The key to leading through change is resilience and the keys to resilience are courage and optimism. I have never seen a better example of this than my enterprising young friend, Bill.
Almost a decade ago he lost his job during a round of layoffs. Many of us thought he’d also lost his mind when he decided to launch a new business. With absolutely no experience in food services, he opened his own food truck! His recipes were unorthodox but delicious. His tenacity became legendary and before we knew it, he had a monster hit on his hands!
A few years in, and he’d garnered national recognition and enough capital to convert the food truck into a stationary restaurant. Another slam-dunk under his belt! We were so proud of and excited for him! He rebounded from that layoff like a boss!
And then the pandemic came and slam-dunked Bill’s restaurant into oblivion.
Like millions of other small businesses across the country, his became another heartbreaking casualty of COVID-19. But while his heart was broken, his spirit was not. In his mind, he didn’t have time to grieve or grouse because he had a young family and several employees to support.
His next move proved undeniably that the key to leading through change is resilience. He resurrected the food truck and hit the road again. While many of us might have seen this as a step backward and a humiliating sign of failure, Bill was grateful for the chance to recoup his losses and roll into a brighter future. What a gutsy guy! He is more courageous and in many ways more optimistic than before—perhaps because he is older and wiser now.
Another key to leading through change is reevaluation
Desperate to process this turbulent whirlwind, some managers are so focused on their vanishing bottom line they can’t see their way forward. The fact is that panic management doesn’t work over the long term. As profits fall away, so do key personnel.
Is it time to reevaluate what to keep and what to change in your overall operational model? Should you redefine what your company considers “success” to be? Are your quotas attainable now?
One more key to leading through change is re-training
What do you need from your staff now? How realistic are your expectations in light of current business trends? Are you willing to restructure teams, and provide new leadership opportunities to facilitate adjustments to mandatory changes?
Once you review what you need from your staff, consider what your staff needs from you. How realistic are your expectations in light of how each employee is coping? Are you open to providing emotional support to those who need it? How stable is their home-based workspace? Do they need training on new digital platforms? How much of a learning-curve can you allow without adding undue stress?
For some people, like my friend Bill, resilience, courage, and optimism are innate. The good news for the rest of us is that we can all learn these attributes if we’re teachable. And there’s never been a more compelling time to be teachable than the era we’re living through right now.
Magnovo’s Leading Through Change training can teach you how to regain the ballast you need to stabilize your ship. Our facilitators can guide your managerial staff through the process of achieving total buy-in among subordinates to new policies and procedures. Magnovo’s trainers are skilled at helping leaders identify and embrace the long view and build a road to success even during unpredictable times.
We can help you plot your course through policy changes, workflow shifts, and new client protocols. And we can help you deal with members of your staff who are resistant to what they may perceive as “a barrage of changes” you need to implement.
The key to leading through change is DiSC
Magnovo’s convictions about leading through change are passionately people-focused. Instead of being punitive, our approach is to increase sensitivity to individual personality traits and assess where they are professionally and personally. And DiSC personality profile training is the best tool for managers to learn how to understand their workers individually and help them maximize professional and personal success.
Dominant, Influential, Supportive, and Conscientious [DiSC] employees—we’re all in this together. DiSC training can help you grow together, stick together, and move forward together. A cohesive team can succeed no matter how many changes there are to navigate during this pandemic.