Earlier this week I posted about a successful workshop I and several colleagues ran for 800 managers as part of a major transition.  My previous post was about senior leader involvement.  Today, I will address the topic of training.

For this particular transformation effort, our client recognized that mid- and frontline managers would play a pivotal roll in communicating the details of the change to employees. Therefore, the client hired my colleagues and I to facilitate over forty 4-hour workshops for managers.  The response to the workshops was overwhelmingly positive – which surprised a lot of people because the change the organization is introducing is highly sensitive and counter to the way things have been done in this organization for more than 30 years.

After running 19 workshops myself, I reflected on what made the sessions work well.  Here are my thoughts:

Conduct Conversations – Not Training

While the manager sessions were called “training” and were accompanied by workbooks and slides, the experience was much more of a facilitated dialogue than a one-way download of information.  

Course evaluation feedback indicated that managers were pleasantly surprised at the level of open, honest conversation that took place in the sessions. I believe this point is essential for future programs of this nature.

Lesson Learned: When is comes to gaining support for a change, conversation matters more than content.

Make Space for Emotions

While it was important for managers to learn the content of the course, in every case it became apparent that the managers themselves needed an opportunity to vent, express their concerns, and name the emotions that they and their people were experiencing.  

We started the sessions by introducing the change cycle and the emotions that typically accompany a change (shock & denial, anger, uncertainty & anxiety, understanding, and ultimately acceptance).  We drew the performance dip that typically happens when people move into anger, uncertainty and anxiety and discussed the fact that the dip is not avoidable.  Rather than pretending there are not emotional reactions to change, we encouraged managers to accept and acknowledge emotions.  

I knew this model would be helpful to managers in communicating with their employees.  What surprised me was how helpful it ended up being for them.  In every single session, managers would speak up and say, “Okay, I realize I am in the dip, but here is my concern . . .”  By having the model posted, we gave managers permission and space to name and work through their own emotions.   

Lessons Learned:
1.    Allow and encourage emotions to enter the conversation early on.
2.    Along with content and key messages, provide models or frameworks to help managers understand the emotions they and others are experiencing as a result of the change.  

Don’t Overcome Resistance – Explore It

The final point I want to address here deals with resistance. Overcoming resistance is the most searched term in the field of change management. All too often change leaders looks to “nip resistance in the bud.”  What I have learned over the years is that the best way to deal with resistance is to get it out in the open and to talk about the reasons for resistance.  

In these workshops, my colleagues and I stopped delivering content about 30 minutes into the session and asked what questions people had.  Usually we got one or two mild questions.  We then asked people to share what rumors and concerns they were hearing.  Managers started to open up and discuss the harder aspects of the change.  Finally we asked managers to “channel their inner skeptics” and ask everything they knew their most skeptical employees would ask.  In some cases the managers would say, “Really . . .are you sure?”  Often one would test the waters and when we listened, acknowledged and openly discussed the concern the floodgates would open and the questions would flow.  

This point is counter-intuitive but essential. When communicating a change, our natural tendency to shut down and overcome resistance forces concerns underground.  Once suppressed, resistance grows stronger and becomes harder to resolve.  It is important for change leaders and communicators to welcome, acknowledge and explore resistance in order for it to dissipate.

Lessons Learned:
1.    Make it okay for managers to ask skeptical, cynical questions.  
2.    Dialogue (don’t debate) about the change.