Leading through change? Don’t forget your stakeholders

Change happens. This is a fact. Sometimes the disruption to status quo comes from seizing a beautiful new opportunity. Other times, it’s a critical shift to avoid potential disaster.

Change gets a lot of criticism. There’s a widely held belief that people don’t like change. That doesn’t feel entirely correct, though. Change brings new, and most people love new. What people don’t love is loss. They don’t love chaos. They don’t love uncertainty. And sometimes change brings that, too.

As leaders, we have the opportunity (and obligation) to emphasize the benefits of the new while mitigating any possible consequences. While it’s not easy, this path can be simple by following a clear change management map and paying special attention to the key step of stakeholder communication.

Every successful change, regardless of the scale, requires understanding, alignment, and commitment from key stakeholders. Acting with the following intentions will lead to that successful change:  

Change is often introduced by announcing a decision. A conclusion has been reached and it’s time to let others know what it is. If this is the first time key stakeholders learn there was a conversation happening, confusion and questions will be abundant. Rather than announcing what is changing, effective communication addresses why a change is coming. What is the problem this solves? What risk were we facing by not making a change? What advantages will come from making the change?

When people understand the rationale behind a change, they can engage constructively in conversations about why the change makes sense and how it will lead to a better future.

By the time leadership is ready to announce a change, they are often impatient to implement, ready to activate a plan they have developed. Messaging has been prepared and it must be sent, received, and understood immediately and all at once.

In those moments, it is important to remember how much people forget about what is said. According to Hermann Ebbinghaus (a German psychologist who founded the experimental psychology of memory), people forget about 60% of what they have just processed within 20 minutes. So that discussion at the Town Hall meeting that was meant to bring everyone into alignment? Chances are, most of the message wasn’t retained, and what was retained is probably not universal. While you may not be able to change people’s memory capacity, you can intervene by using multiple messaging tools, touchpoints, and follow-up. Understanding is not built in one exposure.

Once leaders have checked the box of communicating the change and have moved on to implementation, many stakeholders feel like they are wrapped in silence. Absent more information, people may fill these blank spaces with their own interpretation or ideas about what may be coming, or try to gather information by talking with the people closest to them. If those conversations are misaligned, it will be very difficult to achieve buy-in. If, instead, managers at every level can meet their team with the information they need to support the change, they may become advocates for gaining enterprise-wide buy-in.

This does not mean supplying managers with a communication guide filled with talking points that appear to control how team members respond or are designed to “get ahead of the narrative.”  People become skeptical when they feel they are being managed into the right response. Instead, it is having conversations with honest engagement: Answering the hard questions, preparing for negative feedback or concerns, and responding to uncertainty with acknowledgement.

One sign that employees are still trying to embrace the change might be recognizing what questions people are still asking, even if it feels like they have been answered dozens (hundreds?) of times. Recognizing those questions can help identify where gaps remain, and if these are understanding, acceptance, or buy-in gaps. Closing these gaps is far more effective when all managers can be part of it.

With every step of stakeholder inclusion, it is important to tailor information to individual impact. Role-specific guides to change, clarity around individual impact, and one-on-one conversations with managers will help employees answer the question, “What does this mean for me, specifically?” When employees know the answer to that question, they know how to navigate change, and that may be the most powerful tool in your move to enterprise-wide change.  

If your organization has change on the horizon, be sure that your map to navigate considers (and reconsiders) your stakeholders. For a practical and customized guide to build understanding, alignment, and commitment with your stakeholders, Zealyst is here to help.