If you compare the change management of ten years ago with today’s change leadership, you are challenged in three areas in particular:
- Increased pace of change
- New forms of organisation
- Higher complexity of the changes
It makes heavy demands on your ability to exploit the strategic opportunities offered by frequent and rapid changes. So how do you specifically need to develop in order to be able to utilise the changes?
To answer that question, it is interesting to investigate how the leader’s role has developed with the ever-changing nature of change leadership.
This is best explained through four habit- and ground-breaking movements which any change leader must be aware of.
4 habit-breaking movements that develop the leader’s role in a change process
1. From change management to change learning
Those days are over when the leader was expected to have considered all aspects of the change before leading the employees through it. The leader must still lead the change, but his role is now more to identify the information which enables the employees to change because they now understand the organisational values, ways of cooperating, business models and attitudes. The leader must learn how to influence attitudes and ways of thinking through dialogue, enabling the employees to drive the change with their new-found understanding.
2. From breaking down resistance to utilising resistance
Even established change theories build on the leader breaking down and overcoming resistance in order to make people change. But today, the leader must focus on utilising resistance constructively by understanding where it comes from and how it can be used to understand the employee’s capacity for change.
3. From standardised to synchronised systems
Many organisations have systems that create efficiency through standardisation. But standardisation often leads to change aversion regardless of whether the standardisation comes in the form of formal systems or cultural habits. The leader must thus from the outset of the change consider how to change the systems to achieve an effect of the change.
4. From lack of insight to a need for help
Even though the leader has taken part in the planning of major changes, it is important to understand that the leader is not above the effect that change has on human beings. The leader still needs personal insight to self-mobilise through the change. And for the leader to be able to lead changes to the best of his ability, he must recognise that he will need to build strategies to help him handle the imminent changes.
Vil du vide mere om, hvordan du udvikler din lederrolle i en forandringsproces?
Her får du konkrete anbefalinger til, hvordan du opbygger tilpasnings- og forandringsevnen i organisationen, så du kan udnytte det øgede forandringstempo, samtidig med at folk i organisationen trives.
Download vores white paper om forandringens forandring her og få vores anbefalinger til udvikling af lederens rolle i en forandringsproces.
