Management Training Part 2: Preparing Your Team For Change

When you’re facing a transition within your company, you want to know that your managers are capable of leading and managing the change. 

Before you roll out any change initiative, take the following steps to ensure that your managers are adequately prepared and have the tools they need to be successful.

Step 1: Look To The Past

Most companies have experience with change initiatives – including both successes and failures. A useful pre-change exercise is evaluating these past implementations. 

Be sure to ask some of the following questions as a gauge of how change management is generally handled within your company:

• How often is your company implementing change?
• What were some successful scenarios?
• What were some failures?
• How is retention usually impacted by change within your company?
• How has change been communicated to your team in the past?
• What feedback has your company received from employees regarding past change?
• Is organizational change management training available to your managers?
• How much preparation has been executed with previous change endeavors?

Asking these questions helps you predict the impact that a potential change will have on your company. Effective change managers value the lessons learned from past experiences and use them to positively enact future transitions.

Step 2: Look To The Future

Successful change doesn’t just happen overnight. Your organization is full of people who are impacted by the transition, including your managers. Once you’ve evaluated past changes, begin to think about your company’s future.

• What are the goals for this change?
• What are the high-level goals for your company?
• How does this change initiative bring your company closer to those high-level goals?
• What kind of impact do you anticipate on your employees’ daily lives?
• What is the process for this change?
• Do you have a proposed timeline?
• Are there markers to determine the success of this change?

Change management training shouldn’t focus solely on how to manage the daily effects. Include your manager’s input on how change impacts your company at the highest levels.

Step 3: Look Out For Your Team

In the face of change, your managers need to be a voice for their people, anticipating potential challenges and helping to ease those burdens. Task each manager with guiding their team through the change, as opposed to waiting for the transition to be managed at a high level.

Each team is going to face hardship, whether it’s with maintaining productivity, managing the impact on their daily work, adjusting to new schedules or dealing with any number of other struggles. Therefore, your leaders need the right tools to solve employees’ problems. 

Provide management training courses that help your managers relate to, shape and lead their teams. Give them the tools to effectively guide their employees through the transition. Without the right communication, conflict resolution and problem-solving skills, your managers will be ill-prepared to help their teams overcome the challenges of change.

Step 4: Look For Feedback

Feedback is an oft-ignored part of the change management process. Most companies enact the transition and then immediately begin looking to their next change endeavor.

Your managers should create channels of communication for their employees throughout the process, but effective change management doesn’t stop there. Many – if not all – of your employees are going to be impacted by a company-wide change, and everyone should have an opinion about it.

Whether it’s via surveys or one-on-one meetings, provide avenues for feedback to help prepare for future initiatives. This will also help your employees at every level to feel involved in the change process and empowered to have a voice.

Change is never easy, but with the right management training courses, your managers are poised to thrive. Download Change Management: 5 Principles To Combat Ineffective Leadership now to learn more.