Change happens often in organizations. Employees come and go, leadership adjusts company goals, workload priorities shift, and business growth occurs. The only constant thing about change is that it frequently happens. But employees can be better prepared for it, and leadership can coordinate workplace change efforts so that the change so it happens smoothly.

Dimensions of Leading Change

Leaders need to handle and delegate the workplace change efforts effectively in order for it to be successful and adapted by the entire organization. There are five dimensions of leading change:

• Modeling the Change. To lead change, you must be able to show others what it means to change. You need to adapt the change first, and encourage others to follow. Being the role model is important. You must also be self-aware, and understand how others perceive you as the leader of the change. If you can do this, you can act accordingly to ensure that the change is adapted successfully.
• Communicating about the Change. Communication and transparency are key. If the change is not communicated effectively with the team, they will be less likely to want to adapt to the change. You may need to communicate the change across a large organization, so plan the best way to send the message – whether it’s written in an email, brought up during a meeting, or discussed on a conference call. Make your language simple, down-to-earth, and clear.
• Involving Others in the Change. Because participation builds commitment, change leaders may need to involve others in the process. This requires a mindset that change is something everyone helps create, rather than change being something they have no control over and have to just deal with. The leader should use effective questions to solicit input from those who will be affected by the change. Involving others also means actively listening and responding thoughtfully when people express concerns.
• Helping Others Break From the Past. Change can be scary and employees may be hesitant to want to change. Leaders need to help others understand why the change is a good thing and encourage them to look to the future with an open mind. The goal is to generate innovative ideas for achieving the change that was deemed necessary.
• Creating a Supportive Learning Environment. Leaders should create a supportive environment as the change happens. As the team practices new behaviors, mistakes may occur. There will be a period of trial, error, adjustment, and retrial. It’s important to be understanding during this time. When people are asked to learn new things and change quickly it can be stressful. The change leader can minimize this stress by creating an environment in which the learning process is openly acknowledged and accepted as a necessary part of the change.

Making Change Easier

Handling and leading change can be worked on with HRDQ’s ‘Leading Change at Every Level’ product. It has step-by-step facilitator guidance, a three-hour program outline, several skill practice activities, action planning worksheets, a real-world case study, a reproducible article, and many ideas for customizing the learning experience. Participants will be able to measure their current change leadership abilities, understand effective change leadership behaviors and learn how to support change efforts.

To learn more about how to handle change in the workplace, attend HRDQ’s webinar “Change Training: Leading Organizational Change Efforts” on Feb. 28 at 2 p.m. EST. Participants will learn why change initiatives fail and how to ensure their success, how to implement a framework to actively lead change efforts, how to plan for the success of future change through close evaluation of the current initiative, how to manage resistance to ensure an efficient transition, and how to apply techniques for increasing and gaining commitment to the change.

Effective leadership is a skill that every manager needs to master. Effective leadership means more success – for the individual, team and organization as a whole. With strong leadership a business can thrive.

There are four types of leadership. One type is direct leaders who take charge and are forward and honest. Spirited leaders are energetic and assertive, and they lead by inspiring. Considerate leaders lead by being empathetic and building group harmony. Finally, systematic leaders are logical and they tend to plan carefully. Managers can encompass some or all of these leadership styles. Knowing your style is important, but also knowing ways to improve is crucial.

There is always room to improve one’s leadership skills. A few of them are listed below:

Create Your Vision

Vision is the ability to imagine the organization’s future and inspire others to work toward achieving goals. Leaders should continually look for new ideas and opportunities and ways to achieve them. Staying focused on the goal and assessing tasks and responsibilities as they unfold is essential.

Pursue Excellence

Leaders should set high expectations for themselves and identify ways to go the extra mile for employees and customers. They should strive for the best results from their staff and take risks when necessary. They should also seek new ways of doing things and be open to other suggestions.

Communicate Effectively

Communication is one of the most important ingredients for effective leadership. Managers should show their passion for the organization, voice ideas in a clear manner, listen to others, and share personal anecdotes to increase understanding. They should end with a call to action.

Build Trust

Managers should remain trustworthy in order to keep their team’s faith in them as a leader. They need to keep their promises, communicate directly and openly, be honest about problems, and take responsibility. If a leader is trustworthy their followers are likely to be trustworthy as well.

Inspire Others

Inspirational leaders are easier to follow. Managers who demonstrate their vision and communicate their ideas are inspirational. They can use a variety of approaches to inspire others around them.

Be Enthusiastic

If a leader is enthusiastic and appreciates their job, the positive environment will affect the entire team. When a leader shows enthusiasm they show others that work matters.

Develop your leadership with HRDQ’s webinar Leading is a State of Being: Effective Leadership Skills on Feb 21 at 2 p.m. EST. Attendees will learn the key characteristics of effective leadership, how leaders can build trust and confidence with their employees, the behaviors that undermine leadership performance, and how to act decisively and demonstrate leadership during crises. Register for the webinar here: https://www.hrdqu.com/webinars/leading-state-of-being-effective-leadership/

Further your leadership knowledge with the Leadership 101 customizable course. This is an effective training program that gives both newly emerging and experienced leaders and managers the tools and techniques for developing and refining their skills. This learning resource helps organizations retain employees and clients, make better decisions, and improve performance.

Attend the free webinar on this product! Register today!

Courage involves behavior. Like all behaviors, courage can be developed, encouraged, and reinforced. While a lot of writers have focused on the realms in which courage is applied (e.g. moral courage) military courage, and political courage, it is more useful to understand the common ways that people behave when being courageous, regardless of which realm they’re operating in.

While the realms themselves may have sharp differences, the ways people behave when being courageous within those realms are surprisingly similar. In my work as a courage-building consultant, I have discovered that there are three ways of behaving when your courage is activated. When you become familiar with the three distinct types of courageous behavior, you gain a deeper understanding of how to tap into, and strengthen, your own courage and the courage of those around you.

I call these three different forms of courage the Three Buckets of Courage.

Try Courage

When managers talk about wanting workers to “step up to the plate,” it is Try Courage that they are referring to. Try Courage is the courage of initiative and action. You often see Try Courage when people make first attempts – for example, whenever you see someone attempt new, skill-stretching, or pioneering tasks. Someone who volunteers to lead a tough or risky project is demonstrating Try Courage.

Trust Courage

Trust Courage is the courage that it takes to relinquish control and rely on others. When managers talk of wanting employees to embrace company changes more willingly or to follow directives more enthusiastically, it is more Trust Courage that they want employees to have. When Trust Courage is present, people give each other the benefit of the doubt, instead of questioning the motives and intentions of those around them. Trust Courage isn’t about taking charge (as with Try Courage), but about following the charge of others.

Tell Courage

Tell Courage is the courage of voice and involves speaking with candor and conviction, especially when the opinions expressed run counter to the groups. To preserve their safety, workers often agree too much and speak up too little. When Tell Courage is activated, it causes workers to assert themselves more willingly and confidently. Tell Courage at work is shown when employees tactfully but truthfully provide tough feedback, even to their manager. It’s also seen when workers raise their hands and ask for help, or when they tell their manager about mistakes they’ve made before they are asked.

The main benefit of using the Three Buckets of Courage as a framework for understanding and categorizing courageous behavior is that it helps make courage, as a concept, more graspable.

Parsing courage into three behavioral buckets allows us to discriminate the different ways we have been courageous in the past and are capable of being in the future.

To learn more about how to develop courage, attend the free webinar “Courageous Leadership: How to Build Backbone, Boost Performance, and Get Results” on Feb. 20 at 2 p.m. EST. This webinar will allow attendees to understanding why being courageous is the premier personal and professional virtue while learning how to create an environment that supports ongoing courageous behavior. Participants will also receive tips on how to increase their courage while inspiring more workplace courage. Register today!

This webinar is based on the HRDQ product “Courageous Leadership.” Courageous Leadership is a comprehensive training package that introduces courage-building, which is a practice that guides leaders to readily meet challenges, fully embrace change, and speak more assertively. Learn more!