Stephanie's 10/15/11 podcast from 104.1 FM The Truth http://www.1041thetruth.com/

 http://www.thelarsengroup.com/2011season/guests2011octdec.html

Whew, I’m glad that’s over!

Have you ever been part of a project team that worked and worked to accomplish a goal, only to return to your day job once the goal was accomplished? The changes in employee language and behavior will be short-lived if you don’t plan for their survival. Weaving the new way of being into your organizational behavior patterns isn’t magic but it does take a little effort. Isn’t it worth it though after you’ve spent all that time and money to achieve the initial results? 

My colleague, Kelly Nieto, and I have developed an approach that helps leaders and change facilitators to create existence structures so the changed language and behavior and ultimately the desired results have staying power. Stay tuned.

Houston, we have a problem.

Sometimes employees don’t trust the sincerity of the communications of the management team because it oozes of political spin. Haven’t we all been part of organizations that either didn’t announce their failures or did so in such a way that sounded like a victory? While, it is important to communicate failures such that they allow the “failure leaders” to maintain their dignity, I argue that it is equally important to reinforce a culture of accountability. I hear managers express concern that admitting failure will lead the masses to lose confidence in their leadership. I have seen quite the contrary. When leaders openly admitted that they made a decision with the information available at the time but they made the wrong decision, employees’ respect for and confidence in the leaders actually grew. Therefore, I encourage my clients at the beginning of a change to communicate their vision, the path to get there, and the planned vector checks along the way. While there is a risk that at those checks they will learn that the original path was flawed, planning to check and being prepared to make adjustments will make the difference between achieving and not achieving the desired results. 

My colleague, Kelly Nieto, and I have developed an approach that helps leaders and change facilitators to assess progress along their change path. Stay tuned.

How is that going to get us there?

Much of what I’ve read on the topic of Change Management centers on dealing with employee resistance. I have found that most employees want to be supportive, particularly if the change is tied to company growth and stability. To be fair, all of the change initiatives I’ve seen have experienced at least some level of employee resistance. However in a majority of them, the resistance was not due to lack of clarity or commitment about the change vision or fearing for the stability of their jobs. The resistance was due to the fact that the path described (if a path was described at all) wasn’t convincing…..in many cases, even to the guiding team.

My colleague, Kelly Nieto, and I have developed an approach that helps leaders and change facilitators to develop technically sound change initiatives that actually have a shot at achieving the desired results. Stay tuned.

Gifts Instead of Weaknesses

The following is an illustration of my take on one of Peter Block/Designed Learning’s Six Conversations that Matter: Gifts Instead of Weakness

Before I ventured into the world as an independent consultant, I worked as an internal consultant in a team of Organization Effectiveness practitioners, both as an individual contributor and then as a manager. In the course of the annual performance evaluation conversations I heard from two different managers that I was a stellar performer but that I really needed to be more respectful of some of the other members of our department.  I thanked them for the praise and sassily responded that we were going to have the same conversation the next year about respecting others. I held firmly to my belief that you can’t make me respect someone if I don’t. Respect has to be earned.

And then there was Taylor. 

I chose not to do an amniocentesis when I was pregnant. So it was a surprise to my husband and me when moments after Taylor was born, we heard “your son has features consistent with Down Syndrome”. That can’t be, I thought. We’re both really smart. Our kid is supposed to contribute to society in a big way. I had a preconceived notion of what that meant and feared this would now not be possible.

Sometimes I think about what life will be like for Taylor when he is older and in social situations. I can appreciate that something that Taylor offers to the conversation may not be the most brilliant contribution. I expect others to show my kid some dignity because he is a beautiful human being. Oh, that is what my managers were trying to tell me all those years! (Thank you Ken and Delmarie.)

I have learned more about life and humanity from this 3 year-old boy with developmental delays than decades of traditional learning offered by PhDs. While I am still on a journey of discovery, I have made a breakthrough. Now I take time to look for the contribution others make in an organization without automatically making them wrong for not contributing in the way I originally pictured. I still strongly believe that everyone in an organization needs to earn his or her keep. Their gifts might just be in unexpected wrapping.