The Emotional Side to Facilitating Change
(1) CommentTo the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.” —Arnold Bennett
A great deal of emotional investment is necessary to achieve the desired outcome of strategic initiatives, yet most change endeavors lean heavily toward the intellectual components (data reviews, critical activities and milestones, logical presentations, rational decision-making, etc.). Several factors contribute to this, one being that intellectual commitment typically precedes emotional commitment and thus, in some ways, is easier to come by. That is, people may quickly grasp the implications of a change at a rational level but then find that they need more time and effort to make the necessary emotional adjustments.
When emotional accommodation is too far behind the logical acceptance of change, dual—often contradictory—signals are sent by the person facing the transition. This kind of split-level commitment can produce confusion, mixed signals, and ambiguous communication for all involved. People may think that they have accepted a recent approach or policy shift only to find more
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©2012 Conner Partners, Inc.
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How to Merge Diverse Viewpoints
This post is the fifth in a series about ways to foster synergy during major transformational initiatives, using a four-phase model that includes Interacting, Appreciative Understanding, Integrating, and Implementing.
Phase III: Integrating
Effective communication (Phase I) and valuing others’ perspectives (Phase II) are important elements of developing synergistic outcomes, but they’re not enough. Synergy is the result of communicating, valuing, and merging diverse viewpoints. As with the other two phases, accomplishing this integration is extremely difficult because many organizational cultures don’t teach and reward the skills needed to do so.
There are four basic conditions necessary for the Integrating Phase. more
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Danger? Opportunity? You Decide.
In this series, I’ve been talking about the importance of being able to reframe a person’s mindset during a change initiative to shift how he or she sees and interprets certain things. There are five key reframing skills:
1. Address the “context” as well as the “content” of interpersonal communications.
2. Redefine the other person’s frame of reference (FOR) in a way that sheds positive light on the successful implementation of the change at hand.
3. Reset the person’s priorities.
4. Respond effectively when the other person reacts to the reframing attempt.
5. Confront the person with the real price it takes to achieve success.
I’ll focus on the fourth skill in this post.
Reframing Skill #4: The Ability to Respond Appropriately Based on the Person’s Reaction
The disruptive nature of major change produces a crisis in the sense that the status quo is no longer viable. The Chinese express the concept of crisis with two symbols.
The top symbol represents potential danger, the lower, hidden opportunity. By combining the two, the Chinese position change as a paradox. Observing how people respond to the stress produced by the crisis of change reveals two basic orientations that reflect similar characteristics. more
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©2011 Conner Partners, Inc.
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How to Work Yourself Out of a Job
“A true voyage of discovery does not consist of seeking new landscapes but rather of seeing with new eyes.” —Marcel Proust
As change professionals, we often say that we want to leave clients free from the need for additional services from us. Unfortunately, our track record doesn’t support that claim. This is less true for pure training interventions; however, consultants (both internal and external) engage in more “doing” than in “transferring capability.”
I realize not all change facilitators share this view, but my personal bias is that teaching clients to execute change on their own is a crucial part of practicing our craft. Some internal practitioners lack the charter to do anything but solve problems. (“Just help us get this project implemented. We’ll worry about learning how to do it ourselves later.”) Some external practitioners operate within a business model that doesn’t include teaching clients how to stand on their own without the consultant’s help. This series, however, is for a third category of practitioners more
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©2011 Conner Partners, Inc.
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What’s Culture Got To Do With It?
(2) Comments“Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have—and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving that up.” ~James Belasco and Ralph Stayer
Flight of the Buffalo (1994)
In a recent series, I reviewed what I have learned about paradigm management and the role it plays in facilitating transformational change. A critical subset of the paradigm model I shared dealt with the interrelationship between “mindsets, behaviors, and systems.”
- Mindsets—conscious and unconscious understandings and expectations around what people hold to be true about themselves, others, and their work
- Behaviors—observable actions
- Systems—the interaction of mindsets and behaviors that have the aim of achieving an organization’s purpose
Expressed or unexpressed mindsets are reflected in particular behaviors. When they are configured and applied in a consistent manner they form systems. There are informal systems (the grapevine) and formal systems (the annual budgeting process).When these three elements of organizational life are focused on, it sheds light on a close cousin to paradigms…culture
Though there are some important distinctions, paradigm and culture are more
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The Eight Stages of Building Commitment
(2) CommentsIn the early ’80s, while involved in research to identify patterns of change-related success and failure, I learned that the winners and losers in this arena demonstrated very different levels of resolve. As a result, I developed the following model, which describes how and when people become committed to major new organizational requirements. (Click here to download a printable worksheet of the Commitment Model to help you identify a person’s or group’s level of commitment.) more
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©2011 Conner Partners, Inc.
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Using Errors to Our Advantage
In the last two postings, we discussed the fact that mistakes are inevitable during major change—essential to the learning process, and an inherent part of transition itself. We also distinguished failures (falling short of expectations without learning) from corrective experiences (missed goals that lead us to learn how to avoid or minimize the same error in the future).
There are clear patterns displayed by people who view missing the mark as a corrective experience versus a failure. more
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Constrained or Nimble? Name Your Organization.
“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.”
— Edward Deming
As change facilitators, we are just as vulnerable as any professional to becoming so focused on the tactical trees in front of us that we lose sight of the forest. Compare this with the orthopedic surgeon who diagnoses the stress fracture but dismisses repeated migraines, or the urban planner who develops his piece de resistance in one small section of town, but ignores expanding decay in surrounding areas.
We run the risk of being so focused on helping organizations with their individual change endeavors that we don’t take into account their ability to address change from a generic standpoint. If we are riveted to the initiatives at hand, we can fail to help prepare our clients for changes that haven’t even been identified yet. When this happens, we unintentionally keep them in a strictly reactive mode instead of helping them also address the preventive side to execution…helping them get ready for more
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©2010 Conner Partners, Inc.
www.connerpartners.com
Manage Intent to Deliver on Promises and Minimize Disappointment
(3) CommentsIf we want to be successful at executing major organizational change, it’s important to understand how to translate aspiration into reality. Aspiration is a vision of what must be—the intended outcome. Reality is the value that accrues from putting it in place and sustaining its impact. “Translation,” as used here, is not a metaphor—a conversion must literally take place that turns concepts and ideas into actions and results.
Moving from intentions to results is neither a hit-or-miss process nor a risk-free slam dunk. Regardless of the discipline, any time there is a transition from one state to another, there is a probability that something will be lost in the process. more
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©2010 Conner Partners, Inc.
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Finding the Balance Between Logic and Creativity
There are clear signature patterns that indicate whether an initiative will succeed or fail. An experienced change agent who recognizes and properly addresses them can greatly influence a project’s outcome:
- The characteristics of success can be infused into the implementation process from the beginning and encouraged throughout execution.
- The dynamics and behaviors associated with failure can be avoided altogether—or at least anticipated, detected, and mitigated as much as possible when signs begin to surface.
Change agents who practice their craft with the proper balance of art and science foster success patterns and minimize failure patterns. In doing so, they bring to bear a powerful competitive advantage for their clients.
However, finding that balance is a challenge.
Professional change facilitation resides on a continuum, with “art” and “science” at the poles. Our “craft” is represented by a sliding point that can reside at any position between the two extremes. Movement toward or away from either end of the continuum shouldn’t be based on more
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©2010 Conner Partners, Inc.
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