is to feel seen, heard, and valued during the change process.

One way to lead with compassion is to focus on developing people’s resilience during changes versus managing their resistance. This is a change in thinking for practice of change management, which has long focused on ways to manage resistance from employees. The good news is that making this leap isn’t as difficult as it may seem. According to research by the University of Pennsylvania’s Happiness Center, which created a Master Resiliency Training Course for the US Army in 2010, simply identifying and focusing on what makes people unique and valuable enables them to overcome adversities and stressors with greater ease, so they contribute to better, more productive working environment. To learn more about this research and outcomes, go to: https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/.

The future of leadership is here, and the call to action is clear. The skills and abilities that make people effective in their day-to-day roles are not the same skills and abilities that make them effective as leaders of organizational change. By valuing connection, communication, collaboration, and compassion in leaders, companies can create environments where people love to work, change is a cultural norm, and innovation is both rapid and embraced.