The Leadership of Guiding Change

Guiding change is described as managing, mobilizing, understanding, and leading change. It includes knowing how to mitigate consequences, overcome resistance to change, and deal with the reactions that team members may have to that change.

Leadership itself IS all about change, not status quo — and guiding change takes some particular insight and care. “They” say that change is the only constant, and being able to manage change well is the nitty-gritty of leadership. Whether it’s planned change such as restructuring, mergers or acquisitions, or change that becomes evident as the result of a process of team development and strategy, guiding that change can be a minefield. Fear of change is what holds us back on so many different levels, and the cure for that fear is education and awareness.

The reason we struggle so much with change is that it’s generally hard to predict exactly what’s on the other side of it. For this reason, it doesn’t matter whether the change is positive or negative, it can still be stressful. Our egos, which live in the same part of our brain as our fight or flight reflex, are constantly trying to do their one and only job which is to protect us. As soon as there is an unknown, no matter how strong our reasoning mind is, our egos will try and fill in that unknown with the absolute worst-case scenario so that we’re primed to stay safe. The…