How to Keep Trust Intact When Introducing Change
Sometimes as a leader you don’t realize how important an organization’s ecosystem is to your team members.
But you quickly find out when you are met with resistance, criticism, and conflict by introducing something new—without preparing your team.
As a leader, it’s important for the health of the business to understand this—
When you introduce anything new—whether it’s a new team member, concept, CRM, or initiative—you’re disrupting your team’s comfort zone.
They’ve built a culture that’s predictable. They know what to expect, what’s expected of them, and how to do their job.
But when you introduce something new, without preparing them, you’ve created the perfect environment for a storm.
And when you have a storm, there are three predictable things that are going to happen.
1. Confusion
Team members are going to ask themselves:
Why are we doing this?
Where did it come from?
What’s expected from me?
And with confusion comes hesitation or slowing down of activity.
This slowing down causes delays, which can be brutal to business.
2. Anxiety
When people are confused, they get anxious and can have thoughts like,
“I had no way of preparing for this.”
"I don’t know what the end goal is.”
“I don’t even know why we’re doing this.”
At this point, if you haven’t addressed the confusion or the anxiety, the third and last part of this storm is inevitable.
3. Conflict
You’re going to get push back.
Productivity will drop.
And, especially if you’re a new leader, people won’t respect you.
This is where lack of trust is brewing.
Team members will doubt your leadership, the organization’s intentions, and particularly the new thing you’ve introduced into their ecosystem.
The greater the lack of trust, the greater the doubt that this new thing will work. Push back, rebellion, and worse, finding ways to prove this new thing wrong, are going to happen.
Chaos ensues and now the inmates are taking over the asylum.
How can you introduce something new and avoid this stormy path?
With these three steps.
Step 1: Gain the Support of the Biggest Influencers on the Team
Every team has one or more members whose opinions and behaviors carry a lot of weight.
Gaining their support will help make the new thing easier for everyone.
Identify those team members who can be your strongest advocates and have a meeting with them.
Explain why you think this new change is necessary and how it will benefit the team members.
Ask them for their ideas on how to best implement this change so that it’s easier on the team and will have the biggest success of being accepted.
Step 2: Tell Your Team What’s In It For Them
After you’ve spoken with the biggest influencers on the team, have a meeting with all the team members that will be affected by this new thing that you’ll be introducing.
Talking points for this meeting would be:
Introduce the new thing and explain what it is
Introduce how this new thing will be implemented
Explain how it will benefit them – you want to answer WIIFM
Be prepared and ask for feedback and questions. At this stage, they need clarity on what this new thing is and what this means to them.
Step 3: Introduce the New Thing in Small Chunks
This part of the process means it’ll take longer to fully implement the new thing, but it will help to avoid a storm and reinforce trust.
If possible, slowly introduce the new thing in bite-size pieces so the team becomes comfortable with it and tests it.
Have an open-door policy or feedback loop so the team can provide input on how the new thing can be improved.
When you include your team in this process, you’re far more likely to get buy-in and avoid the chaotic storm.
Based on an excerpt from IT’S PERSONAL, NOT BUSINESS podcast, Episode 3.