Hundreds of others have said it, but apparently the point bears repeating:  If you want your people to accept and support change, you must first show that you understand the organization from their perspective.

When we try to motivate others or mobilize energy for a change, the most important element is being able to connect with people.  An authentic connection has a lot of ingredients, including understanding:

• What matters to this person;
• What is this person’s reality;
• What is this person trying to accomplish at work;
• What is getting in the way?

Attempting to change anything without intimately knowing the answers to the above is a recipe for disaster. Take, for example, leaders who try to “boost morale” with ridiculous actions that only serve to demonstrate their lack of a clue.  David Spark recently wrote a post about 10 tales of condescending morale boosting efforts.  The examples he shares are incredibly funny in the way that Dilbert is funny -  familiar and painful.

Contrast these awful examples with leaders who know how to connect with the emotions and reality of their people.  One of my favorite examples comes from Peter Bregman.  Bregman wrote about the CEO of a software company who skipped his usual morale-boosting  visionary holiday speech and instead authentically empathized with what his people were thinking and feeling after a very tough year. After the speech, more people came up to thank, appreciate, and congratulate him than after any speech he had given before.  (You can read Bregman’s article and the CEO’s speech here.)

Michael Abrashoff, past captain of the U.S. Navy’s USS Benfold put it best, saying,

Acting in accordance with this belief helped Abrashoff lead 311 sailors through one of the greatest turnaround stories of the modern military. Similarly, as a leader at any level, it is critical that you understand your organization from the point of view of the people on your front line.

For me, these three situations were powerful moments.  None of the leaders blamed the audience for their lack of understanding.  Each had the guts to share openly that they a) were surprised and b) recognized that they had to do a better job at communicating.

What helped each of these leaders was learning about a concept known as the Marathon Effect.

If you have ever run (or watched) a large marathon you know that at the start of the event the best runners are right on the starting line. Where are the first-timers? Way at the back! Think about one of the big races with thousands of runners—like the Marine Corp marathon in Washington, D.C. It can take about an hour for someone at the very back to even get up to the start line. By that time, the ones who were at the front are halfway through the race!

William Bridges, a renowned expert on organizational transition, recognized that a similar phenomenon occurs during organizational change.  If you are rolling out a new compensation system, reorganizing your company, or introducing a new product, you’ve probably been working on this long before you unveil it to the people who are going to need to execute the day-to-day details. If it’s your initiative, your project, by the time you say “let’s go” you are thinking that everyone should be right there with you on the starting line. They aren’t. They are way at the back and they need time to catch up.

Bridges coined the term “Marathon Effect” to describe the fact that change leaders and those involved in planning change are often out ahead of everyone else. In my work with organizations, I frequently find myself reminding clients of this fact. Since they are accountable for getting people committed, they can easily be frustrated when everyone doesn’t get it as fast as they want them to.

Former GE CEO Jack Welch reminds leaders that we have to be patient. He warns that, “The vision becomes boring to the person who came up with it.” It’s tempting to keep changing your message—making it flashier, making it new. Don’t. To get people on the same page, you can’t keep giving them new pages.  Focus instead on slowing down enough to get people caught up to where you are in terms of awareness, understanding, and support.  Then, you can all move forward together.

Between September 2009 and January 2010,  IBM researchers interviewed 1,541 CEOs, general managers and senior public sector leaders who represent different sizes of organizations in 60 countries and 33 industries.

According to Samuel J. Palmisano IBM’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer:

Here are some highlights from Capitalizing on Complexity, IBM’s report on their annual Global Chief Executive Officer Study.

1. Creative leaders invite disruptive innovation, encourage others to drop outdated approaches and take balanced risks. They are open-minded and inventive in expanding their management and communication styles, particularly to engage with a new generation of employees, partners and customers.
2. To enact continuous change, standouts avoid the old command and control style of leadership. Fifty-eight percent prefer to persuade and influence compared to just 17 percent that tend toward command and control. An Electronics CEO in Switzerland told us, “The world does not function top-down as in the army. Today’s leader needs to exercise collaborative influence and demonstrate strong team leadership.”In addition to leading differently, CEOs and their teams are communicating differently. To communicate with customers and employees, they are experimenting with and assessing the results of using many newer types of digital media and social networking channels.
3. Standouts reported a better balance of communication approaches. They acknowledge the continued importance of communications “from the top,” especially to establish clarity of purpose and company values. But they also are embracing “viral” forms of communication to engage those inside and outside their organizations.

To me, the IBM study and associated report are further evidence that we are moving into an era where top-down directives will be replaced by problem-solving and action planning methods that engage and leverage the collective wisdom of people at all levels of an organization.   For more on this shift, check out:

• My blog post: Utilize Conversation to Achieve Shared Understanding
• IBM’s full report Capitalizing on Complexity.

Riboldi’s description of Akido struck me as being a powerful way to visualize an approach that I talk about when advising leaders on how to deal with resistance to change.  The most common response to resistance is to attempt to overcome it – in other words to use power and strength to subdue the resister(s).  As professor Gary Yukl’s research shows though, using power tactics usually result in compliance without commitment, and – even worse – increased resistance.

Instead of overpowering or overcoming resistance, I urge leaders to first accept the emotions underlying the resistance and then actively engage with resisters to find collaborative solutions.

Jeff Swartz, CEO of Timberland, brilliantly demonstrated this approach when Greenpeace launched a letter-writing campaign against Timberland.  Greenpeace and their supporters claimed that Timberland was causing deforestation in Brazil by purchasing leather from inappropriate suppliers.  In this month’s Harvard Business Review, Swartz shares how he and his team responded to the claims and the 65,000 angry emails.  Rather than spending energy refuting the claims and/or attacking Greenpeace, Timberland communicated with emailers respectfully and transparently and expressed a sincere interest in engaging with Greenpeace to find a solution.  In the end, Greenpeace ended up praising Timberland for their leadership on this important issue.

According to Swartz, one lesson he learned from this experience was:

While you might not have to deal with angry activists in your work, if you are leading change at any level, you will encounter resistance which may come in the form of an attack.  My hope is that you will apply Swartz’s advice and not stand there with your arms folded and mind closed. You will seek out the legitimate question or concern that may be beneath the resistance.  You will engage with the resisters, cynics, and skeptics to collaborate on a solution. And you will succeed.

Links:

Read Swartz’s “How I Did It” article from HBR here.

Read Juan Riboldi’s article on Akido Coaching here.

Two articles I read this week do a nice job of making the case that you can’t afford to neglect audience engagement.

In her recent article, the Future of Meetings, Kristin Arnold, author of Boring to Bravo: Proven Presentation Techniques to Engage, Involve, and Inspire Your Audiences to Action, asserts that the very nature of meetings is evolving.  Design and networking are among the trends Arnold discusses:

Presentation expert and author  Olivia Mitchell echoed the fact that presentations are evolving in her recent article, Are You Ready for the Third Era in Presenting?.

Mitchell maintains that there have been three distinct eras of public speaking and presenting to date and that we are now entering “The Era of the Audience”.   She posits that audiences expect and demand to be more involved and that they prefer the use of methods such as Open Space and open Q & A over the old “orator” style where a speech is a carefully crafted, one-way performance.

I have been an advocate for audience engagement for years and personally delight in working with audience members to create programs and experiences that address their needs and interests and engage them in the process.  When creating a custom keynote or engagement event, I often interviews dozens of people who will be attending an event.  I make my “talk” about them and interact with them.  The result is that the presentation, and the entire process of creating it, becomes a conversation.

There may still be some need for presentations that merely inform, or those that entertain.  But I believe the greater need – and demand – is for presentations that engage!

His post reminded me of a point that I made in an earlier blog post, “If we want to see it, we need to say it.”  In other words, often our expectations aren’t met because we haven’t communicated them in the first place.

He also shared the story below – and while you may have heard it before – I think it is a good reminder:

A CEO was getting very frustrated with one of her senior managers. She was so fed up, she was about to fire him. But before she did, she felt she should give him one last chance and hired an executive coach to work with the manager at a cost of $20,000.

So after explaining the situation to the coach, the coach asked her to write down a list of expectations that she had for this manager. Basically, the same exercise you just did. He thanked her, and said he would do his best, and left an invoice for 50% of the total bill.

The first thing the coach did when he met with the manager was to give him the list. The manager was amazed – he had never seen anything like that before. He was able to figure out what he was doing wrong and what he needed to do to please his boss and be successful. He thanked the coach and went on his way.

Three months later, the coach met with the CEO to review progress. The CEO was ecstatic with the manager’s performance – a complete turnaround. She asked the coach – “how did you do it?” The coach told the CEO he simply gave the manager the list of expectations and gave her an invoice for the rest of the bill.

To read McCarthy’s full post, click here.

Next time you have to present, consider whether you can use something surprising to keep your audience tuned in!

In my experience, if you want to engage your audience, it is critical to begin any presentation with the Three C’s: connection, credibility, and common cause.  Here are a few thoughts on each, along with examples from our attorney.

Connection

With most audiences, I recommend starting with a personal connection.  What do you have in common with the group?  How are you similar in thinking, background, approach, etc?  Our Saturday presenter started his talk by letting us know that he had been a teacher (with Teach for America) and that he is married to a teacher.  You could see the smiles spread around the room of educators instantly!

Credibility

Next comes what you know and how you know it.  What gives you the credibility to talk to the audience about this topic?  Our attorney let us know that he want to law school at Notre Dame and that he had been specializing on the day’s topic for more than 10 years.

Common Cause

This last item sounds a bit like “connection” but it means something different.   Connection helps your audience to relax.  They feel safe because they feel like you have said that you are like them, not better than them.  Common cause is about the bigger purpose that unites you and the audience.  Our attorney told us that he does what he does because he wants to improve the quality of education in America.  So did we!  Why else would we be at an 8-hour workshop on a Saturday?

For more ideas telling stories that help you connect with and engage your audience, check out Annette Simmon’s book, The Story Factor.

For some specific techniques to use at the start of your talk, check out this great blog post from presentation advisor, Jon Thomas:  5 Ways to Start Your Presentation Off Strong.

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.