Transformational Leadership: How To Get Teams Excited About Change

Energising a change fatigued workforce is one of the hardest things to do in change management. It is so much more than team building events and celebrations and more and more communication. Most change communication focuses on information about what changes will occur, when, by whom and so on. This doesn’t inspire anyone, fails to energise and above all it creates apprehension about the unknown and the impact on employees. After all the most important take away from all change communication for employees is what’s in it for me. And despite the fact that you may have organised road shows, CEO blogs, email notices, staff meetings about the changes; until an employee experiences that change for them it is still the unknown because they have not had to deal with it.

There are extremely helpful strategies in change management and team communication that you can do to motivate your industrial force and encourage them to work harder for higher productivity that were used two real life cases.

The first example is of an automobile industrial company. Motivation in this case is classic but the principles of transformational leadership behind it still apply. Because of decreased sales, a dwindling economy, and financial limitations, the US- based Saturn Motor Company was still recovering. Pride was not an issue among the staff of Saturn, but adjusting to constant organizational change in strategies and goals was. To address this, “The Saturn Homecoming” event which lasted for three days was created to celebrate the hardworking employees and the loyal customers. Amazingly, the strategy worked as the staff became motivated with increased team dynamics and customers drove from all corners of the country to support the Saturn company in its goal to motivate employees and give a big thank you to its supportive consumer base. For more details on this successful event, check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHpSsf9AeJU&feature=related.

The second story is about a company that was also going through organizational change in industry direction and was experiencing huge cuts in the budget. The company planned to change offices to try and change the working environment to energise employees, and this included computer and technology systems dealing with the business needs and customer service. It was vital for them to do this because of the competition they were facing from nine other companies in the same kind of industry. Instead of redesigning everything the managers improved the communication process and brought in designers to design things around employee needs, they were asked to see the difference between the old designs and the new. They went a step further to provide the staff with an environment equipped with the simulated changes, which was delivered through computer LCDs that showed how much productivity could increase and how customer service could improve because of the new workflow. They changed the concept of classic organizational management of removing employees from their present environment to show them organizational change by bringing the change straight to them instead. They wanted the staff to feel, compare, and see the experience, rather than just be given the information to process only.

Now I know some of you will say with regard to the Saturn story that good times don’t last, absolutely, there will be economic booms and busts as there will be changes in CEO’s and the focus of executive teams. But this topic is how to deal with the here and now, how to energise a workforce and connect the journey and the vision of the organisation.

Marcia Xenitelis is a recognized authority on the subject on transformational leadership and change management and has spoken at conferences around the world. For access to case studies and more information on the types of strategies you can implement to engage employees visit www.transformational-leadership.com for a wealth of free informative articles and resources.

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