Implementing Change with Emotional Intelligence
Show Notes
In this episode, we're diving into how to implement the change you want for your people. I’ll walk you through why it’s so important to approach change thoughtfully and how to communicate the "why" behind the shift with your team. We'll explore ways to invite your team's feedback and make the process collaborative. By involving them throughout, you can build more trust and create lasting impact.
Take Action
Use the four-step process in the episode to implement a new change for your team. Check out the edited and oh-so-nicely organized transcript below for a recap of the steps.
You can always message me (Odalis) to share your thoughts, questions, or conspiracy theories about leadership.
Organized Transcript
Hey, you're here. This is the change lives with your leadership podcast. And it's for leaders and managers who want to leverage the coolest f*cking thing ever. The fact that as a leader, you get to change people's lives every single day without any of the corporate or toxic f*ckery.
Welcome back. I'm Odalis, still here and still leaning forward, waving my hands when I'm talking excited to be chatting with you about changing lives with your leadership.
Still one of the coolest f*cking things we get to do.
Series recap
So here's a quick recap of what we've covered so far in the change lives with your leadership series.
First, we celebrated how you get to actually change people's lives every day with the decisions you make.
In the second episode, we explored five high level areas where you can start making changes to create more of the culture and environment you want for your people.
In the last episode, we dove into how to deal with any thoughts or external factors getting in the way of you making the change that you want to make.
Now in this episode, we're going to talk about how to implement the change you want to make.
By now, I hope that you've picked something. You've picked one change to make bigger, small, smaller, big. If you haven't, no worries. This episode may spark some ideas for you.
So why does it matter how you implement the change you want to make?
I think it's probably by the time that we're five or six that we start noticing how much change can suck sometimes. We may not be aware that's what upsets us at five or six. But we know there's something we don't like.
Oh, you liked having chicken nuggets and French fries for dinner, and now you have to eat some shiny green alien arms your mom is calling “green beans” instead of fries covered in more ketchup than a bottle could even hold. Booooo!
As adults, that doesn't change. We tend to be initially wary and even hostile towards change, especially when we've been doing something a certain way for a long time.
Multiply that by six different people on your team, six different personalities, personal histories, preferences, and pet peeves, and you've got the perfect storm for destruction. Okay, maybe not quite destruction, but potentially unhappy, frustrated, and even angry mini storms of emotion.
So when you want to introduce a change to your team, it makes sense to do it in a thoughtful and considerate way.
Especially if one of your goals is to treat your people with more respect, consideration, show them how valued they are, and how human you recognize them to be.
This is an incredible opportunity to show your people through your actions that you want to create real change.
Step 1
So the first thing you're going to do in implementing a change, and this is whether, you have an open and honest relationship with your team around making the workspace more human and supportive or not. It doesn't matter which situation you're in. Even if you're asking them what change to make, you still want to start in the same place, which is…
Tell them why.
It's either going to be you explaining why you're asking them to give you some suggestions for changes, or you sharing the change that you want to make and why you want to make that change.
The goal here in either situation is to show your people that this isn't some random whim with no thought or consideration behind it.
Share why you think change will benefit them and be as specific as you can.
Example
For example, let's say you're the one introducing a potential change and you're suggesting that you spend more time during your one-on-one’s to talk about their growth goals within the company.
I wouldn't recommend that you just say…
“Hey, from now on during one-on-ones, we're going to spend 15 minutes talking about your growth at this company.”
…and leaving it at that.
Instead, be transparent about why you think this change is worth making. You could say…
“Hey, I'm thinking about adding some dedicated time to our one-on-ones for discussing your growth goals within the company so that I can help you come up with a plan and give you the resources you need to achieve your goals.”
This doesn’t make you a weak leader…
To be clear, you're not doing this and involving your team because you're a weak leader who can't make decisions or because you don't value your own insights and ideas.
There are plenty of decisions that you will make as a leader that you won't discuss with your team. Where their input will be considered, but mostly from what you've already learned from them in the past and not from any new info that they're going to share with you.
In this situation though, where you are making a change to purposefully create a positive impact in the lives of the people on your team (and assuming that there's no urgency to make this change)…
It makes sense to give them a chance to tell you directly if this is something that they want or need.
Step 2
Next step, you want to continue to include your people in the process by…
Asking them to share their thoughts about the change you're considering.
And if they're the ones that are suggesting a change, same thing, you still want to understand why they are suggesting a change.
This creates trust, gives them some power to decide, and it increases the chances that they will participate and get the benefits that you want them to get out of the change that you're making.
You can ask them questions like:
What do you think?
What concerns do you have?
What am I missing?
Nothing complicated here. Just easy, open-ended questions.
Show them that they have a voice in a change that's going to impact them and that their insights matter. Show them this by listening and asking questions to better understand what they share with you. Show them that you recognize that you aren't the expert on them because you can't be.
Each of us individually knows ourselves and everything going on in our lives the best. No one else knows everything about us at work or outside of work, and that's okay. Let them tell you from their perspective.
Example cont.
Now, going back to our example change of you introducing more time in your one-on-ones to talk about their growth goals, let's say you're suggesting that 15 minutes of each one-on-one is dedicated to discussions related to their growth goals.
Of course, you can make suggestions and share your experience and maybe what's worked for you in the past around how you're implementing this change. But this is a different team, a different company, a different time.
It makes sense to involve them to understand their unique needs in this moment.
Your team may come up with other implementation ideas such as spending more or less than 15 minutes on it. Or having a separate one-on-one session for an initial discussion on growth and goals, and then using your one-on-one’s to keep track of their progress over time.
What if they don’t share anything…
Now, let's say that you ask your team for their input, you ask them if there's anything that you're missing, what do they think about the change, and they don't seem to be sharing anything. Like they don't feel comfortable enough to speak up and share their thoughts. That's okay.
This is a great opportunity to work on building trust.
So, the first thing I would suggest is…
Consider a different channel where they can share their thoughts and feedback. For example, instead of asking them during a team meeting, tell them that they can send you a private message with their thoughts or give them a form to fill out that makes all the responses automatically anonymous.
Second, even if no one shares, if the trust just isn't there yet…
You asking and then you following through on doing what you said you would do (meaning making the change) that will build trust.
You can ask again throughout the implementation process of the change for their feedback, and as they see you take action and do it in a considerate way, they may gain more trust and get more comfortable enough to share with you.
Now, let's switch to a different potential situation.
They don’t want the change you suggest…
Let's say you share your thoughts about the change and why you want to make that change, and they tell you that they don't even care about that change. Maybe there are more pressing things that they would like for you to consider or focus on instead. That's okay.
Honestly, that's amazing because now they are communicating with you and speaking up.
Thank them for that, for having that courage. And more importantly, listen before giving your thoughts or ideas or reasons for why it can or can't happen.
Just listen.
Listen and ask questions to help you better understand why this is important to them, what they're hoping to get from this. Don't assume that you know. Put the focus on them and what they are asking for.
Then you can let them know that you will think more on what they brought up and give them a specific date or event (like your next team meeting) for when you will follow up and share potential next steps for making that change happen.
If you don't have enough information for that, let them know that you'll be reaching out to them to discuss this further. And again, make sure you're giving them a specific date or event for when you will follow up. You need to show them that you are taking action and not just saying things.
So many opportunities…
You might have noticed this by now…
But basically every interaction with your people…
Either together or individually is…
An opportunity to build more, to create more of the environment you want to offer them.
You have so many opportunities to work towards your bigger vision of the kind of culture and environment that you want for your people that you can make progress fairly quickly, even if you don't handle every situation exactly like you want to.
Perfection is not required.
In fact, trying to be perfect will only backfire and create a bigger rift between you and your people. Because if you expect perfection from yourself, I can tell you that it is very likely that you are showing your team that you expect perfection from them too. Which is unattainable and setting them up to fail.
The steps so far…
Okay, to recap the steps so far…
You're going to talk to your team about the change that you want to make and why. Make sure you share your thoughts and your reasoning.
You're going to ask for their feedback on the change or the implementation of that change. The goal there is to listen and incorporate their feedback into your plan for making the change.
So now let's move on to the third step in this process.
Step 3
You want to make this collaborative.
Involve them in the implementation of the change, if possible.
Again, the more you involve them, the more likely they are to fully participate and get the benefits that you want them to get out of this change.
Example cont.
Sticking with our one-on-one growth goals example, you might ask for volunteers to test out this change and then provide feedback on it before it's rolled out to everyone else on the team.
Involving them in the process does not need to be complicated. I have no doubt that if you give it some thought, you will find multiple options for involving them in the process.
Step 4
Now the fourth step and the last step is to…
Follow through.
If you say that you're going to make a change…
If you communicated why…
If you took the time to get your team's feedback and make adjustments…
If you took the time to come up with ways for them to be involved in the implementation…
Then you need to actually follow through and make the change.
This one may seem obvious, but it's important and it does get missed.
Following through allows you to build trust and it shows your people that you do what you say and aren't just saying things because they sound good.
I'm sure you can think of multiple examples where you've been told by leadership at this company or other companies that some big change was coming that people really wanted and then it never happened.
We've all experienced being told all the right things and then being disappointed when we got nothing or a pretty crappy knockoff.
Following through is incredibly important for building trust and making progress towards creating the culture and environment that you want for your people.
And part of that follow-through is also checking in after you've already started rolling out the change and you're implementing it to get feedback on whether or not it's helpful for your team, whether or not it's going well. Then you can make tweaks, if necessary.
Let the results be what they are…
Don't hold on too tightly to what the results should look like because you don't get to dictate that.
Right now, what you're doing is simply making offers of support and respect and humanity and more of what you want to offer your team.
Your people will each get something different out of it based on their own experiences, beliefs, and what's going on in their lives at that time.
So just let the results be what they are.
Know that it is building something. It is nurturing something for your people on your team.
In the next episode…
The final episode of this series…
We're going to go into some real-world examples of changes that have been made by leaders that impacted the lives of their people.
Share & grow our impact…
And if you know a leader or a manager that could benefit from what we covered today around making change and including their team… please, please, please share this episode with them.
Again, the more of us that are doing this kind of work, the bigger the impact we can make.
The invitation stands…
And as you know by now, especially if you've listened to the other episodes in this series, I continue to invite you to message me with your questions, your thoughts, your ideas, musings about anything I shared in this episode or in this series so far.
I want to hear from you.
I want us to keep the conversation going so that we can both learn from each other and connect.
And of course, let's keep changing lives with our leadership—together.