Another Leadership Skill For Success During Organizational Change

 

The fourth and final post in the July series on leadership skills in change management...

A fourth skill to master is involving all levels in the planning and execution processes. As a project manager, you will have to make a special effort to maintain involvement beyond what is usually expected when major organizational change is not involved.

You will maintain involvement of Stakeholders, of course, but include other levels. Add to your routine communication duties direct conversations with those who report to those stakeholders and with team leaders.  Find and include other key players or high prestige individuals. In your communication plan, specify that the project will provide project information to a wide audience and respond to comments.

Remember that workers may be suspicious of changes they are not involved with. They may even be fearful or resistant to the changes. They may be supporters, fence-sitters or resisters. All this affects the success of your project.

You have to ask the right questions in your interactions to assess the situation. Here are some examples:

• What is your judgment on the changes that are planned? (HR Alternate Wording: How do you feel about the changes that are planned?)
• How are people around you accepting the changes in general?
• Do you see serious resistance from any source that will interfere with your team's success?
• How would you describe the climate of the organization around you?
• Would you say people around you are more "concerned," "anxious" or " fearful"?
• Do you know enough about the organizational changes that  are ahead? What questions do you have?
• Do you know enough about how we are proceeding with this project? What questions do you have?

Individual discussions are better for you in this situation than project-wide or organization-wide Q&A. Asking these questions will  allow you to assess the project impact of any issues you uncover - and remain "out in front" of such issues as described in my last post.

Given that much of this skill involves communication, consider beefing up the project communication plan to include these interactions. That will go a long way to helping ensure you have the justification and support to spend the time necessary in these activities.