GrowthSpace is lucky enough to have the top experts from around the world available for our customers. These experts enable the personalized, professional development that is so highly rated and beloved by our users. Each month, we feature the top-rated experts from a different L&D program offering to show our appreciation and shine a much-deserved spotlight on our experts’ unique styles.
For July, we’re focusing on our top-rated experts specializing in helping leaders strategize change management. These experts help leaders make major organizational changes through coaching and mentoring, helping lead their participants on a change management path to success.
We asked each expert for the #1 Change Management-related lesson or recommendation that they would share with their participants. In these uncertain times, the right approach to change management is essential.
Here are valuable tips from our top experts on how you should help support the organization and your people during changes:
Olga Erman
Change the way you look at yourself: as a valuable asset for your organization rather than a resource. It’s a candidate/employee market, baby.
Malgorzata (Maggie) Pieprzak, MBA
Embrace the change and have the courage to step into the unknown. See the change as the source of new opportunities. Ask yourself questions: what benefits do you get from change, what can you learn from it, who can support you in change and what can be your anchor (any positive experiences, your values) to go through change easier.
Anna Wells, RCC, ACCTP, ICF
Employers must be ‘communicative’ about their intentions and ensure they have their ’employees’ engaged in the process. Creating the future together. ‘Collaborative Leadership’ with employees will support the transition as they need to feel like partners in creating the future. A stakeholder who is valued and cared for, will participate and contribute to the greater good. If employees feel a part of the future, they will create it.
Tara O’Brien
My number 1 recommendation is to work on healthy company culture, management and leadership training and alignment, and employee engagement. I believe all change management must begin with a focus on culture. When Satya Nadella became the new CEO of Microsoft in 2014, the company wasn’t doing too well. He decided the first thing he would focus on would be organizational culture. He believed starting here was much more important than working on company strategy. That’s because amazing company culture creates innovation and retention and growth potential. Bad or mediocre culture costs hundreds of billions of dollars for U.S. companies each year vs. companies with highly engaged employees who are found to create 5 times higher returns regardless of the industry. This is where I focus all of my change management initiatives, to begin with when working with clients.
Ruthy Pariente MCIL
Career development is not a ladder anymore, it’s a climbing wall.
Yagev Ben Itzhak
Continuously analyze the trends in your market and be flexible to change your business model, what worked in the past will not necessarily work now.
Lois Barth
Managing one’s anxiety, creating transparency and trust as a team leader, and creating a space for people to express their fears and get support.
Alan Arnett
Don’t make assumptions or look for generalised solutions – make sure you base changes on real data and robust dialogue with customers and employees
Ilana Meskin
You must bring people along with you – do it with them, not to them. Most organizational communication around change describes the WHY, then tells people to embrace it – all driven from a management lens. Find ways to reverse the top-down waterfall by gathering employee perspective and involving multiple levels of staff, especially your critical front-line managers. This is powerful for several reasons: It breaks down the hierarchy, it has the potential for genuine dialogue between leadership and employees, and your employees will feel heard and feel a true connection to the process.
Sebastián Fernández
Perhaps for many of us, the time has come to participate proactively in this new PARADIGM that is already changing and inviting us to be part …, or to be left behind! Maybe it’s the time to promote efforts towards new and CREATIVE directions. Maybe it’s the time for those, always postponed, BRAINSTORMING moments. Maybe it’s the time to TALK about what we usually don’t like to talk about. Maybe it’s the time to LISTEN and talk with the people that we usually ignore. Maybe it’s the time to EXPERIENCE what we didn’t dare to do.
Carlee Wolfe
Continue to focus on purpose at work (for the individual, team, etc.) to inspire, connect and support colleagues, even during uncertain times.
