Leadership behaviours that enhance change leadership
Author: Eric Thompson
Eric Thompson identifies five leadership behaviours that serve leaders well in times of change.
Any team develops into an effective unit in a number of stages and over a period of time. The form of leadership required from the leader has to be appropriate to the stage of development of the team. In the 1960’s Bruce Tuckman published a model for developing team effectiveness, identifying four stages; Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. This has close parallels with Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership® model where the leadership style changes from telling, through selling and participating and on to delegating as the team becomes more mature. It also fits with the Tannenbaum and Schmidt continuum which describes initial use of authority by the leader developing into greater freedom for team members as the team develops. The models all tell the same story; the leadership style has to change depending on the situation and different leadership behaviours will come into play.
The context for change leadership
It doesn’t matter either whether the team is one that has been set up for a short term specific purpose and will be disbanded when its task is complete or whether it is an existing team that is going through a change of remit, the team evolves and the leadership style needs to evolve with it. Change has an impact on team development. As the team develops so its ability to cope with change in its environment increases. An experienced team should be able to cope with changes going on around them. However as the scale of the change increases, the ability of the team to respond to the situation may be compromised. Significant changes may even threaten the existence of the team or dramatically change their scope of work. The greater the change, the more likely it is that change leadership will be required, and that the leader will have to take the team back through the development cycle to help the team come to terms with the new environment, before they are able to self manage again.
“…the leadership style has to change depending on the situation and different leadership behaviours will come into play...”
The leadership models acknowledge that as the team develops there is an evolution from leader centred activity at the beginning of the process to team centred activity once fully developed. In other words, when a team is being set up or when an existing team goes through a period of change, change leadership is necessary to enable the team to become effective. The notion of the leader doing more at a time of change is easily recognised. Think of the skipper of a sailing yacht taking the wheel when the storm brews, or the leader of a country at a time a war spelling out what has to happen. There is a premium therefore on the ability of the leader to help the team establish or re-establish its purpose, its strategy and its operating rules.
These are the things that become unclear when change impacts on an organisation. When team members loose sight of where they are heading and loose confidence that the established processes are the right way to proceed, positive team behaviours such as empowerment, initiative and support of other individuals are curtailed. Members become more uncertain, less confident and more concerned for themselves. In an organisation that is under change, where for example, everyone has to re-apply for their own jobs, it is easy to speculate as to whom exactly might be looking after the customer. It is up to the leader in these situations to take the initiative and guide the team to become effective again.
What the leader needs to do then depends on the situation, and we have already established that for a period at least the leader needs to do more, but if you are that leader, what are you going to do more of?
Based on hours of discussion with team leaders as they prepare for change in their teams I have observed that there are certain leadership behaviours that we keep coming back to. Let’s examine them in turn and examine how they help the leader at times of change. Successful application of these leadership behaviours is what change leadership is all about.
Communication
“Successful application of these leadership behaviours is what change leadership is all about.”
The first of the leadership behaviours that we will examine is the ability to communicate. When change occurs team members loose their internal model of what they are there to do. They can no longer answer questions such as “Why are we doing this?”, “What do we do?”, “How do we do it?” If you are the leader, your task is to communicate to these people what the answers will be to these questions in the new world. Your initial reaction may be to say “I don’t know either!” but that should not stop communication from taking place.
Remember communication is a two way process. Questions can be asked as well as answered. Instant answers are not required. What is required is that the process takes place, and that team members have an opportunity to question, to discuss and to gradually understand what will be required of them in the future.
Change leadership is enhanced when leaders communicate a little at a time, as often as possible, in as many different ways as possible, and providing as many different perspectives as possible. Once team members have built their own personal model of the future and have checked it out against the reality of what is happening on the ground, so that they can once again begin to make their own decisions, the communication process will have served its purpose.
Support of Individuals
For the second of our leadership behaviours let us consider the leader’s ability to support the individual members of the team. Support in this context is very much about the individual. It is the individual, not the group, who has specific worries and concerns. What will happen to them and their family? When will it happen? If you are the leader you need to make time available for each individual, you need to make yourself accessible and you need to be prepared to listen. Answers can come in due time, but the leader needs to provide active support to each individual.
It is often only during these one to one sessions that the real concerns of individuals become apparent. Many leaders have described how individuals whose outward display indicated total control were discovered to be in inner turmoil as a result of the change. These individuals need to be identified and support provided.
It is interesting that while leaders may well consider themselves to be just human beings, or another cog in the great organisational machine, this is not how their team members see them. For them, the leader is the organisation, and they are looking for answers as to what the organisation is about.
I remember some years ago voicing my concerns about a forthcoming change to my leader. What I got was empathy. He told me that he shared many of my concerns. That wasn’t what I was looking for. He was my leader, I wanted him to lead and address those concerns! So don’t ruin your credibility as a leader by pretending to be just one of the team. At times of change individual team members expect and deserve the leader’s personal support.
Independence from the Team
The next of the leadership behaviours to look at is independence. Leaders need to retain a degree of independence from members of the team all of the time, but at a time of change it becomes even more crucial. The stakes are higher. If you are the leader you have to be able to make the correct decisions, and you can’t even begin to have your judgement questioned by appearing to favour one team member over another. Leaders may also have to be prepared to use the “disciplinary process” if some team members refuse to respond appropriately to a new environment. If they don’t deal with an individual who is being obstructive, they risk alienating others who respond appropriately.
Independence is also important to separate the leader’s behaviour towards the team from the way that the leader behaves as an individual. We talk often about leading teams as though the team and the leader operated in a vacuum, and did not interact with the rest of the organisation. This is seldom the case. You may be leading your own team, but on the other hand you are probably a member of you own boss’s team. You cannot afford to let what happens to you as a team member of that team, effect how you handle the leadership of your own team. To do otherwise will once again destroy your own credibility as a leader. Independence enables you to deal appropriately with your own team while dealing with your own concerns as an individual.
Keeping things separate is of course easier to say that to do. It is not easy to be entirely rational and emotionless about a situation that you are deeply involved in. For this reason, leaders can benefit from an interaction with an independent coach who can help them to analyse the situation that they are involved with and plan an appropriate course of action. This sort of support provided for the leader is likely to result in the leader providing an improved response to the team in any particular situation.
Development of Others
The fourth of the leadership behaviours that helps to contribute to positive change leadership is the ability to develop others. At a time of change everyone has to learn to do things differently. A good leader will be able to work with their team to help them discover first of all what they need to be able to do, and secondly to learn how to do it. Coaching will probably be a key activity at this time. By helping team members to achieve new skills the leader not only enables the team to do its work, but increases the confidence of the team member and reduces any concern about the change stemming from their ability to learn new skills.
Some leaders have a strong disposition towards developing the members in their team. Not all leaders see it that way though. For some, the first reaction when someone is struggling with a new task is to do it themselves. This approach tends to leave the problem firmly with the leader. Ultimately the leader needs to take the initiative and find a way of developing the team members to do the new tasks. If they don’t, their own personal work load will become impossible, and the team will not become self managing again.
Role Model
As the final of our leadership behaviours, let’s look at the manager as a role model. Most people are naturally anxious about change and it doesn’t take a lot for the pessimist in all of us to emerge. The individual’s response to change is heavily influenced by the response of the people round about them, and key among those influences is the reaction of the leader. Is it any surprise that if the leader displays a negative reaction then so too do many members of the team? The leader needs to be aware of the impact that their behaviour has on other people. The leader’s own behaviour is then a key influence on the outcome of the change process and the leader needs to behave appropriately, if the change is to be managed successfully.
In Summary
Even the most successful team will need help from its leader when faced with major change in its environment. For change leadership to be successful, observation suggests that certain leadership behaviours need to be used more regularly until the team has taken the impact of the change on board, and has learned how to be successful in the new environment.