Change Communication Training
Drive strategic change
Craft an effective communication strategy that sparks and sustains change with empathetic speeches, stories, ceremonies, and symbols that motivate and inspire teams.
The Change Communication Guide for Uncertain Leaders
Here’s an uncomfortable truth: Leaders don’t always know what changes are around the corner.
Good or bad, change breeds uncertainty, and uncertainty can breed fear—especially when it will affect employees, whose jobs hang in the balance, and customers, who depend on a product or service.
Instead of communicating openly with both groups, leaders tend to go silent at times of crisis and change—and that needs to, well, change.
Uncertainty’s No Fun
Humans, as a whole, don’t deal well with not knowing what’s coming.
Given a choice, we’d rather experience an electric shock right now than not know whether we’ll get shocked later. That’s right: Pain is preferable to uncertainty. Our brains seek what scientists have called “cognitive closure,” which motivates us to resolve ambiguous issues in our minds.
Social psychologist Arie Kruglanski has found that people with a high need for closure will “seize and freeze” on the first piece of information that gives them a feeling of knowing. Others, though, prefer to resolve tension through action.
Both reactions are fine if the uncertain folks in your organization happen to either settle or act on something that proves productive. But without a leader to guide them, that isn’t very likely.
Let’s say your company is changing leadership, reorganizing, or just launching a totally new strategy. You may know what you ultimately want to accomplish but may not have all the details nailed down.
In those cases, leaders tend to stay quiet, fearing that incomplete information will make everyone more nervous and expose them to criticism. Meanwhile, the lack of information makes some employees seize on the first piece of gossip that sounds plausible.
Others prepare for a blow–they start revamping their resumes and setting up interviews. As a leader, you’re better off being the source of information, no matter how incomplete, rather than letting others fill in the blanks.
When Silence Isn’t Golden
Leaders stay silent in times of uncertainty for plenty of seemingly good reasons. Maybe there are legal considerations that are out of their hands, for instance. But they often keep quiet at the wrong times and for the wrong reasons, too.
Maybe you assume that that you’ve explained your intentions well enough for employees to connect the dots. Maybe you just trust that they’ll trust you, worrying that admitting your own uncertainty may compromise that trust.
In any of those cases, you’d be wrong.
Never assume everyone knows what they need to and will be satisfied with what they don’t. Focus on what can be said rather than what can’t. People will be more willing to forgive your in-progress ideas if they feel like they’re part of the process.
You might be tempted to dive into the “what” and “how” of the changes afoot, but take care to emphasize the “why” as well.
Help your team envision the final outcome by describing the future you hope to create together. But also remind them that even though some aspects of their world may be changing, others are not: The values that you and your organization have always stood for are here to stay.
