When I teach workshops on the tools of change leadership, I always end by jumping up and down on one essential final point.
Which is that these tools are less than useless – they are actually damaging – if you do not take action on what you’ve learned by using them.
Wait, what? Damaging?
Yes. If you go through the process – curiosity, conversations, exploring people’s concerns and ideas – and don’t do anything, don’t take action on what you’ve learned, you destroy trust.
Not just lose trust. Destroy trust.
Trust, once destroyed, is massively difficult to regain.
And trust is essential for leading.
On the other hand, when you follow through, when you take (relevant) action, you gain trust. Which is like money in the bank when times are uncertain.
To go back to the title of this article, if you’re making a movie and you have the lights turned on and the cameras are rolling, but everyone’s just milling around on the set with no actual action … well, you’re not going to have a movie.
Same with leading change. Or, for that matter, leading in any situation. You’ve had the conversations, you’ve learned and understood where people are relative to what’s happening, but then…
Oops.
Curious about the Change Leadership workshop for your team or for a conference? Drop me a line here.