Change-Friendly Leadership: How to Transform Good Intentions Into Great Performance

Description

Most attempts to change fall flat. Around the world, countless change efforts are underway in all kinds of organizations, spearheaded by leaders with good intentions. Despite the good intentions, the majority of these programs will not succeed. Why? In this radical new book, practitioner Rodger Dean Duncan shows that humanness, approachability, and friendliness are necessary but often overlooked elements of making change successful. Change cannot be achieved by a press release, slogan, or announcement. Effective organizational change requires the active, mindful participation of the people affected by the change. Leaders must learn how to bring their entire team on board with changes and ensure they are invested in the process as well as in the outcome. The Friendly Factor is not just a play on words. It's the very foundation for effectively engaging people's heads, hearts, and hopes. The Change-Friendly framework is based on timeless principles that are tried and true in even the toughest situations. Using this framework will enable you to create effective, lasting change in your organization. Q&A with Rodger Dean Duncan What's so friendly about change? Often not much. And that's the point. Change squeezes us out of our comfort zone. The resulting discomfort produces stress. Stress often manifests itself as resistance. Resistance in the face of change is like having one foot on the brake while the other foot presses the gas pedal. We live in a moment of history where change is so fast-paced that we begin to see the present only when it's already disappearing. Change is not just faster. It's also exploding in quantity and magnitude. Experts say we can expect more change in our lifetimes than has occurred since the beginning of civilization more than ten millennia ago. Trying to keep up with change can feel like getting trapped on a runaway treadmill. Trying to manage it can be even harder. Then what's the solution? In a nutshell, we must create an environment that's receptive to change. This requires what I call change-friendly leadership. It's not leadership by title and it's certainly not leadership by command and control. It's leadership that genuinely engages the heads, hearts, and hopes of the people whose genuine buy in is critical to the success of the change. In this context, friendly is not intended to connote coddling or laissez faire. And it's certainly not intended to imply a warm and fuzzy, hands-off approach to serious issues. Change-friendly leadership is a behavior protocol or framework. It produces successful change by acknowledging the sentiments and leveraging the individual gifts of people affected by the change, regardless of their organizational roles. What does the change-friendly framework look like in actual practice? The Change-Friendly Leadership Model is quite simple. At the center are four sets of very specific behaviors. I call these the Four T's: Think-Friendly, Talk-Friendly, Trust-Friendly, and Team-Friendly. Think-Friendly behaviors include exercising curiosity, asking smart questions, and challenging your own conclusions. Being Talk-Friendly involves dialogue skills, listening to learn and understand rather than to rebut and overpower. A person is Trust-Friendly by consistently earning trust and extending trust. This involves carefully avoiding common trust-busting behaviors that undermine credibility and influence. Being Team-Friendly means working with people in ways that foster genuine collaboration. It's much more than superficial team work. It's synergy on steroids, and it requires a special openness to other people's contributions. And more!