Change leadership involves organizing teams and influencing individuals to achieve the desired organizational transformation. An effective change leader can use various strategies through this process to ensure stakeholder support, reduce resistance, and accomplish tasks within the projected timelines. One of the highly recommended strategies is open, persistent communication. From a change perspective, communication is critical to successful change since a lack of information about the change and failure to understand it affects employee connection with it (Ericson-Lidman & Strandberg, 2021). As a result, communication that enables employees and other stakeholders to understand their mandate and the purpose of change should be prioritized. Li et al. (2021) supported the same by underlining the significance of transparent communication as a fundamental determinant of how change is perceived, understood, and managed. The second strategy is stakeholder engagement in critical phases like problem identification and goal-setting. Barrow et al. (2022) stated that involving stakeholders increases staff buy-in, hence continuous support. It also increases the momentum for the change initiative since stakeholders understand the purpose of the change and their role as valuable team members.
A guiding team’s values, commitment to the assigned tasks, and composition determine its approach to change. Including the most vocal critic of the change initiative in the guiding team denotes accepting criticism, diversity, and uncomfortable truths. According to Rousseau and ten Have (2022), diversity of opinions and evidence is a success factor in effective change. Similarly, incorporating a critic can help to increase the diversity of the team to enrich its experience, skills, and perspectives. It would also offer a massive opportunity for ensuring issues are explored in-depth and opposing views evaluated before a decision is made.
Barrow, J. M., Annamaraju, P., & Toney-Butler, T. J. (2022). Change management. National Library of Science.
Ericson-Lidman, E., & Strandberg, G. (2021). Change agents’ experiences of implementing a new organizational culture in residential care for older people: a qualitative study. Nordic Journal of Nursing Research, 41(3), 149-157. https://doi.org/10.1177/2057158521995994
Li, J. Y., Sun, R., Tao, W., & Lee, Y. (2021). Employee coping with organizational change in the face of a pandemic: the role of transparent internal communication. Public Relations Review, 47(1), 101984. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2020.101984
Rousseau, D. M., & ten Have, S. (2022). Evidence-based change management. Organizational Dynamics, 51(3), 100899. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2022.100899