Being Part Of The Solution: Part Three

In my last blog, I spoke about how in my workshops, the front line Managers, Supervisors and Individual Contributors form Initiative Teams and develop action plans to lead Change Management in their organization.

I said that I’d talk more about the roles and responsibilities of the Leadership Team as well as the roles and responsibilities of the team to help foster an Entrepreneurial Workplace and employee empowerment and empower and motivate their Initiative Teams.

For the purpose of this blog, I’m going to talk their roles and responsibilities for the Initiative Presentations we referred to in the last workshop.

Key roles and responsibilities for the Leadership team include:

• Be supportive. Catch them doing something right.  Recognize them for their efforts.
• Provide guidance in a kind and constructive manner. Give them the opportunity to both succeed and fail as the learning from failures can be powerful, motivating and empowering.
• Remember, when you give feedback, suggestions can be taken as orders. This is especially true if there are multiple levels between you and the employee and/or if you don’t work in the same facility and they have limited exposure to you.
• Give the team to opportunity to complete their plan. Help provide the support, whether it’s time, removing roadblocks and financial when feasible to allow them to lead and complete their initiative action plans.
• If something goes sideways on their plan, remember and reinforce to them it is not a performance issue, it’s a learning opportunity. And give them the chance to learn from it and adjust their plan.

The key to the Initiative Teams success include:

• Provide solutions in your presentation. While it’s important to identify the problem, the Leadership team probably at least knows the problem on a macro level.  Your identification may give them additional details along with the people and financial impact of those problems.
• Show them what your solutions are. Show them progress you have made so far with regards to any action plans to implement those solutions.
• Once you’ve shown them the problems, your recommended solutions, and what you’ve already accomplished, ask for the support you need from the Leadership team to be successful.

In my next blog, I’ll provide a bit of a summary and some other key tips on helping your employees focus on being part of the solution and feeling motivated, empowered and excited about leading Change Management initiatives within your organization.