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How Leaders Benefit From Change Management Skills
Benefit From A New Leadership Approach
We advise considering the advantages of Change Leadership skills and capabilities to any business or leader about to embark on a transformation journey.
In recent years, we have seen that traditional approaches to leadership have become ineffective. Now, it is time to take a more adaptive approach, rethink leadership styles, and consider a new adaptive leadership model.
Change leadership is a new approach. Leaders benefit from highly transferable and future-ready skills. In other words, they are resilient and adaptive to change.
Change leadership is a powerful tool for advantages in many businesses. By employing change leadership, leaders can create a type of atmosphere that encourages growth and innovation while implementing continuous improvement, customer-centred design, digitalisation, and lean management methods to gain an edge over competitors. With the right guidance from experienced adaptive leaders, organisations can use this adaptive leadership style to maximise advantages and stay ahead of the competition.
Gartner reports that 42 per cent of CEOs at companies who have digital transformations underway expect to undergo deep culture change by 2020. Additionally, 46 per cent of CIOs report that culture change is the biggest barrier to realising success.
Above all the median success rate for cultural change of only 19% poses a huge risk for businesses without solid change leadership capabilities.
Stepping into the role of a change leader can be extremely challenging but the benefits of change leadership outweigh the difficulties.
Let’s take a look at 5 Change Leadership benefits and how you can make full use of them.
You can make a significant impact on the mental health of your workforce
Firstly, if people aren't happy and healthy, how can they work to their best potential?
Well-being is no longer an individual matter but an organisational one. Over 42% of team members around the world experienced a decline in mental health since the pandemic began. The global average of employees suffering from work-related stress has nearly doubled in the past decade (reaching 6.3%). Investing in well-being is crucial for your solid business outcomes.
It’s no longer news that uncertainty increases work-related stress. By improving your people's emotional intelligence and leadership skills, you reduce stress during change. Therefore, empathy and listening skills contribute positively to the health of your organisational culture. This is a huge benefit of Change Leadership capabilities.
You can track change better and turn data into insights
Secondly, successful decision-making is the cornerstone of successful change leadership. By tapping into their networks, leaders can gain access to data and feedback that give them the ability to track progress in behavioural change, as well as test out decisions before they take action. With these insights at their fingertips, decision-makers are better positioned to lead organisations into a brighter future.
Instead of relying on external consultants that love reporting success stories, you will be able to track more meaningful data and progress. You can integrate the data with your internal BI and access unfiltered, direct feedback from your people. Furthermore, building a change-agile organisation enables you to track the long-term impacts way past the date when the project team rolls off.
You can build a history of change successes
Thirdly, and most importantly, Change Leadership is the #1 contributor to change success. So what is it that makes such a big difference?
An effective leader embraces incremental Change as Business As Usual. She fosters enthusiasm for the journey ahead, listens intently to those she leads, and understands the motivations and concerns of those she governs. She has learned tools and established habits that help her guide and inspire others through transformations whilst acknowledging the challenges that come with change.
When everyone from the CEO to your frontline leaders applies their Change Leadership skills consistently you will soon build a history of change success stories that paves the road for future innovations.
Change readiness becomes part of your DNA
Remember the feeling when something new throws you off your game? Now imagine that you could feel fully prepared or ready for whatever the world throws at you.
Having highly transferable, evidence-based and practical Change Leadership skills and tools at the ready does exactly that. It makes you flexible, change-ready and agile, not just for one project but for changes of any size. When change readiness is part of your DNA, it benefits you and everyone in the business.
For instance, you can draw on a combination of 360-degree feedback tools, learning, coaching and co-planning workshops, and a dedicated change leadership training program to navigate your transition.
Stressed About Leading A Transformation?
Helping your team through a transition used to be a big headache. Luckily, there is the perfect solution! Try the Resilient Change Leader course for free, and gain control, learn rapid change planning and focus your motivation.
DIY is cheaper
Lastly, there are costs associated with change. External Change Management consultants can cost you $1100 to even $3700 per day and often can make up $100,000-$135,000 of your annual project budget per head. Some might argue that the 'cost' of hiring an external change consultant is not in the initial out-of-pocket expense, but rather the frustration and time it takes to resolve issues occurring once you have lost the external expert.
The benefits of in-house Change Leadership capabilities are bountiful. We believe that upskilling your people to lead change is more cost-effective in the long run. Shared Change Leadership is also less disruptive than assigning an in-house Change Manager to wear the hat of change. Picture Change Leadership training as an investment into your people and organisation rather than a cost. Above all, there are tons of benefits to investing in training.
Did you know that our Change Leadership training has an estimated ROI of 5.7?
Leaders Need A Change Mindset
All organisations that have faced disruption in the past decade agree that the speed and magnitude of changes in today's business environment require companies to transform their ways of operating – or ultimately, perish.
Having a change leadership mindset is critical. It turns fear into optimism and empowers you to take action instead of holding back stunned or complaining.
Change Leaders practice adaptive leadership and know that they role-model the change. They actively and visibly take small steps toward the future goal. These small steps are sometimes called pilots or MVPs (Minimal Viable Products) or sometimes leaps of faith. Independent of what you call these steps, they are the key for people to experience what the future could be like.
Eva is one of the masterminds behind Approach Services' blog and The 6 Cents of Change. She is an innovator, trainer and change manager. Her work has been published in the Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research. In her spare time, she enjoys camping with her two little boys and permaculture gardening.
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