Friday, 24 April 2015

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

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