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Skills for Communicating Change
Ir. Mohd Firdaus Mohamad Idris | Continuous Professional Development
To identify communication skills appropriate to different imanages of managing change
Appreciate the breadth of skills needed as a Change Manager in Communicating Change.
Understand the roles of Toxic Handlers in change process
Access the different change conversations needed in a change process
Adapt your change language to ensure that is coherent and aligned with desired change
Make your change communication strategies relevant to both internal and external stakeholders
Coach
Director
Sending of clear, unambiguous messages about the need for change
Appreciative listening skills, Toxic handling, Dialogue, Community building, Appeals through ideals, Attention to emotions
Focus is on ensuring people share similar value and are aware and what action are appropriate, "Getting Buy In"
(To ensure people understand what is going to happen by providing them the answer of 5W)
Interpreter
Navigator
Storytelling, connecting the dots , Engaging in change conversations, including initiative, understanding, performance, and closure conversations.
Critical listening skills, Persuasion accounts, Negotiation, Selling of change, upward and downward, Appeal through deals
Provide staff with a sense "what is going on" i.e through story telling.
(Pay intention to identifying alternative interest and power relationships and actions that may disrupt the proposed change)."Tell and Sell" communication techniques are used.
Caretaker
Nurturer
Discriminative and therapeutic listening skills
Discriminative and therapeutic listening skills
(Focus is on letting people know about the "why" of change. "Identify and reply" reactive communication strategies is used)
The nurturer images leads change manager to reinforce view that processes cannot always be predicted.
These skills are aimed at involving people and encouraging commitment to the change process
It may not be possible to overcome some change issues through communication – at times the differences between intended outcomes and internal and external pressures can be too deeply embedded
Precise communication at
the right place and and the right time
is a guarantee for success!
How the ideas are presented.
1. LINKING the idea to the logic of business plan.
2. Raising the PROPOSAL continuously
3. PACKAGING the issue INCREMENTALLY so that the size of the change does not appear to be too large
BUNDLING by linking it to other ideas and issues.
Profitability, Market Share & Organizational Images
i,e Suspending Judegement;
in order to produce an open atmosphere of trust
Identifying assumptions; to reveal misunderstanding..
There are four types of listening skills – suspending judgement, identifying assumptions, listening for learning, and reflecting. (Gerard & Teurfs, 1997)
Issue selling is a way of gaining senior management attention to changes initiated from below.
The used of other success stories to avoid organization from repeating historically bad choice and to invite the repetition of past success.
"Take the Heat" & Voluntarily shoulder the sadness, frustration and anger.
This is an effective way of helping employees learn from past changes & painting pictures of the future
Some people in organizations take on a role of handling the ill-effects of change processes and absorbing these as a way of shielding others from their negative impact. (Frost & Robinson, 1999)
Different change conversations should be used at different stages of a change process. There are four types of conversations
Acknowledgments
Celebrations
Rewards
"Condition of Satisfaction", "We need to ensure that there are no more than 2 customer complaints per thousand units produce"
This communicates the type of changes needed and allows for a greater appreciation of why this type of change.
this signals the end of the change (Ford & Ford, 1995)
These Draw attention to the needs of change
this focuses on the actual change that is intended and how progress will be monitored.
Promises are made
Accountabilities are establish
Deadlines are set
An Assertation, " We have to bring the finances under control"
A Declaration, " We are going to increase our market share"
Coherent language is important to avoid message ambiguity in the change message. The desired change and the language used must be sync with and reflective of each other.Sillince (1999) identified four dominant language forms used in change conversations:
Ideals
expressing preferences
Appeals
seeking support
Rules
seeking to direct the behaviour
of individuals
Deals
serving as a form of
bargaining and exchange
The use of metaphors influences the images of change. These change images include:
Machine imagery of change
based on the “fix and maintain” view
Developmental imagery of change
based on the “build and develop” view
Transitional imagery of change
based on the “move and relocate” view
Transformational imagery of change
based on the “liberate and re-create”
view (Marshak, 1993)
The use of words and sentences that are misinterpreted or have evolved from their original meaning can be detrimental to the change process. It is important that a common change language is established.
Communicating to external stakeholders is an important (albeit often neglected) aspect of communicating change.
Research on communication of change with stakeholders has focused on:
Crisis management
managing threats to organizational survival such as competing accounts, statement of regret, denial.
Crisis management
managing threats to organizational survival such as competing accounts, statement of regret, denial.
Four key defensive practices used to protect organizations from negative reactions have been identified:
Excuses | Justifications | Disclaimers | Concealment
Research in this area has focused on Sensegiving strategies are:
Acquiescence sensegiving - strategic changes are presented as
being aligned with current
understandings and standards.
Balancing sensegiving -
frames a change as deviating
from current standards.
Change Manager has to identify communication skills appropriate to different images of managing change, access the different change conversation and communication strategies needed are relevant to stakeholder involve.
Therefore, the correct tools and technique as well as the process taken to communicate during change is very importance in order to achieve the desired target and to minimize and overcome the resistance to change.