Leading Change: Effective Decision-Making and Team Involvement

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Leading Change: Effective Decision-Making and Team Involvement

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Hello. I’m Melanie Parish, and I am one of your hosts of the experimental leader podcast. I am an executive coach, a team coach, a consultant, and I’m super happy to be here with you today.

Hi. I’m Mel Rutherford. I’m McMasters first transgender department chair. I’m one of the CO hosts of the experimental leader podcast, and I’m happy to be here today.

Well, what are you thinking about today, Mel?

Well, I was thinking last week I went to a leadership workshop. And, you know, I do a lot of leadership workshops, both presenting and and as a student. And this one I was a student at, and it was being presented by somebody who was going to talk to us about change management. And this was on an academic campus. It was on a university campus, so it was presented to university academic leaders, and as we got into this, the speaker’s idea of change management and advice about change management, she was telling us about the resistance we were going to meet, and how we had to, you know, move forward and move people through change, despite the resistance, despite their ideas to the contrary. And it really struck me that I don’t really usually deal with that because, because of the decision making process that we use in my department. And when she was describing the resistance that people would have, and she, you know, she told us, 20% of the people aren’t going to want to do this, I thought, why not take the step back to to the decision making process in my department? All of all of my colleagues are very smart. Everyone on the on campus here is really smart, and when they’re when they’re resisting a decision, when they’re resisting change, it might be really interesting to get curious about why they’re resisting the change. Bring the original problem that you were trying to solve to them and and get them into constructing a solution that works for everyone.

Well and and I think that you think of it as a decision making process, like you do, like a formal consensus decision making process, but I actually think it’s a leadership process. So I actually think that what you’re talking about is what the leader does. The decision making process is part of what you do as a leader. But I think that this idea that we’re going to change people, I don’t even know we were, you know, you and I were talking about this earlier, and I think it comes from this idea of, like, the top down, typically, you know, 50 to 65 year old man who cisgendered man who is going to assert his authority over over his underlings, because that’s how he thinks of them and And I actually think this is a problem in leadership like this, this idea that you’re going to do it to them is ignoring a lot of feedback loops and ignoring the opportunity to, as you said, back it up. But also, I think people get confused about what their role is as a leader like I think they they think when they’re appointed leader, they rise on high, and then they have to tell people what to do and and I actually believe in a different kind of leadership than that.

Yeah, that’s interesting. And one of the things that occurred to me, and I’d be interested in in your thoughts on this, one of the things that occurred to me is that leadership might look different in different domains, if you consider, you know, I’m as I mentioned, this workshop happened on an academic campus where I think people should. Be involved in the governance people at all levels, you know, faculty, staff, everyone should be involved in in the governance of the university. A lot of my leadership training and leadership experience has been in a religious community where the process is more important than any widget where we’re creating, but, but then, but then I know, like I was wondering what you thought about a business setting. Because in a business setting, you know, somebody owns the business, and if somebody owns the business and they decide, you know, we’re moving office to a different city, you just go along with that. And so if this leadership process looks different in different domains.

Well, I think, I think there’s some noteworthy times that change is sort of imposed on an organization. One would be in a time of acquisition. So it’s a time that there’s a lot of uncertainty. It’s a time that leaders might have to make really hard decisions about staffing after layoffs. There’s times that the the culture is more negative, and then sometimes you have to a leader might have to make a decision that’s hard. You can’t decide who’s getting fired by consensus, and sometimes the bottom line doesn’t support the workforce that you have. So I think, you know, in a business setting, there are some key times that having leadership actually means walking in front. But I think that, like if you’re fostering, if you’re not in hard times, if you’re fostering a culture of innovation where you want ideas, the idea that you’re going to take your group and do something to them to get them to the new reality, it’s problematic because you spend a lot of time on implementation. You don’t actually get traction. And if we talk about, like, from a coaching perspective, I have clients who are implementing a change, the things we talk about is, how do you elicit as much feedback and input as you can so that you can have them, for example, move to a different platform or something, but they are heard along the way. So it’s it’s not imposing it. And then assuming 20% are not going to go with you, it’s listening to that 20% to see what they know about the process that that you don’t know. Yeah, and so I think in general, if you are imposing a change, you’re probably not valuing your feedback loop enough, and you’re going to spend a lot of time jumping up and down, which I really recommend. You know, good leaders don’t look very good when they jump up and down trying to enforce their their whatever. And so if you’re spending a lot of time in enforcement, you’re not going to come out smelling like roses as a leader.

Yeah, yeah. And I was thinking about even in an academic setting, we might have some problems and constraints that we don’t have any control over. One example I thought of is if our budget is smaller this year than it was last year. Another example I thought of is if the provincial government, you know, says universities have to have a policy that described. Well, we have to do that because the provincial government has said so. But even in those cases, I don’t think it should be the the upper level management imposing the solutions on everybody. I think, I think the problem should be brought to everybody, and everybody can participate in in creating the solution to the problem.

Even on my team, that’s pretty tiny. I think sometimes if I impose a decision, then if they don’t do it, I probably haven’t, like even in a tiny, nimble team like mine, if they’re not doing it later and I’m trying to force them to it, I probably haven’t taken into account their workflow, their needs, there’s something that they haven’t bought into, and then I’m actually not able to enforce it unless I pay a lot of attention, which is takes me away from the things I want to be paying attention to. In my role, all of a sudden, I’m in force. I become an enforcer. That’s the risk of this, this idea of change management, by the way, it’s one I’ve heard for years. There’s leapers, there’s, you know, there’s, like, it’s actually, in my book, this idea that that people take change differently. So some jump right in. And I did a contract at a fortune 50 company, and man, those people were uptakers, like, say something on Monday and they’d all be using it in their vernacular on Friday. They knew how to just, like, engage with change. Like, that was how you got promoted in that company, was with change. Now, they might not be doing it a month later, but the first week, they were really good at implementation. And so there’s also that risk too, if you’re doing change like, does change stick, or is it a flavor of the month, right? If you’re a leader who likes to change things like, what, what? What are you thinking of? Why is change important? I think all of that is really important to think about in this context.

I think so too. And the reason for the change, and the reason this change might be the solution to our problem, should be really, really transparent. Everybody needs to deeply understand why we’re doing this, especially if it’s costly or difficult. Why are we doing this? You know, I think you’ll get more traction if people understand what the reason is behind this change you’re proposing.

Well, and and I think it’s like, so I always say, I have a lead on a project. I always say, hey, I’ll play on your team. I’m happy to play on your team, Sue or bill, or whoever, like you’re in charge of it, but feel free to call me in and get me to help. And the same is true for the leader. It’s like you want your team on your team for the work. You want to ask them what they think about whatever it is, and you want their input at the early, early stages about how you roll something out, if only So, like in the lunchroom, you know, they’re not saying, I can’t believe, you know, I can’t believe Mel Rutherford is doing this to us. Instead, it’s like, yeah, we we really appreciate that he’s taking the lead on this, and we want to make sure we support him.

Yeah, and I think some, I think some leaders and managers imagine they’re going to change that. They’re going to save some time. If they came up with a solution, they impose the solution, then we’re done. But it often doesn’t save you time when, when you, when you meet with resistance. Sometimes you, you know, sometimes the resistance actually escalates and you get to, so, you know, get the union involved, or get some, get some legal complications if you haven’t really checked out the landscape before you make the change. Whereas, if you involve everybody in the decision making, and you bring everybody along in the thinking about the change, then you need that might be the more efficient way to go.

Well. And, you know, dictatorship is really fast in theory, but you might need a firing squad to back you up, right, you know, and you don’t want to put yourself in that position as a leader, where you have to be that authoritarian. So leadership is super fast, and as a dictator, you have to enforce way more than you want to, to have to maintain your culture. I mean, if you just were just really honest about it, you lose a lot of positivity. You lose a lot of productivity. If you’re enforcing something on people, if you just look at flow of work, those things are impacted by something like enforcing a new policy. Everybody has to talk about it. Everybody has to disagree about it. Everybody has to fight to get their pieces of pie back. So there’s a lot of that that is really time consuming at the so it’s like, do you do it at the beginning, or do you do it at the end? Right? I don’t think either one of them is inherently faster, unless you’re picking a paint color and then I am in full support of it not being a group decision.

Are you picking paint metaphorically or literally?

I was actually picking paint literally. There’s some decisions that more input doesn’t make better, you like, there’s some sort of, you know, hire a designer, get expertise, go with the expertise, right, right. Yeah, anything else we should say about this?

No, those were my thoughts. It was really interesting workshop, and it was really interesting just reflecting on how how leaders can dig themselves into positions where they’re they’re at odds with the people they’re leading, rather than slow, slowing down, listening and rolling everybody really, really help, helping people think through what the leaders struggling with, what, what’s the problem you’re trying to solve? Evolve. Let’s, let’s think together about what the solution might be, and get everybody, get everybody working towards the same thing.

And I guess for our listeners, I have a couple of questions, like, where are you noticing that you have friction in your decision making or your change management? And if you are, is it at the beginning or the end, like, where are you feeling the friction? And then what’s the impact of that friction on how you’re viewed as a leader, and then what’s the impact of how you’re viewed as a leader on your ability to be the leader that you want to be? So I sort of think of flow as I think of the sort of change management, and what’s the impact of the way that you do change and like, what’s so important about the change? Is it worth the risk? Well, it’s been fun being here with you today. Yeah, it was a really fun conversation. And go experiment.