The three core characteristics of good change leaders
I’ve been spending the last couple of months developing a change leadership framework (based on the research) to build adaptive change leaders.
You don’t need a crystal ball to see that even if the level of change happening now is more than ever before, it’s not going to get easier in the future. We know that AI is going to bring lots of change for organisations, that technology is evolving more rapidly than ever, and all of these changes may also mean we need to respond to environmental changes more quickly than ever.
So what does this mean for the people we need to lead our organisations through these turbulent times?
Research on change leadership shows that the best leaders in times of change are able to:
maintain progress and direction even when there is uncertainty,
to stay connected to their team and build trust and engagement that brings people with them
and to constructively challenge the status quo.
I’ve broken this down into the three characteristics that make a brilliant change leader.
Direction:
Leaders need to set direction and create a sense of progress in times of change. In an environment where there are many conflicting priorities, this isn’t as straightforward as just delivering on a plan. Good change leadership prioritises agility and an outcome focus, adjusting time and effort onto the things that make the most meaningful progress towards the outcome. Direction is also about building the organisation’s capability in the areas it is moving into, including skills, tools, capacity or authority needed, and creating and making visible the progress as it happens to create a sense of momentum.
Engagement:
Creating an engaged and empowered workforce is all about trust, clarity and fairness. Trust is at the heart of how your employees receive the change – they want to know that you can do the things you say you will, that you care about their interests and that you mean what you say and follow up on your actions. It’s also important that you create a sense of clarity about what you are proposing and how it will be implemented. Finally, a key differentiator of good change leaders is empowerment of your team – to input to decisions that affect them. Participation is an essential component of how people respond to change.
Challenge:
Leaders who genuinely want to create change are not happy with the status quo. They carry the courage of their convictions and will remain focused on the outcome they want to achieve. They are able to be objective about how things are really working and will follow up on issues, holding teams to a consistent standard in line with what they want to be in the future by calling out inconsistencies and issues with the current state.
You can find out more about the Adaptive Change Leader methodology and how I can support your leaders to deliver change here.
“The most common leadership failure stems from trying to apply technical solutions to adaptive challenges.”