From our episode, “6 Common Costly Mistakes that Derail Organizations In Times of Change” with Esther Weinberg
At some point, leaders today probably feel the sense of being ready to powerfully take on all the opportunities and challenges at their feet. But the question really is how?
The answer is by creating workplace cultures where trust, respect and psychological safety are valued which probably no one would argue with. That right sounds good on paper but they’re measured as the bottom line.
The Ready Zone
Action ready
It’s the foundation of the house that’s around developing your level of emotional agility. You’re even understanding what your legacy is and how you bring that inside the organization.
Influence ready
It’s how you develop influence through visibility and alignment while building sustainable relationships and doing it from the intention of being giving rather than just taking.
Connect ready
It’s how do you have consistency in communication and take responsibility for the impact of your communication because as we know just because words are coming out of your mouth, doesn’t mean you’re actually saying anything.
Culture ready
It’s how do you build an organization where people are coaching and mentoring each other to build out the best in everybody and that’s what everyone is around to do.
Impact ready
Is how do you develop and grow powerful teams.
Pivot ready
Is how do you really master resilience and cultivating that consistent mindset of change and resilience inside your organization.
They’re all foundational like the water you drink
Big mistakes that organizations tend to make in time of change
Forgetting to create the environment of trust, respect, and psychological safety is almost like taking the eye off the wheel. Change is not one time, it’s constant and it’s interesting because the data shows that if employees trust their employers, their engagement level can increase by up to 20% but the likelihood they will leave their organization goes down by 87%.
People are experiencing your changes inside the organization. On top of four tons, other changes covered parenting, political issues, social issues, and economic pressure. The psychological impact of that is huge
Ann Masten, a great Psychologist and Professor of Child Development in University of Minnesota called this phenomena, “Search Capacity”.
Search capacity is our adaptive systems, mental, and physical that we can do in acutely stressful situations like natural disasters because you can see it. But we’re in chronic stages of grief and loss, we have this external calamities like supply chain shortages, inflation, climate change, gun violence, hate crimes but what about the interior crisis?
How come we take our eye off the ball when it comes to us? So that’s all a fabric and a part of creating this environment of trust, respect, and psychological safety.
Ways leaders can assist their teams in bringing about long-term change
- Honor your word
- Practice self-care
- Be human too
- Show how you feel
- Communication and connection
- Create resiliency
- Put diversity as part of the equation
- Ensure you’re on the right track
- Admit when you’re mis stepped
- Expand awareness
- Inquire your teams’ well-being
Right now, we have to also educate and teach people how to speak about their emotions because we have to remember that feelings are a signpost to what’s important and why do we ignore them so much?
One silver lining of COVID was that even though they couldn’t help but show emotions, leaders couldn’t help but show some more real versions of themselves. Some did more than others but all of a sudden, we could see inside our leaders’ homes. We can also judge how well our company’s doing based on how vulnerable people are. It’s a good thing people are vulnerable.
We can’t control change. What we can control is our actions and our intentions. Anyone can shift for a singular moment and in a moment and think of it the sum of all those small shifts lead to massive ones. They’re these moments that build up resilience and give us evidence and proof that we all can change and have the strength to continue.
