Author: Kevin Nourse, PhD

Categories
Leadership Success Leadership Transition Onboarding Leaders

Onboarding New Leaders: 5 Common Mistakes To Avoid

Onboarding New Leaders: 5 Common Mistakes To Avoid

When starting in a leadership role, knowing what mistakes to avoid can be challenging. After all, you are still learning the ropes and figuring out how everything works. Many leaders in transition get caught in the excitement of a new position, but fail to anticipate ways that they can derail.

Based on my experience as an executive coach working with newly hired leaders who nearly derailed, here’s a list of some common mistakes that can easily be avoided.

1: Assuming support for their vision

Leaders are often hired based on a compelling vision they have to transform their organizations. However, implementing a vision without engaging key stakeholders and building trust can result in a failed change agenda and a damaged reputation. It is critical when onboarding new leaders to help them understand the cultural context and adapt their vision based on the vested interests of stakeholders. In essence, new leaders have to earn the right to create change by demonstrating appreciation for an organization’s history.

2: Not building alignment with the boss

Perhaps the most critical relationship for a new leader is with their boss. A new leader’s manager plays an instrumental role as a sponsor, helping to open doors to social networks. Therefore it is essential to build alignment with one’s manager on a change agenda, key priorities, communication protocols, and authority. Alignment with one’s new boss is a top priority when onboarding new leaders.

3: Setting the wrong tone

How a leader behaves from the start will strongly influence their reputation and likelihood of success in their new role. Most organizations have well-understood unwritten rules for how a new leader should balance an assertive style with a cooperative approach. The key is to enlist well-regarded mentors to determine this balance.  

4: Attempting to do too much

One of the biggest mistakes a new leader can make is trying to do too much. They often have grand plans and want to implement them all at once. However, this can be overwhelming for both the leader and their team. New leaders who burn out by attempting too much or focusing on the wrong priorities can damage their reputations. The solution is to prioritize and align with the boss on critical priorities early in their tenure. 

5: Not being visible enough

A newly hired healthcare executive, Susan had a naturally introverted style and jumped into her new role with gusto. Her comfort zone associated with this approach nearly derailed her since she largely remained in her office or the executive suite. Her direct reports assumed she didn’t care about them because she made little effort to engage in person. Building trust with followers through visible, real-time interactions is vital for newly hired leaders. Susan realized this and made a point to attend department meetings in her division to discuss her vision, experience, personal interests, and appreciation for what each department had achieved before her arrival. 

Starting a new leadership role is an exciting time filled with promise and opportunity. However, it can also be fraught with the potential for derailing setbacks if the process of onboarding new leaders is not well-designed. By being conscious of five familiar sources of derailment, new leaders can prevent lapses and thrive in their new roles. 

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Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience coaching leaders who are experiencing transitions to thrive in their new or expanded roles. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or kevin@nourseleadership.com

(c) 2022 Kevin Nourse

Categories
Leadership Success Leadership Transition Onboarding Leaders

Leadership Transition Plans: Core Elements

Leadership Transitions
an plans are a critical element in helping new leaders transition into their role

Leadership transitions into new roles and organizations can be fraught with hidden landmines and potential career derailers. A surprisingly number of newly hired leaders don’t survive in their roles beyond 18 months. To ease this transition, forward-thinking organizations establish onboarding programs that include three critical elements including a leadership transition plan, internal mentors, and executive coaching. 

What is a transition plan?

A leadership transition plan is a valuable document that outlines success outcomes and other factors that could impact a leader’s ability to function well in their new role. As an executive coach, I have partnered with clients to help them create a draft plan.

Once developed, it is critical for a new leader to align the plan with their boss initially and throughout the following 6-9 months. In essence, the plan becomes a working document revised as conditions change and the new leader becomes more grounded in their new role.

Elements of a transition plan

There are seven components of a well-considered leadership transition plan. 

1. Key priorities and success outcomes for a new leader 

New leaders must clearly understand and align priorities and associated success outcomes with their bosses. Steven, a new Chief Financial Officer, is accountable for implementing a new financial accounting system and upgrading key business processes. 

2. Time-bound goals and milestones

Time-bound goals delineate expectations for 30, 60, 90, and 120 days that map to the new leader’s key priorities. This element for a leadership transition plan helps ensure a new manager is on-track. Steven set the 30-day goal of assessing his organization’s readiness for transformational change. 

3. Decision authority

New leaders need to understand their authority to make decisions. This authority could consist of decisions they can make unilaterally and those where they must consult their boss or peers. With Steven, he ultimately owns many decisions but is expected to engage a steering committee, including some of his peers, given the far-reaching impact of a new financial system.

4. Risk factors

Risk factors include issues new leaders face that could derail their efforts to achieve their priorities. For example, Steven’s efforts to implement a new financial system could fail based on a series of failed software implementations in the past ten years in his organization. His new organization is in the process of launching three other change efforts that could distract his stakeholders from supporting the new financial system implementation.  

5. Leader strengths and weaknesses

A well-designed leadership transition plan also identifies the skills needed by a leader in light of their risk factors and goals, along with their strengths and weaknesses. Steven realized that his priority in implementing a new financial system would require him to manage resistance and make presentations. His aversion to public speaking and tendency to become overly directive when faced with opposition represented developmental opportunities for him. He and his new boss talked this through, including developmental actions he could take to function more effectively.

6. Key stakeholders 

Key stakeholders represent important people a new leader must engage to achieve success. In consultation with his manager, Steven identified ten key stakeholders that could significantly impact the success of his system implementation efforts. They discussed the personalities and interests of each stakeholder, along with strategies to engage each.

7. Mentors and other resources

A vital component of a transition plan is a list of supportive resources available to a new leader. Steven identified several needed resources, and his boss helped him identify individuals who could play a role in his success. For example, Steven’s resource list included well-regarded cultural mentors who understood how to implement change in his organization and various organizational process experts. 

 

An essential component of a comprehensive onboarding process is a leadership transition plan jointly developed between a new leader and their boss. This plan is often a working document revisited periodically in the first six months of a new leader’s tenure. A transition plan as part of a well-designed onboarding process can help new leaders speed their transition to their new roles to feel confident and produce tangible results. 

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Additional resources on leadership transitions and transition plans:

The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter, Updated and Expanded

The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan: How to Take Charge, Build or Merge Your Team, and Get Immediate

Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience coaching leaders who are experiencing transitions to thrive in their new or expanded roles. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or kevin@nourseleadership.com

(c) 2022 Kevin Nourse

 

Categories
Executive Coaching Leadership Success Time Management

Leadership Effectiveness: Breaking Free of the Shiny Object Trap

Steven, an experienced CEO, was very effective in his role but wanted to explore ways to take his productivity to the next level. Specifically, he described how he was subject to what I refer to as the shiny object trap – losing sight of his daily priorities and getting distracted with a less critical task or time waster. 

He realized the magnitude of the problem when he received feedback from direct reports about their frustration with his reactivity and distracted state of mind, which prevented him from making timely decisions. 

As an executive coach, Steven’s experience is surprisingly common among my leadership clients who are trapped in a reactive mindset and get derailed on advancing strategic priorities. In this era of endless emails, texts, and other social media interactions, there is no lack of distractions that limit leader effectiveness. Neuroscientists have taught us how our nonstop reaction to technological disruptions creates new unproductive habits, similar to Pavlov’s dogs salivating at the sound of a bell. 

Building Awareness

The cost of these distractions can be substantial in terms of reduced sense of personal achievement and delayed or mismanaged change efforts. Most managers could easily spend their whole day on their computers or cell phone and not advance any strategic priorities.  

In coaching Steven, I explored the underlying causes and factors that limited his effectiveness as a first step before helping him design experiments to try new behavior.

Steven recently completed the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, revealing that he was a perceiver on the judging-perceiving scale. As a perceiver personality type, he likes to remain open and flexible in emergent situations. However, it was evident to Steven that his personality strength had become a liability due to being overused. 

Steven tried three strategies to build awareness of the current state before determining how to change it:

  • We explored how Steven’s preference served him and when it did not and clarified what it would feel like if he over-functioned with his perceiving preference. 
  • Steven took notes in his journal when the shiny object phenomenon occurred for two weeks and his emotions; this allowed us to understand better the situational factors that triggered his behavior.  
  • He asked his direct reports to provide feedback about the impact of his unfocused and reactive style on their productivity.

As a result of these awareness-building activities, Steven realized how his reactivity to email and texts triggered an adrenaline rush. This experience, combined with his boredom with strategic planning and visioning, created the perfect conditions for this bad habit to persist. He realized the magnitude of the problem when he received feedback from direct reports about their frustration with his reactivity and distracted state of mind, which prevented him from making timely decisions. 

Moving Into Action

Steven developed four initial strategies in our coaching sessions to manage his distraction. I suggested he frame these options as experiments he could try and upgrade over time.

Clear goals and accountability

Steven began setting clear priorities for each week and communicating these priorities to his team to enhance his accountability. With this accountability and clarity, he reduced his temptation to get caught in distractions, including email, texting, and social media.

Triage the situation

He learned to assess and triage the incoming emails and texts to quickly screen out hot issues associated with critical stakeholders (e.g., an issue raised by a board member) that did need his focus. For those that were not urgent, he added them to a list to review later in the week.

Timeout periods

Steven began experimenting with timeout periods on social media and text messaging, where he closed his email application and muted his cell phone for 30-minute blocks. He let his administrative assistant know about this experiment so that if truly critical situations emerged, she could notify him. This experiment was challenging at first, but he began to establish a useful new habit as he practiced it. 

Weekly reflection

Steven blocked out his calendar on Friday afternoons and revisited the list he created of potential issues and problems during the week. Through this more in-depth review, he chose which topics needed action in the next week and the extent to which he could or should delegate them downward.

He also considered the underlying issues prompting urgent emails and text messages from various stakeholders to assess how to prevent future crises. For example, Steven began scheduling regular informal calls and breakfasts with board members to stay in touch with emergent issues or concerns they had before it became a crisis prompting urgent emails and text messages.  

Many leaders struggle with the shiny object trap, where unanticipated emails and text messages cause them to lose focus on their highest priorities. The secret sauce for improved leadership effectiveness begins by building self-awareness to identify mindsets and habits that diminish your impact and then take action with bold experiments. 

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Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience coaching leaders who are experiencing transitions to thrive in their new or expanded roles. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or kevin@nourseleadership.com

(c) 2022 Kevin Nourse

Categories
Healthcare Leadership Success Leadership Transition Onboarding Leaders

Three Strategies for Preventing New Leader Derailment

Leaders can derail with support to integrate into an organization's culture

By Kevin Nourse, PhD

When new leaders join a new organization, it’s a time of great excitement and promise – as well as potential for costly career-limiting mistakes and derailment. The key is a new leader onboarding process that helps accelerate an executive’s integration into a culture, enabling them to create impact and achieve results quickly. 

The Case of Simon

Consider the case of Simon, a highly skilled physician leader whom a major medical center hired based on his experience and compelling vision for improving patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes. Excited by his new role, he started his new job with gusto. His organization provided little new leader onboarding guidance other than a standard new hire orientation. 

Simon’s excessively blunt analytical style did not mesh well with the medical center’s culture

However, after two months on the job, things began to unravel. Simon’s excessively blunt analytical style did not mesh well with the medical center’s culture. He shared his vision for the center with the managers and staff but was not transparent about the underlying rationale for the reorganization. In addition, his combative style of debating issues and ideas came across as attacking staff. As a result, he grew more frustrated with the unspoken resistance to his reorganization and the lack of engagement during staff meetings. 

I began coaching Simon to salvage his career and improve the likelihood of implementing his vision. Initially, this involved collecting feedback from critical stakeholders, clarifying his priorities, end enlisting the support of his boss. While Simon ultimately recovered from nearly derailing in his role, I have seen many leaders who do not.  

What is a leader transition?

A leader transition is a significant shift in a leader’s role due to a promotion, expansion of their role, or joining a new organization. One of the most critical factors impacting the success of a transition into a new organization is the ability of a leader to understand and adapt to the culture so that they can gain support for their efforts and achieve results quickly.  Many researchers have argued that understanding an organization’s culture is an essential element of a new leader onboarding process.

Consider these examples of culture clashes impacting leaders:

  • A newly hired leader in a healthcare organization tried who enhance his power by frequently citing his achievements in past jobs but was instead perceived as arrogant. 
  • A newly promoted medical director in a pharmaceutical company edited documents shared by peers without being asked, thereby damaging these relationships.
  • A senior leader who used an iPad to capture notes in meetings was unaware that this practice was taboo in the eyes of his boss, who automatically assumed he was checking emails.

Cost of new leader derailment 

Recent research suggests that 40% of new leaders do not last more than eight months in their roles, primarily due to cultural missteps. There are far-reaching implications of newly hired leader derailment and turnover. The most obvious impacts are hard costs associated with turnover, including recruiting costs. The less apparent consequences include:

  • Lost organizational opportunities associated with change efforts that go unfulfilled by new executives. 
  • Poor decisions. 
  • Front-line staff and other stakeholders lost confidence in the senior leadership team.
  • Senior leaders who take on the responsibilities of derailed senior leaders and risk burning out. 

Despite the frequency of derailment and high cost, many organizations provide only a basic new hire orientation that is inadequate in addressing the onboarding needs of new leaders. While these sessions help new leaders understand the mechanics of functioning as a manager, they don’t address the unique challenges associated with integrating into an organization’s culture. 

Preventing derailment

The ideal solution to prevent derailment and turnover among newly hired executives consists of three parts:

  1. An onboarding plan that outlines specific time-bound outcomes for a new leader and has the support of a newly hired manager’s boss
  2. Executive coaching provided by a professional coach to provide external support during the transition, including a 360-degree assessment at the end of 90 days
  3. An internal network of mentors with a positive reputation based on a track history of peak performance

Onboarding Plan

An onboarding plan, jointly developed between a new leader and their direct supervisor, creates an informal agreement outlining success. Well-developed plans include:

  • An assessment of risks faced by the new leader such as negative impacts the by former leader in their position or challenges in their organizational portfolio
  • Success outcomes for the first six months, such as execution of crucial initiatives or development of an organizational assessment
  • Critical supports for the new leader such as an executive coach and internal mentors.

There are a couple books that address the elements of a onboarding plan I really like: The New Leader’s 100 Day Action Plan and The First 90 Days.

Executive Coaching

An executive coach can provide valuable insight for supporting a newly hired executive in a confidential setting, including: 

  • Navigating crucial conversations with their manager
  • Making sense of cultural norms, taboos, and patterns
  • Navigating setbacks 
  • Enhancing their grit and resilience to navigate the overwhelming challenges they face in their new role
  • Gathering feedback from organizational stakeholders in the form of a 360-degree report to help surface perceived strengths and weaknesses

Internal Mentors

Mentors internal to the organization can play a crucial role in supporting the successful integration of a newly hired executive. Ideally, these mentors are formally selected and have positive reputations in the organization. Internal mentors can provide critical support for a new leader:

  • Insights on cultural norms among the senior leadership team, such as navigating conflicts, decision-making, and power 
  • Insider perspectives on various parts of the organization such as their key priorities, personalities, historical perspectives, and relationships with organizational units
  • Support for building relationships throughout the organization by making introductions and sharing feedback with a new leader

Landing a new leadership position is filled with excitement and opportunity. Unfortunately, many new managers never successfully integrate into a new culture because of deficient methods for leader onboarding. However, with a new leader onboarding process that includes three key elements, new leaders can survive and thrive in their roles.  

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Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience developing transformational change leaders in healthcare and other sectors. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or kevin@nourseleadership.com

(c) 2022 Kevin Nourse

Categories
Goal Setting Leadership Success

Achieving Goals: The role of self-efficacy and action orientation

Strategic thinking

It’s that time of year when so many of us endeavor to set goals and resolutions for the New Year. Despite best intentions, many people never actually achieve their goals. While there are many factors that enable goal achievement, two of the most important ones are self-efficacy and an action orientation.

Self-efficacy, a concept identified by psychologist Albert Bandura in the late 1970s, are the beliefs you hold about your ability to achieve a goal or manage a challenging situation. People with high self-efficacy are more likely to set higher goals, procrastinate less, and demonstrate greater tenacity in working toward their goals. 

Psychologist Joachim Brunstein identified action orientation nearly 20 years ago consisting of a trait enabling decisive and rapid action to achieve a goal. People who posses this trait have the ability to regulate the emotions that might keep themselves stuck overanalyzing an issue or planning how to achieve a goal.  

Consider the following options to build your self-efficacy:

  1. Reflect on past challenges you faced or goals you achieved to identify the skills, mindsets or abilities you tapped to create success.
  2. Recite positive affirmations aloud when facing a goal or setback to shift your mindsets and self-beliefs (e.g., “I have all the skills I need to conquer this challenge successfully”).
  3. Ask three people who know you well to describe your biggest strengths and the impact of using those strengths. 
  4. Surround yourself with highly accomplished people who have a strong belief in their capabilities.
  5. Read biographies about people who have achieved great things to understand their process and approach better.  

Here’s some tips on building your action orientation capabilities:

  1. Set concrete time limits for your planning and goal setting.
  2. Engage friends and colleagues to hold you accountable for taking action, such as designing a consequence if you do not take action (e.g., write them a check for a substantial dollar amount they will cash if you do not take action by the agreed upon date). 
  3. Experiment taking action without any planning; learn to trust your instincts.
  4. Chunk your big goals into microgoals – small actions you can take with minimal effort and resistance.
  5. Identify the conditions that cause you to get stuck in analysis paralysis (e.g., exhaustion, overwhelm, frustration, etc.).

People who achieve a lot in life and work do so because they set stretch goals, take action and celebrate their achievements. Self-efficacy and an action orientation are integral to effective goal setting. The good news is that everyone can enhance these skills and achieve greater levels of success.

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Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience developing transformational change leaders in healthcare and other sectors. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or kevin@nourseleadership.com

(c) 2021 Kevin Nourse

Categories
Leadership Teams

Leadership Retreats in the Era of COVID

Leadership retreats have traditionally provided valuable opportunities to build relationships and trust, share insights, advance organizational change priorities, and reinforce corporate culture. When conducted at the end of a fiscal or calendar year, they provide an excellent opportunity to reflect on achievements and lessons learned and set clear intentions for a new year. With the magnitude of changes many leaders currently face in the new normal triggered by COVID, there has never been a more critical time to bring leaders together to align on a vision for the future and share insights from the past six months.

These realities beg the question: How can organizations conduct leadership retreats that create value using a virtual platform?  

In this blog post, I share my observations on five key challenges organizations face in conducting virtual retreats and mitigation strategies to ensure success.

Challenge #1: Death by passivity

Whether conducted in-person or via Zoom, many leadership retreats fail because participants are overwhelmed by the amount of content introduced without any interactivity. In many instances, organizers fear drives them to pack retreat agendas with too much material. When they begin to run out of time, presenters begin to speak even faster and eliminate opportunities to interact with the audience. To address this:

  • Review the presentations proposed by each speaker to make sure they have built interactivity into their talks; aim for every 6-8 minutes using such features as a chat, poll, whiteboard, or breakout groups. 
  • Be ruthlessly honest when reviewing the program design in terms of realistic time allocations of each segment.
  • Provide opportunities for regular breaks after 90-minute parts of the content and informal breaks as needed, such as inviting everyone to stand up and stretch. 
  • Avoid using a monotone voice that can lull people to sleep; consider standing when you facilitate or present and use your hands naturally to inject more energy and vocal variety.
  • For a multi-day retreat, poll participants at the end of the first day to determine if there is enough interactivity.
  • Invite participants to turn off their video cameras – not only does this reduce the bandwidth needed for the session, but it also reduces the exhaustion participants might experience.

Challenge #2: Frustrations of Zoom-newbies

Many new Zoom users get frustrated when a leadership retreat begins, and they are unsure how to use the software features. This frustration can spill over and lead them to disengage from the retreat content. Consider:

  • Orienting new Zoom users on how to use software features before the start of the retreat
  • Explaining to participants how to maximize their participation such as using a workstation (versus a PDA or cell phone), printing the materials in advance, and joining the session in a location that is quiet and has a powerful WIFI signal.
  • Inviting participants to sign-on 15-20 minutes early to work through any technical issues, especially audio.
  • Polling your group in advance to find out who has experience or skill in using Zoom.

Challenge #3: Technical snafus, poor sound, and lighting 

Producing a polished, well-facilitated virtual retreat with sufficient lighting and audio can significantly impact whether you achieve your envisioned outcomes. Early in the pandemic this spring, Zoom session participants were much more forgiving of technical snafus since many were still learning how to use it. However, as Zoom has become more commonplace, expectations of a well-produced session have become higher. To prevent technical snafus:

  • If you are the facilitator starting the Zoom session, consider hardwiring your system to a network instead of using a WIFI.
  • Each session should have a producer running the meeting and managing the technology, enabling a subject-matter expert to focus on content delivery.
  • Be sure to do dry runs if you’ve never used specific Zoom features, such as breakout groups or whiteboards.
  • Ensure you have adequate security, including passcodes.
  • Test both the audio and lighting for presenters to ensure higher quality communication. 

Challenge #4: Lack of relevance, organization, and flow

With in-person retreats, it is much easier to spontaneously adapt the program in the moment. On the other hand, successful online retreats typically need much more preparation. The lack of significance for participants can result in disengagement, frustration, and wasted resources. To build relevance:

  • Conduct focus groups to gather input from selected participants about their challenges, envisioned outcomes for the retreat, and logistical issues or concerns.
  • Poll front-line staff to gather their feedback on issues that limit their ability to perform their roles or perspectives on how well the leadership team collaborates; use this information in the retreat to improve overall organizational functioning.
  • Clarify both the retreat objectives or outcomes and the detailed design for each segment, including the start and end time, the speaker, and interactive activities.
  • Consider using a time-bound approach that addresses and explores past accomplishments, present realities, and plans or goals for the future.
  • Poll the group periodically to assess how well the session are meeting their needs and addressing the stated objectives.  

Challenge #5: Lack of real-time human connection

One of the most significant benefits of an in-person retreat is the ease of access to colleagues for spontaneous relationship building. However, there are strategies you can use to inject human connection in a Zoom retreat, such as:

  • Conduct icebreakers throughout the retreat in breakout groups of 4-5 people to give everyone a chance to engage; provide some powerful open-ended questions to guide the conversations.
  • Poll the group at various intervals to learn more about participants and their backgrounds (e.g., tenure, title, college degrees, etc.)  
  • Invite participants to share a personal artifact near their workstation on video, such as a photograph, paperweight, or diploma.
  • Schedule an informal, unstructured happy hour as the final session and invite participants to breakout groups for networking and relationship building.  
  • Enable participants to customize their Zoom name to reflect their role, location, pet name or other descriptive information (e.g., “Kevin – Palm Springs”).

Virtual leadership retreats that focus on building alignment, clarity, and trust are more critical than ever given the uncertainties many organizations face in the COVID pandemic. Through preparation and purposeful design of the agenda, interactivity, organizations can achieve a substantial return on the investment of time and resources. 

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Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience developing transformational change leaders in healthcare and other sectors. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or kevin@nourseleadership.com

(c) 2020 Kevin Nourse

Categories
Grit Leadership Development Resiliency

Leading Change in the Age of Acceleration

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Categories
Leadership Development

Democratizing Change Leadership

Summarizing research since 2000, researchers Dumas and Beinecke* identified a meta-framework and supporting conclusions about successfully implementing change. Their article explored supporting literature associated with two views of change leadership. One of their critical findings in this review was the shift from focusing only on specific change initiatives and tactics to creating a broader change embracive organizational culture where all employees are equipped with abilities to initiate and navigate change.

This perspective resonates with my experience in building organizational and leadership resilience. Rather than viewing change as a periodic effort, many of the executives I’ve partnered with are interested in creating cultures where people throughout their organization can initiate and lead change even though they may not have a managerial title. In essence, organizational members are provided the requisite skills, access to information, and a level of autonomy to capitalize on change opportunities.

For example, I’ve delivered leadership development programs focused on strategic thinking and change leadership to organizations as a means for helping staff recognize and exploit untapped opportunities to create greater organizational value. Programs such as these help shift the mindset of people from feeling like a victim of their circumstance toward being an author of their experience. In psychological terms, their locus of control shifts from external to internally-driven. Employees that are empowered with this kind of training and support are far less likely to fear change even if it is initiated from above.

Organizations that democratize change leadership skills accrue substantial dividends in terms of greater agility, resilience, and sustainability over time.

*Dumas, C. & Beinecke, R.H. (2017). Change leadership in the 21st century. Journal of Organizational Change, 31(1), 867-876.

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Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience developing resilient change leaders in the association sector. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California and Washington, DC. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or kevin@nourseleadership.com

(c) 2019 Kevin Nourse

Categories
Leadership Resiliency

Advancing Leadership Success by Building Resilience