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.

Any of you who have worked with high-tech companies know that the best way to kill an idea is that say that, “corporate says we have to do it this way.” How in the world could we get 7,000 “techies” to not only comply with the brand guidelines, but to want to? We knew that we needed every person to understand at a gut level why brand consistency, and therefore guidelines, were needed. So we started our program with a visual tour of some great brands—Apple, Starbucks, Ann Taylor, and Disney. We got people interacting and talking about why each brand was so recognizable. Time and time again, the audience saw that deliberate, consistent use of fonts, colors, and shapes helped to create a strong brand.

Next, we showed slides that compared and contrasted all of the advertising and marketing this company had been doing. Without us having to say a word, the audience members realized that their old brand was in complete chaos. We ran more than 70 of these sessions, and every single time, this was a pivotal moment. You could watch people sit up and almost immediately become willing participants in the change process instead of prisoners in a training class.

As a change leader and communicator, ask yourself how you can help people feel a sense of urgency and get “it” at a gut level.

Douglas goes on to argue that systems thinking enables one to understand, and get past the limitations of frames.

I find the concept of frames to be useful because in my own work, I have seen evidence that conflicts and disagreements about specific issues often stem from deeper beliefs and worldviews.  Earlier this year I was asked to work with a leadership team that was divided over several change initiatives.  On the surface, the conversation was about ERP systems, performance management, and compensation.  As I spoke with each leader individually though, it became apparent that the team was actually dividing into two “camps”.  One camp represented the more tenured group that had been with the company for decades and who all shared the underlying belief that the company existed to provide opportunities for its people.  The second camp was largely made up of newcomers with experience in other firms and industries and who often shared a belief that the bottom-line mattered most.  The newcomers perceived the tenured group as “resistant to change” and “stuck in the old way of doing things.”  They kept wanting to “sell” the idea of a new compensation system and the more they pressed, the more resistance they encountered.  Yet no one understood that it wasn’t a system change that people were resisting – it was making decisions that could negatively impact people .

In his book, Why Don’t You Want What I Want, Rick Maurer discusses the fact that paradoxes (such as profit vs. people) contain a tension that, when explored, allows us to find mutual wins.  He has discovered that a useful template for initiating conversation is “How can we do A while ensuring B?”

The leadership team I described above was able to have more productive conversations once we identified and surfaced their frames.  For example, we started one conversation with the question,  “How can we adjust our compensation system so that our people feel valued and we ensure our ability to remain profitable?”  Finding workable answers was not easy, yet people we far more engaged and willing to work through the tough issues because they were able to talk about what really mattered to them.

So how do you engage employees, or re-engage them? Lessons from the field of positive psychology indicate the importance of paying attention to how people feel before you focus on what you want them to do.  In her book, Exuberance, John Hopkins psychiatry professor Kay Redfield Jamison writes, “In times of adversity, inspired leadership offers energy and hope where little or none exist.”

In tough times, effective leaders help other regain feelings of hopefulness, optimism, and energy.  One example of a leader who did this successfully was Winston Churchill.  Lord Franks, England’s ambassador to the United States after WWII, heard Churchill speak many times.  After one of these occasions Franks wrote, “I came away more happy about things.  He dispelled our misgivings and set at rest our fears; he spoke of his aim and his purpose so that we knew that somehow it would be achieved. He gave us faith.”

If you lead an organization, department, or team it is equally important that you begin the process of re-engaging your employees by first acknowledging the emotions people are feeling, and then communicating in a way that rebuilds hope and enthusiasm.  For specific tips on how to do this, download my free e-books, Transforming Anxiety into Energy and Leading After Layoffs.

As Peter Bregman writes in his book, Point B: A Short Guide to Leading Big Change, providing information is important in any change.  But, he writes,  “tell & sell” isn’t enough.  Real change happens when every person impacted is actively engaged in the process of change – to the point where they become owners  – not targets of the change.

Just last week, Melissa Dutmers of RiverFork Consulting posted 9 questions to ask when leading a change:

1. What do you think about this change?
2. How do you feel about this change?
3. What do you see your role as in this change?
4. What is your opinion about this change?
5. What is your experience with this type of change?
6. What are you working on and how will you be impacted by this change?
7. What are your ideas about this change?
8. Would you change anything about this change?
9. Why do you think this change is needed (or not)?

Her readers added their own suggestions, including:

• What are you already doing in your day to day work that supports the change?
• What areas do you feel will be a challenge for you to adjust?
• How can I support you?
• What’s most important to you about the change?
• How will this proposed change be different from past changes in this organization?

Great advice from people who know that the job of a change leader is to educate, engage, and empower others.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In addition to the fun factor, I think this video illustrates another powerful point.  People are curious.  In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath demonstrate how powerful it can be to start a talk or a class by using a question or a mystery:

Today’s takeaway:  Are you leveraging fun and curiosity to interest people in your change effort?

A few weeks ago I attended a panel discussion about the impact of executive actions on employee engagement.  One of the executive panelists, Steve Bigari spoke about the importance of really caring about employees as individual people.  By dressing as waiter and serving coffee before the meeting, he illustrated the point that leaders often don’t see the “invisible” people in their own organizations.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Bigari’s demonstration lately because I am preparing to teach a class on motivating and retaining employees.  While there are many aspects of motivation to be explored, I think the most fundamental point is that every employee needs to be seen and know that he/she is respected and valued as a person.

Patrick Lencioni, author of The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, asserts that anonymity is a driving force in what makes people miserable at work.  He writes:  “People cannot be fulfilled in their work if they are not known.”

I agree with Lencioni.  In my experience, every employee  wonders, “Does anyone care about me as a person? Do I belong here?”  The answers go a long way toward determining motivation, engagement, retention, and productivity.

In fact, the 2007 Tower’s Perrin Global Workforce Study study of 90,000 employees found that the #1 element any employee wants (across all generations) is senior management interest in his or her well-being.

So, if you are a leader at any level – go ahead and make someone’s day.  Take some time to check in with people one-on-one.  You might try a technique we call the “Take Ten Check-In.”  Take jut 10 minutes a day to ask one person how he/she is doing.  Make it about the person – not just the work.  You will make his/her day.

Has your company held layoffs this year?  If so, chances are high that the layoffs are taking a toll on the morale of your employees.

A survey released last month by Watson Wyatt found that:

• Employee engagement for workers at all levels dropped 9 percent last year and close to 25 percent for top performers.
• Compared to last year, top performers are 20 percent less likely to recommend their organization to job seekers and 14 percent less likely to remain with their company.

For more results from the Watson Wyatt 2009/2010 U.S. Strategic Rewards Survey, click here.

To learn how to re-engage and re-energize your workforce post-layoffs, check out our e-book:  Leading after Layoffs.

I was fascinated by how rich the resulting discussion was.  While people chose different animals, there were a lot of similar references. The animals they chose for the future tended to represent characteristics such as speed and agility coupled with teamwork.

While not a member of the team myself, I played along with the activity privately – doodling in my own notebook.  Without even realizing it I drew an owl and wolf.  Hmm. . .  All of the sudden I realized the owl represented the intellectual aspect of my work – the writing, which I love.  But the owl is solitary – you almost never see two owls together!  The wolf to me represented being a part of a strong, devoted, and powerful pack.  Still fiercely independent but able to come together to bring down prey and share in raising the young. This metaphor told me that I need to be working more with other people!

Wow! I never would have predicted that such powerful individual and team insight could come from such a simple (seeming) activity!  My guess is that it unleashes that non-judging right side of our brains and tells us what we are really feeling without slowing us down with left-brain rational processing.

Give it try yourself or with your team.