How to lead your team through a change nobody wanted

When I talk about change in leadership trainings and workshops, I often joke that we are good at change when we are the ones planning and controlling it. The switch often flips when unexpected and undesired changes happen to us. 

This is exactly what happened recently with a client who is a leader in a financial services firm when a popular, long-tenured leader at her organization had unexpectedly departed. This person had been deeply involved in the growth and development of the team so when the news hit, the freakout was fast. Because this leader had so much influence on the team's success, the unpredictability of how this would impact their goals, their clients, their careers was nearly intolerable.  

On the day the news broke, she found herself in all the small group huddles by the coffee, on the patio, over lunch, participating in the venting and the speculation. She admitted that in a leadership meeting that morning, she had spent the entire time pinpointing everything that was handled wrong instead of contributing to solutions.

Over the course of a single day she had gone from:

1. Feeling like a victim ("I told them this would happen, nobody listened to me"), 

2. To being the villain (criticizing decisions and fueling the negativity instead of leading through it), 

3. To trying to be the hero (soothing people, agreeing with their frustrations, hinting at exceptions to be made to soften the blow). 

This is something I see over and over with leaders during times of unexpected change. They make a complete journey through the drama triangle (see below) through feeling victimized by the decision, angry about how it was handled, and then trying to swoop in and save everyone. (Note: This is NORMAL … the key is to recognize it sooner in yourself and others and make the shift).

The role you want to play is NOT the hero. Heroes save the day because they love the helpers high, but they often prevent their team from growing and adapting.  I teach leaders their role is to view change first with a creators mindset (using their creativity to find solutions) and then pursue the role of a coach who can curiously hold space for others as they problem solve.

As leaders, when we try to save our teams from feeling disappointment, struggle or challenges, we actually hinder their growth. They never learn to grow the necessary skills they need to advance through adversity. They become dependent on a leader's heroics and can resist growth and challenges.

A key aha moment during our conversation came when she realized that if her team was freaking out this much because one person left, then that person had become a single point of dependency (a costly hero to the organization). The team had built their confidence around one leader, believing the only way they could be successful was through that one person. That's a fragile foundation for anyone's career.

Her job now was to help her team move from "this is happening to us" to "what are we going to create from here?" And she couldn't coach them through that shift until she made it herself.

🔥 When unexpected change hits your team, where do you go first - the victim, the villain, or the hero? And more importantly, how do you shift yourself before you try to shift anyone else?

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PUT THIS IDEA INTO ACTION

When big, unwelcome change hits your team, your instinct might be to either vent alongside them, tell them everything will be fine, or try to fix it all yourself. None of these actually help people move forward. Here is how to coach yourself and your team through changes:

1: Make your own shift first. 

You cannot coach anyone through a mindset shift that you haven't made yourself. Before you walk into a single conversation with your team, ask yourself:

• Am I using my creativity to design a world where this is terrible, or am I using my creativity to figure out how this could be happening for me?

  • You have to lead from the second one, even when the first one feels more justified.

2: Meet people with compassion, then gently challenge their thinking. 

When someone comes to you frustrated, don't bypass their struggle. Start by acknowledging it. You can say phrases like:

• "I know this wasn't on your bingo card this year." Then, when the time is right, ask a question that opens up possibility:

  • "What opportunities could this open up for you?"

  • "How might this allow you to try some things differently?"

You are helping them make the leap from using their creativity to stay stuck to using their creativity to design what comes next.

3: Stop colluding and start coaching. 

There is a difference between holding space for someone's emotions and enabling their story that everything is terrible and now everyone will fail. 

• When a team member comes to you and says, "Can you believe how messed up this is?" resist the urge to agree and soothe by reciting everything that has gone haywire.

• Instead, try: "I know this is hard. I also want to challenge you to bring three good things that might come from this to our next one-on-one."

This is a great way to acknowledge their feelings and gently help them refocus where they place their energy.

4: Use your one-on-ones, but consider a team brainstorm. 

Deal with the hardest conversations individually, because if you try to coach everyone in a group, the people who need it the most won't think you're talking to them. 

Consider pulling the team together and saying, "We wouldn't have picked this. We're not happy about it. But we have to figure out how to make this work now. So let's spend our time talking about what we can do, what we might try, what we need to change, and what this might open up for us."

TRY THIS NEXT: The next time unexpected change hits your team and emotions are running high, before you respond to anyone, pause and ask yourself: 

Am I about to vent alongside them, rescue them, or coach them? 

Which approach moves you closer to the leader you want to become?

Kelli Thompson is an award-winning author, keynote speaker, and executive coach who specializes in helping high achievers advance to influential leaders in their organizations. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Closing The Confidence Gap: Boost Your Peace, Your Potential & Your Paycheck.

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