A case for collaboration to tackle change

A survey of one of our clients found that a third of their leaders didn’t subscribe to the idea that ‘change can unite people in the face of a common challenge’. That’s more than enough inertia to hold the whole organisation back. But what lies behind such a belief? People who resist change are often accused of ignorance, laziness, indifference and more. But a much more likely root cause is one of the most primal emotional knee-jerk reactions we have to change – anxiety.

Even the mild transient anxiety we all feel from time to time can be the silent killer of our motivation to change. That’s because our innate negativity bias wants us to focus only on what could possibly go wrong, making it hard to see change as anything other than a threat to our security.

That’s why we measure its presence at the start of the HPC Programme. In this case, 90% of leaders reported experiencing anxiety at work, and yet the organisation only rated itself 2 out of 5 in dealing with it. Anxiety is underpinned by thoughts of a future spiralling loss of control. However, learning just a few simple antidotes can develop enough self-assurance to do a mental handbrake turn, transforming that vicious circle up into a virtuous one. Even a small flicker of light can be enough to see the way out. Here’s what that looked like for our client:

At the end of the Programme, over 90% of leaders reported feeling ‘significantly more confident’ about dealing with change – any change. And over 80% reported that the Programme – which includes a number of sessions over a 12-month period – had permanently changed their behaviour.

Most notable however was that proportion of leaders who still could not see change as the chance to come together to make a difference. By the end of the Programme their number had dropped from a third to 4%.

If you’ve read this far, collaboration and wellbeing are probably at the top of your organisational development objectives. After all, whatever change you want to achieve, high performing teams can achieve more of it with less, quicker and more sustainably.

To create high performing teams, people need to believe in each other and believe in the strategy. And before they can do that, they first need the self-assurance to believe they themselves can adapt.

Rich Alderton from High Performance Change is an Adaptability Intelligence specialist, so why not contact Rich for an initial discussion?