I didn’t write anything last month which is the first time that’s happened since I began doing this. If this was a game of Cricket I would have made a half century and then got out. But that’s a little negative, I was extremely busy on a number of fronts and had to prioritise, and allow myself to drop some things. An overrated capability and one that is not my strongest suite, but I did it and we’re still here.
So to this month’s thinking linked from that, most leaders will tell you they’re “good with change”.
It’s one of those things we’re supposed to say now. Like being “people first” or “data driven” or “agile”. Change is part of this ideal. Everything shifts on macro and micro levels. Markets, funding, customer expectations, technology, even people. If you’re a leader and you’re not up for change, you probably won’t last long (it’s probably not for you).
But here’s what I’ve been reminded of lately, being close to a lot of change activity (sometimes in the room, sometimes alongside it):
People don’t really resist change. They resist what change feels like.
They resist what it signals. The uncertainty of it all and the loss of control. The idea that “we’ve decided and you’ll catch up later”. The worry that they’re about to be asked to do more, with less, while being told it’s an “exciting opportunity” (yes, this is still a tactic and will be around for some time yet).
This though is why change is such a high quality mirror for leadership. That’s because change doesn’t just test your strategy, it tests your values. No, I don’t mean the ones written on the wall, I mean your own personal leadership values. The ones you actually believe in and look to bring. The ones that show up in different ways, especially under pressure.
I think change creates higher pressured situations for leaders due to what’s at stake on a number of fronts e.g. results, credibility, ego.
The bit we forget is that change usually starts with care
Most change is triggered by a positive intention, even if it might not seem like it.
I don’t mean it always comes wrapped in perfect logic and pure motives. Sometimes change is driven by ego or politics or panic, if we’re honest
But the changes that matter most, the big ones, they usually start with some form of care. For example:
- A desire to protect outcomes that matter for an organisation
- A push to reduce risk before something breaks
- An attempt to make something sustainable
- A need to improve quality or experience
In other words, change is often born from responsibility of leadership. The problem is that intent isn’t what people experience. This will be second guessed. People experience what you do next and that’s where this idea of a ‘values test’ starts.
Where change goes wrong – an integrity gap?
You can often tell how a change will land within the first few moments of how it’s introduced.
Not because of the slides and not because of the comms plan, but more because of the tone.
A few things that spring to mind when I consider this are:
- Whether leaders are speaking like humans who have thought about the impact OR like a spokesperson trying to “sell it”.
- Whether leaders are willing to name the trade-offs OR whether they’re pretending there aren’t any.
- Whether they’re inviting people into reality OR managing them away from it.
This has integrity written all over it and can create a gap.
The gap between the positive intention behind the change, and the lived experience of the change for everyone else and it shows up in predictable ways.
Sometimes it’s speed replacing sense-making. Decisions are made quickly (often for good reasons), but meaning doesn’t get built at the same pace. People are told what’s happening, but not helped to understand it. So they fill in the blanks themselves and I can’t think of many situations I’ve been in where that is filled with optimism (there will be some I’m sure).
Sometimes it’s certainty being performed. Leaders speak with absolute confidence because they think it will calm everyone down, but when reality shifts (as it always does during change), credibility drops. People don’t mind “we don’t know yet” half as much as leaders think. What they mind is being reassured, only to find out later it wasn’t true. I’d vote for this any day of the week.
Sometimes it’s accountability becoming ‘foggy’. Everyone nods. Everyone agrees. But nobody really owns the next decision, the next communication, the next hard trade-off. So change becomes a series of announcements rather than a series of actions. And people lose trust not because the change is hard, but because it’s messy. This requires a fairly well performing Leadership team to make sure this isn’t the case.
When all of this is going on your values aren’t what you say, they’re what you are doing and what you reinforce.
A short story (you may recognise it)
A leadership team I worked with recently was in the middle of an important change. There was a lot at stake, a fair amount of pressure and some external forces, so it was a of a decent size and complexity.
They did what many leadership teams do, they tried to protect their people by taking the burden on themselves. They worked harder, had extra meetings, focussed on the problem. From inside this team, it looked like high commitment, but from the outside, it looked like secrecy.
They weren’t hiding anything deliberately. They just hadn’t thought about their impact, because they hadn’t realised that every closed-door session creates a potential for a story in the corridor.
When you dug into it, people weren’t angry at the change, they were just anxious about what it meant. I would have been too. Because they didn’t feel included in the sense-making, they assumed the worst was about to happen.
When the leadership team finally slowed down enough to bring people into the reality something shifted. I wouldn’t say that everyone loved it, but the tone definitely changed. They managed to create a shared problem, not an imposed plan.
That’s an example of what I would call values-led leadership in change. There’s nothing special here, just holding maybe the values of integrity and transparency.
What values-led change actually looks like
This won’t be everyone’s choice of values, but my belief is that these 5 are important enough to call out:
Clarity – naming what’s changing and what you’re protecting.
Honesty – telling the truth about what you know, what you don’t, and when you’ll update people.
Consistency – holding the line on standards when pressure rises.
Care – supporting people through hard shifts without rescuing them from them.
Reliability – following through and closing loops so trust doesn’t leak out over time
The “values test” to keep coming back to
Here’s some questions that may help when you’re in the thick of some significant change activity:
- Can we describe the positive intention behind this change in one sentence?
- Which value is most at risk right now, and what behaviour will protect it?
- Are we asking people to change… without changing anything ourselves?
- Are people experiencing this as “done to” or “done with”?
- What will we do this week that makes our intent visible?
If you can answer those cleanly, you’re probably leading change with the idea of integrity mentioned previously.
If you can’t, I wouldn’t panic, I actually think that’s more than likely. Awareness is always a starting point and then you have options for what you do next.