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How to Get Leaders on Board with a Change

There is no such thing as organizational change. Organizations don’t change. The only thing that does change in an organization are the people within it: when enough people have bought into the change, we then see the changes happening.

Any change that impacts our life is uncomfortable. If you don’t believe that, just move your watch for one day to the opposite arm. Most of us like the comfort of predictability. When organizational change impacts us personally, it rocks our status quo. If given a choice, we’d typically rather keep on doing it the way we’ve always done it.

How do organizations successfully lead organizational change? They don’t, until their leaders champion the change. Organizational leaders have the power to lead the change, or sabotage it. Employees grow immune to the flavor of the month when it comes to accepting change and will look closely at their leaders to see if they are walking the talk when it comes to buying into the change being mandated.

The following tips will help ensure that your organization’s leaders are role models for leading the change being proposed.

Continue reading “Getting Leadership Buy-In” »

From the August 2011 Quest for Leadership Excellence Newsletter (sign up)

Today’s successful organizations are led by talented leaders who have high expectations for their organization, their employees and most importantly, for themselves. In many cases, long before they received their title, these leaders were demonstrating their leadership capacity by leading themselves. What do we mean when we talk about leading yourself? When you are a successful self-leader, you typically achieve the following:

A Compelling, Positive Vision:

There are three types of vision:

• A positive vision: Today is good and tomorrow will be even better.
• A status quo vision: I hope tomorrow is as good as today.
• A negative vision: If you think today is bad, just wait until tomorrow when…

Before you lead others, you need to have a compelling, positive mental vision of where you are going. What are your goals with your organization, your team and yourself? The only leadership vision that energizes a team is a positive vision that paints a picture of the intended destination and focuses individual effort on team outcomes.

Continue reading “To Lead Others, Start with Yourself” »

In Good Times and Bad

Depending on which business analysts you listen to and believe, the recession is over (or not) and business projections for the coming year are improving, (or not). Although the experts cannot agree on the future of our global economy, there is no disagreement that most businesses and industries have experienced significant blows to what was business as usual.

While most of our clients are cautiously optimistic about the future, many are still dealing with lingering pain points, including keeping morale up during difficult times. In a recent survey conducted by Express Employment Professionals, 19,000 companies were questioned about their hiring plans for the second quarter of 2011. In addition to identifying what sectors anticipated hiring, the survey also found that 62% of the respondents were concerned, or highly concerned, about morale in the workplace. Respondents identified reasons for low morale, including:

• Fear of lay-offs or general job security
• Employees feeling undervalued
• Poor communication
• Lack of confidence in management

Continue reading “Keeping Employee Morale Up” »

Great leaders have the confidence to hire smart talent and then get out of the way, letting people do what they do best. They surround themselves with people who not only have the necessary technical expertise, but are as passionate and excited about the success of the business as they are.

These leaders hire people with a can do, take charge attitude; people who know how to get things done, even when the boss is not around. These talented contributors not only get things done, they challenge the status quo, sharing recommendations that no one had ever thought of before. They are thinkers, not just doers. In some cases, they are smarter than the boss . . . at least in their area of expertise.

However, some leaders, fearful for their job security, strive to be the brightest star and hire accordingly. If you find yourself working long hours, putting out daily spot fires and herding cats to ensure that that things consistently turn out right, we challenge you to think about hiring someone smarter than you are . . . at least in a particular area of expertise.

Continue reading “Hire Smart” »