How to Inspire Change in the Workplace

Image Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gOcdpIe7N4

Change in the university level is often met with extreme skepticism, anxiety, agitation and rejection. Working as a member of the Online Studies team at a college, I have seen these reactions firsthand. I do overall consider my college to actually be very effective at embracing and accepting change, but like most universities/colleges as stated in the article, change is not always easily embraced or effective for us.

I feel the article (referenced below) gave us some great tips on how to overcome change resistance and think some of them may even be valuable in our attempts at assisting faculty in change transition. I am a huge proponent of positive reinforcement, and I strongly believe in celebrating accomplishments. According to Gilley, Godek, & Gilley (2009), the best ways to reduce change resistance are:

• Ensure leaders are educated and understand the change process/reactions
• Make the change personal and understand individual needs
• Involve all employees in the change process, from ideas to implementation
• Communicate frequently and often
• Change should be small baby steps, not massive overhauls in a short span of time
• Reward success, don’t punish failure

I strongly believe that those processes are fundamentally important and very effective at ensuring a successful change process. Especially the components that deal with understanding how people react, inviting everyone in the change process, and rewarding success and not punishing failure. I firmly believe in the importance of establishing a culture of care at the workplace, and to that end, employees should not be afraid to fail.

Initiating the change process is also a strategy in of itself. I saw an interesting video (down below) that talks about the keys to creating change agents and creating transformational change management.

When looking to get a message across and change behaviors, it’s important to create a sense of urgency. For example, Adobe Flash is near the end of the software’s life cycle (Forward Focus, 2017). Next year in 2020, Adobe will formally discontinue support for the aging and already unsafe-to-use platform. Advising instructors at the college whom still use Flash-based platforms of this process to transition them off of the platform due to this deadline, is a demonstratable example of urgency.

The next step is to build a team of change agents! These are leaders and “change activists.” These are the people that are going to be the ones to guide the process, deliver the vision, and help bring about a culture of acceptance for the change. These must be truly effective leaders leading the change, not just a group of people on a committee making decisions. This team should have people that inspire change, with high levels of emotional intelligence (Forward Focus, 2017).

And most importantly, create a vision! An actual vision, a strong vision that is intuitive and clear. This will help inspire people to want to change. Focus more on demonstrating what could and will be, and what is in it for the people being affected by the change, not so much raw data or spreadsheets and statistics (Forward Focus, 2017).

Change is inevitable. Those who fail to change fail to grow. Just look at companies like Blockbuster Video, or most recently, Toys R Us, to see what happens when change is resisted instead of embraced.


References: 

Gilley, A., Godek, M., & Gilley, J. W. (2009). The University Immune System: Overcoming Resistance to Change. Contemporary Issues in Education Research, 2(3), 1–6. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com.goodwin.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1056934&site=eds-live&scope=site

Forward Focus. (2017, July 12). Transformational Change Management [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gOcdpIe7N4