How we help teams navigate Change

Today on the podcast, we’re talking about how we help teams navigate Change. We start by establishing that all of us have different levels of comfort when it comes to change. Some like the beginning, some the middle, and some the end. Knowing when and how you are best suited to enter the change process is critical. Not only will it help you on a personal level, but it will also help the team succeed. And when a team can successfully navigate an inevitable change, the organization is better suited to win.

This episode is the fourth and final episode where we’re discussing our Team Engagement Series. Brian and Linda Schubring are talking about our approach and philosophy for helping teams thrive. During this Team Engagement Podcast Series, we talk about Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, and Change. These four episodes can stand on their own but it will be helpful for you to listen to all of them to get a more complete understanding of how we incorporate these four topics.

Before we dive into the topic of Change, it will be helpful to explain the Team Engagement Series process.

What Is A Team Engagement Series?

At Leadership Vision, a team engagement series consists of four, 90-minute sessions on a given topic. In addition to the Four C’s (which you’ll be learning about here over the next few weeks), we also have sessions on Knowledge, Purpose, and Trust, Emotional Health and Well-being, Courageous Leadership and Strengths-Based Team Development.

The Four C’s series was created when we found that teams who could Collaborate, Communicate, handle Conflict, and work through Change well together, seemed to be the most successful.

When we work with teams around these topics, sometimes they can be in a crisis situation, but most often we work on these competencies to better prepare a team to handle them when they inevitably do come up.

We also approach these sessions first from the perspective of the individual, then the team, and finally the overall culture. They weave together to create a cohesive approach to helping teams thrive in ever-changing environments.

Understanding Change

We live in a world where change is inevitable. We saved change as the last topic here in the series as a sort of exclamation point on the entire Team Engagement process. It also makes sense to have it at the end because we believe that when teams communicate and collaborate effectively, they can navigate change. And when teams handle conflict appropriately, the navigate change the same way.

All of us have dealt with change since our earliest childhood. Change is part of our lives and a natural rhythm in our world. It’s something we can all connect on.

We introduce the topic about change, we start by simply asking people why change is important and what it means to them. Typically conversation in the room explodes because everyone has an opinion on change.

The more we hear people talking, the more we hear what part of the change process they’re actually drawn to the most. So we ask them this, “When are you best in change? Are you best before, during and or after?”

After some wrestling with this question, we ask our participants to get up and physically move to a section of the room we have designated to correspond with one of those three parts in the change process.

We then ask people to think of a significant change that has happened in their life.

• What prompted the change?
• Who was involved in that change?
• How did that change shape your attitude towards change right now? 

It is at this point that we make a Strengths application. We’ll have them list out all of their Strengths and provide examples of when certain Strengths are helpful, and unhelpful, during change. It’s amazing to see the flashbulbs of awareness pop as people begin to understand that while they may have a preference to a certain stage of the change process, all of their Strengths help them navigate change in one way or another.

Finally, this lays the groundwork for a team to begin talking about the behaviors, attitudes, norms, and values that exist in an organizational culture when it comes to change. By naming them, it provides an opportunity to talk about healthy ways to engage in the change process.