Are You Ready to Lead Change?

Achieving successful, sustainable change depends on many factors. Organizational change research and my own experience reinforce that how leaders lead change is a key differentiator between changes that work and changes that don’t go far enough, fast enough or stick.

We know leaders impact:

• How the change process unfolds

• The results that are achieved

• The climate in which change is planned, implemented and integrated

• How people experience change

Powerful insights from the neuroscience underpinning organizational change, engagement and collaboration are helping us better understand why change is hard, how people change and how they become change ready_. We are defining change readiness as the willingness and ability to lead change and lead people through change._

Change ready leaders engage in the personal development work that enables them to shift: from a traditional “command and control” leadership style to a ‘co-creative’ leadership presence; from firefighting to problem solving; from doing to facilitating and coaching; from having all the answers to leading with questions, listening and learning and from operating on auto pilot to practicing evidence based change leadership.

Review the attributes, knowledge and skills of change ready leaders outlined below and assess your readiness to lead change.

Change Ready Leaders:

• Understand why change is hard and how people change

• Differentiate between leading change (external) and facilitating the transition process (internal)

• Develop a share understanding of the need for change across the team

• Maximize everyone’s participation and ownership in the change process (planning, implementation and integration)

• Attend to the human side of the change experience (core needs, feelings and emotionally charged reactions to change, requisite mindset and behavior changes)

• Model the desired culture (humble, open minded, curious, collaborative and committed to learning)

• Create a work place climate supportive of continuous learning and adaption

What are your greatest strengths?

What is your greatest opportunity for improvement?

High quality change leadership is the single biggest determinant of successful, sustainable organizational change. Change ready leaders leverage neuroscience insights to lead change that works and build organizational change readiness and capability into the DNA of the organization.

Do you feel confident and competent to lead change and lead people through change?

Are you change ready?