Change management by function occurs within a context of dissonance. People at their core are creatures of habit, with these habits adding secure familiarity to our lives. The working environment is no exception, with habits being key to how a person performs their assigned role.

When change occurs, these habits are interrupted, creating dissonance – the lack of harmony or agreement between people or things – within a person’s context. This is why in work, change can be highly stressful for employees and leaders as the structure and certainty they have become used to being undermined.  

How people adapt to change, and how employees cope with change within their organisations, can depend on the following factors:

• Temperament: A disposition from birth that influences how people engage with the world around them
• Early socialisation: An important factor that speaks to the attitudes and behaviours of a person’s parents and significant others who influence how a person thinks, feels and behaves
• Belief system: Invariably inherited by an individual, a person’s belief system is often programmed from early life, with fear around change and taking risks typically acquired limiting beliefs
• Life experience: What a person learns through successive transitions gives them tools, skills and acquired wisdom

When organisations seek to roll out change, change management initiatives are often located in an organisation’s HR department. Yet, many a change management initiative fails to take off or make the needed internal impact. This is because change management needs to be process that involves those affected, with line managers and supervisors playing an important role. 

Instead of driving change through a top-down approach, the change should be driven by those affected by the change. To do so, these employees should have a business problem posed to them and they take charge of designing the change. The alternative, as has happened before in organisations that have undertaken change management initiatives, these efforts may be resisted by those targeted by the change. Such resistance leads to a loss of time, resources, creates disharmony and can lead to parallel power structures forming among the employee cohort.

To achieve successful change is not to change people as such but rather allow those involved in the change to be the masters of their own fate. When given the opportunity to succeed and ownership of that opportunity, employees can surprise through increased job performance, satisfaction and commitment to the organisation.

As this process is underway, managing fear around change becomes an important task in keeping teams focused and morale at a healthy level.

Three ways to manage change fear

In attempting a change management exercise, there are a few ways organisations can manage the uncertainty and dissonance change creates.

1. Identifying and celebrating early success

Identifying early, quick wins can begin as soon as the change management process is underway. To do so, questions like those below should be posed:

• What are our top priorities for the first phase of this process?
• What projects will show measurable progress can we plan to complete in a nearby time span?
• What will be our communication strategy when these quick wins are achieved?

Communication is crucial because telling the story behind the change ideally should be a story of progress and accomplishment. Successful stories of change breeds confidence in the change and why it is taking place, and illustrates how employees and the organisation benefit.

2. Creating shared experiences that support the change

Creating shared cultural experiences is a key towards establishing an environment supportive of the change. This is because they embed a shared mindset that can lead to improved results within the working environment and how customers are serviced.

Cultural experiences can be divided into four types, being those which positively impact change and need no interpretation, a positive impact needing some interpretation, no positive or negative impact, and lastly, a negative impact. When engaged in a change programme, those which produce a positive impact are sought after, allied with a clear and credible communication campaign so employees fully understand what is happening around the change, its benefits, and why.
 

3. Leveraging EQ and situational awareness

In any conflict, situational awareness is important but not easily achieved. This is because situational awareness in a working environment requires high quality communication and leadership across all relevant levels in the business. Situational awareness at the individual level is self-awareness, essential to emotional intelligence (EQ).

EQ is critical to effective leadership, particularly when dealing with change and uncertainty. A leader able to tune into themselves and their emotions, the emotions of others, and who has a firm grasp of situational awareness is equipped to manage an environment defined by uncertainty. EQ generally leads to better results, as employees are more adaptive to change, and increased employee satisfaction, critical to any change programme.

To learn more about Letsema’s change management expertise within our Next-Gen Operations practice, click here.