Navigating and Facilitating Change
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Click here to view and download this month’s worksheet to utilize on your own or with a Group and/or Team over the next 12 months.
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“People are the gatekeepers of change, and that is the most often overlooked and undervalued critical success factor to ensure effective and meaningful change.”
Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers
Robert J. Kriegel PhD, David Brandt PhD
We are excited to launch the second quarter 2023 Tool of the Month as we continue our daily quest to be and become more effective as we lead, manage, and serve others each day. Thank you for sharing the journey of growth and development with us via the Tool of the Month!
The Change Ready Profile, one of the four core tools we are exploring this year, is a key coaching and development component used as a method for developing self-awareness. We will begin this quarter by providing an overview of the Change Ready Profile. In May, we will explore how it can be used more specifically as a 1-1 Coaching tool, and in June, we will discuss further how to navigate and facilitate change at the team and organization-wide levels. Our featured book this quarter is Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers authored by Robert J. Kriegel PhD and David Brandt PhD
There is an old saying ‘the only person who likes change is a baby with a wet diaper!’ and we recognize how resistant we can all be when it comes to anticipating, accepting, and embracing change. Our collective global response to the recent pandemic was evidence of how severely the challenges of change can impact individuals, teams, and organizations.
In Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers, the authors share, “a Gallup poll reported 75 percent of American business leaders are not well prepared to manage change” and that was years before we ever normalized the word pandemic. We are generally poor at responding to and adapting to change because we create cultures where we engage in and reward, reactive responder mode. We have become experts at reverse engineering situations, fixing problems, and praising team members for heroic behavior as they respond to the fire du jour.
Moreover, we are addicted to subject matter expertise and problem solving. Team members are primarily hired for their subject matter expertise, which is quite understandable. We are educated for it, trained for it, rewarded for it, admired for it, recognized for it, and logically, exceptional at problem solving in our area of subject matter expertise. Our role is focused on the urgent and the known. One of the greatest challenges of being and becoming change ready in organizations is that we fail to spend the time to help subject matter experts (aka leaders) shift to what we refer to as the proactive initiator mode.
Developing the characteristics and skills to take initiative, learn to be creative, innovative, spend time in planning, being adventurous, learning to practice adaptability by experimenting by trial and error, and learning to tolerate ambiguity is a matter of personal and professional growth and development. And that requires a significant investment of precious resources, time, energy, and money.
If you work in an environment where tackling daily problems, responding to urgent requests, and never having enough time to plan, prepare, think, innovate, and create, are the norm, you are not alone. Drs. Brandt and Kriegel’s research revealed that 70 percent of the population are responders, and most individuals are security and stability seeking creatures. We hit the ground running each day solving problems, fixing what is broken, and leaving the future in the future. Individually and corporately, we fail to dedicate resources to coaching and equipping ourselves to being and becoming change ready.
Add to the reactive responder mode culture, the human tendency to wrestle with and resist change due to fear of losing control, the lack of a desire or willingness to expend additional energy to do the additional work change inevitably creates, and or the fear of the myriad of unknowns and the uncertainty of change, leaders (aka subject matter experts) find themselves stuck, and shedding more than a few tears of frustration, trying to help move individuals and collective organizations forward.
As subject matter experts and leaders, developing one’s individual and collective change readiness, resulting in the ability to navigate and facilitate change effectively, will lead to environments where trust, caring, and clarity are high while ambiguity and resistance are low, resulting in greater levels of team member engagement, satisfaction, and effectiveness.
The Change Ready Profile is an incredibly impactful tool that measures and quantifies current levels of change readiness in each individual team member. The team scores can be aggregated and then compared and contrasted to identify the unique team average. As an example, our practice monitors a database including results surfaced from former and current partnerships and trainings.
It is important to remember the Change Ready Profile is not determinative, it is not a psychological assessment, and it is not intended to place a team member into a behavioral box. Conversely, it is a tool to help an individual develop awareness and measure one’s current level of change readiness.
The Change Ready Profile helps individuals examine change ready strengths and opportunities for growth and how flexible one will be when faced with the incessant demands of an ever-changing world. As leaders help navigate and facilitate change, the tool can provide a pathway to developing individual, team, and organizational effectiveness.
At the Individual Level
After completing the Change Ready Profile, many individuals find they have higher scores on some traits and lower scores on others. This is typical of most profiles and indicates that some change readiness traits are more developed than others. It is important to recognize strengths and identify areas where one may grow and expand their capacity to embrace and navigate change.
At the Team Level
The Change Ready Profile scale has value not only as a personal measurement to evaluate individual change readiness, but also as a training tool for leaders to coach their team members. It can serve as an effective tool to provide 360-degree feedback for associates at all levels in the organization. This feedback can be very useful, as it allows team members to see that others do not always see them as they see themselves.
At the Organizational Level
The Change Ready Profile scale is also useful in coaching teams and can be used by organizations in creating collaboration, project management, and planning groups. For example, adventurers are great starters, resourceful people are excellent problem solvers, optimists make good cheerleaders and whose input is especially useful when people feel discouraged. When initiating or undergoing cultural transition, a change ready organization is essential.
The Change Ready Profile measures our flexibility and readiness to respond in a rapidly changing environment and scores seven traits on a scale of 0 – 30 consisting of an individual’s:
Resourcefulness
Optimism
Adventurousness
Drive
Adaptability
Confidence
Tolerance for Ambiguity
Drs. Kriegel and Brandt and defined a score in the range of 22 – 26 as the Optimal Change Ready Zone. See this month’s worksheet for a description of the seven traits of change readiness. If you have never taken the Change Ready Profile it can be obtained by ordering a copy of Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers, where you will find the instrument included with the copy of the book purchase. You may also contact us to purchase the tool by emailing Erica Moe, Practice Manager at erica@lauraschanz.com.
Change readiness means feeling excited about change, anticipating and initiating it rather than simply reacting to events, according to Drs. Kriegel and Brandt. Most organizations do not take the time to create a culture of change readiness and successfully shift out of reactive responder mode. Change ready organizations are proactively created over time by consistently coaching individuals, challenging beliefs and assumptions about “sacred cows”, building an environment of trust and caring, conquering resistance, and creating an energizing atmosphere.
Overall, it is crucial to understand that change readiness is an ongoing process. There is, and will always be, room to grow and improve. One does not, and will not, ever stop expanding one’s capacity to handle change. The Change Ready Profile serves as a useful tool at the individual, team and organizational level and can help us set ourselves and others up for success as we navigate the future.
Extraordinarily effective leaders may find the Change Ready Profile an excellent coaching instrument to help develop themselves and others to be and become the most effective version of themselves. Join us next month as we take an in-depth look at methods to develop change readiness. We can take action, stop crying about change and embrace the ever-changing future with optimism, certainty and confidence!
-LS
This Month’s Worksheet
Click here to view and download this month’s worksheet to utilize on your own or with a Group and/or Team over the next 12 months.
Recommended Quarterly Reading
Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers
By Robert J. Kriegel PhD, David Brandt PhD
2023
Managing From The Inside Out
Winter 2023
February 1, 8, 15, 22
March 1, 8, 15
AM Classes: 8:30-11:30 A.M.
PM Classes: 1:30-4:30 P.M.
Spring 2023
May 3, 10, 17, 24, 31
June 7, 14
AM Classes: 8:30-11:30 A.M.
PM Classes: 1:30-4:30 P.M.
Fall 2023
October 4, 11, 18, 25
November 1, 8, 15
AM Classes: 8:30-11:30 A.M.
PM Classes: 1:30-4:30 P.M.
Register today to engage in professional growth and development as a Leader Manager and join us for Managing From The Inside Out! Simply email Katie Williamson at katie@lauraschanz.com to reserve a seat for yourself or a Team Member. The 2023 Registration Fee is $1,295.