Personal Qualities and Skills that Help You Lead Change

This week, I received a request for an interview for an industry website. I was asked to write answers to five questions on my change experience and practices.

One question made me pause: "What personal qualities and skills have helped you to lead a change management  effort?" I speak about the importance of people taking stock of their strengths before they work through a change. It reminds them how to show up and what they can lean on if times get tough. 

Here is my master list of qualities and capabilities. I wrote about the first four in my article.

Empathy: Putting yourself in other people's shoes, being aware of how people are perceiving a change and why they feel this way.

Interpersonal Skills: Creating quality relationships and connections. Solid relationships lead to trust, which lead to collaboration and partnership.

Perspective: Seeing the forest and the trees, seeing the big picture and focusing on small details at the same time.

Priority Setting: Identifying the important activities and issues in a sea of urgent ones.

Action Orientation: Getting things done versus just talking about them or being paralyzed by information overload.

Tenacity: Pushing through challenges, like resistance to a change, until they are overcome.

Focus: Concentrating on goals and performing your role without getting distracted by the dynamics around you.

Communication: Getting across your ideas to diverse groups of people.

Planning: Mapping how you get from 'here' to 'there' including who needs to do what, when.

Agility: Responding quickly to new opportunities and challenges.

Personal Learning: Identifying what works and what doesn't and being able to apply knowledge to different environments.

What I learned from writing the article is that taking stock of my strengths is just as beneficial in the middle of a change initiative as it is at the beginning. It resets you to where you need to be.

It's a good reminder of how to show up and what I can lean on if times get tough.

Phil

The Best Presentation is the One the Audience Gives

Courtesy of Linda Kennyhertz

I gave a great presentation at the 2015 Global Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) conference in Las Vegas this week. Actually, the participants gave it to themselves.

It was called Leadership, Process and Culture: How to Build Change Agility into Your Organization. My premise was that we must build flexibility into our organizations so that people can quickly and easily respond to change because today's pace of change is faster than change practices can support.

For large audiences like this one (200), I would typically speak on topics that would build to an overall recommendation. Each one would include a question and participants would be asked to share their answers to the group. This usually results in me talking 80 percent of the time.

This time, I flipped the ratio: I talked for 20 percent of the time and participants talked either in their groups or presented to the entire group for 80.

Here are the questions they discussed:

• Describe a change agile environment in which you have worked?
• What is the biggest risk to change agility? Why?
• How do you ensure that the right conversations are being had?
• Share one highly effective practice related to embedding new ways of working into normal operations

The atmosphere was engaging. It was also noisy. People were learning from each other and the examples they shared demonstrated the topics perfectly. 

I have learned that the best presentation is the one the audience gives because it is the most relevant, interesting and educational. It's also the most memorable, which helps learning.

I didn't give a great presentation this week. I facilitated one.

Phil

When was the last time you took a minute to celebrate?

I have been working long hours lately, often past 1:00 am, including weekends. Balancing consulting assignments and staying ahead of my commitments has been more than a full time job. 

Two nights ago, I finished writing a training program that was a 'must do' task before I could sleep. It was 12:30 am and I only had one more thing to do before I could go to bed.

As I scanned the document, I realized that not only had I finished a learning module, I had completed the suite of support materials I had been working on for six months. People would soon be using these tools to help them navigate their change. My work was done.

I quickly closed the file and called up my next one. Then I paused. I felt I had missed something: I had skipped paying tribute to my accomplishment. I didn't feel like celebrating (I felt like sleeping), but I knew that not taking a moment to acknowledge my work would set a bad precedent. 

I wanted to avoid the trap you can fall into when in constant production mode: getting work done becomes more important than the benefit from doing it. I needed to stop and acknowledge this milestone. I needed to celebrate it.

I closed my new file and opened the one I had just finished. I scanned through the over 100 pages of guidance and tools, imagining how people would benefit from them. I noted the design changes I had made to overcome challenges and the input I had received to make it better. I was celebrating the experience as much as the outcome.

Here are some of the benefits of taking time to celebrate your accomplishments:

- Marks the end of a piece of work―you did it!

- Gives meaning to the work you do―this is why you chose your profession

- Acknowledges lessons learned―both what to do and not do

- Honours a commitment ―as promised

- Demonstrates what you are capable of doing―to a client, manager or your team

- Marks the beginning of a new chapter―what's next?

It only takes a minute to celebrate and the benefit lasts much longer. Next time I will plan for my celebration.

Phil

How to Manage Yourself When You Are Unprepared

Last Sunday, Barb and I ran the oldest road race in North America, the 30K Around the Bay. 

This is a popular warm up race for those who are running a Spring marathon. It's not popular for those who are not in shape.

The Grim Reaper at 27 k who I avoided

I was not close to being prepared for this 18.6 mile endurance test. For the past 6 weeks I have had to prioritize work over running. 

As Oprah Winfrey says, "Running is the greatest metaphor for life because you get out of it what you put into it." Since I hadn't prepared, I knew that I would not achieve a personal best performance. 

My running predicament is similar to work challenges that we are not prepared for. In these situations, you usually don't perform at your best. You can,however, focus on being the best you can be under these circumstances.  

Here is a checklist of things you can do to manage yourself when you are unprepared:

- Be realistic--False expectations often leads to big errors: starting the race too fast would have weakened me further and increased the probability of being injured
- Confirm what you know--what facts and experiences can you leverage? I had run this race twice before so I knew where the hills were
- Ask for help--Barb shared that a final killer hill had been removed from the course so I adjusted my speed accordingly
- Call on your strengths--Draw upon your skills and what you do well: I made sure that I perfectly angled my turns that eliminated extra distance I would needlessly run
- Adjust your approach if it isn't working: I usually speed up in the last mile, but this time my legs cramped and I dropped my speed until I could regain my gait
- Remind yourself that the situation is temporary--you are managing a moment in time: Counting down the remaining kilometres gave me confidence that I would manage through my challenges and reach the finish line
- Document your learnings--documentation is a way of committing knowledge to memory: I captured my reflections and lessons learned about the race in my running log as soon as I could hobbled to my office.

My results were not my best, but they were the best I could have achieved under these circumstances. I ran 30k in 3 hours, 7 minutes and 55 seconds. This time is 8 minutes slower than last year's race when I was training for a marathon, yet 4 minutes faster than the year before when I wasn't. 

Sometimes being unprepared is unavoidable in both our personal and work lives. Being the best you can be under the circumstances can be good enough.

Phil