How can you be an effective change leader?

10 SOFT SKILLS YOU NEED AS CHANGE MAKER 92 % of INNOVATION projects STOPS due to a lack of buy-in and priority. Your soft skills make or break your success: 1. Communication: to inspire others and foster collaboration. 2. Creativity: to Think outside the box and to stimulate innovation. 3. Adaptability: to navigate the uncertainties. 4. Empathy: for better team dynamics. 5. Emotional intelligence: to help build strong relationships. 6. Problem-solving: to drive innovation forward. 7. Resilience: to bounce back from failurer. 8. Leadership: to inspire and motivate others to embrace new ideas. 9. Collaboration: to build a diverse and inclusive environment. 10. Strategic thinking: to effectively leading innovation initiatives.

For me, there are typically 4 key elements to this: 1. The Project vision - what are we trying to achieve. 2. The Purpose of this change - why is this change important to the business 3. The People - who's going to be impacted & involved in the overall change journey 4. The Particulars - at a high level, what exactly will be changing - is it process, behaviour, skills, technology, etc. If expressed in a succinct way as a high level change charter, it provides a great communication tool to get stakeholder on board and share a consistent message.

Change does not happen without people. So people should be front and center to any change process. When you are building your change strategy approach it with the mindset that change is a team sport. Change in organisations only happens if individuals change, so spend time specifically engaging with these key stakeholder groups: - Sponsor - who will be the sponsor or champion for this change who can help build coalitions and remove barriers. - Managers - managers will often be asked to lead the implementation of change with their teams. Involve them early, engage them in the process and equip them well. - Impacted Employees - ensure you understand how the change will impact different groups and get representation on your change team

As change manager, your role is to build a communication plan and support with the development of key messages for different audiences at different stages of the project but don't assume all communication should come from you. Research by Prosci shows that the preferred sender of communication for both personal-level messages is their manager and their preferred sender of organisation-level messages is the CEO/C-suite. So your role is not just to build the plan but also to engage managers and leaders in being able to credibly and authentically communicate your key change messages. While you may want to use senior leaders

Change management is a team sport, whether it's your team, your sponsor, managers, engage as many people as possible in what it is you're trying to do. That way, driving change that is critical for the business becomes part of everyone's job. It will lead to better solutions, better integration into day-to-day processes and quicker adoption of the change across the organisation.

Managing the transition is also about handing the change over from a "project" to "business as usual". Think about how the handover will work, who will own the new ways of working, technology etc after the initial change project has finished. Ensure the new owners are well equipped to continue to drive things forward. Whether that's ensuring managers are able to role model the right behaviours, new employees are onboarded in the right way or someone ensures continuous improvement of a process or system carries on. Put support systems in place, both formal and informal so that when the project team pulls out and moves on, the business is able to sustain the new normal.

If you start with the end in mind, this becomes easier to sustain change. For me this starts with asking the right questions at the start of the change project: => How does this change fit with our existing strategy? => How does it fit or sit within our company culture, which element of our culture will help or hinder this change? => How does this change fit in with other priorities? Does it compete or does it supplement or even accelerate other things we're trying to do? => Is this change an evolution or a disruptive transformation? => If 12 months from now, this change has failed, what was the reason? => If we were successful, what's been key?

Here are the some of key skills to be a effective change leaders. Facilitating change Strategic thinking Coaching for change Communication Project Management Self- Management Professional development Facilitation meeting and workshop

In addition to the core steps of defining vision, engaging stakeholders, effective communication, team empowerment, transition management, and sustaining change, consider fostering a culture of adaptability, promoting continuous learning, addressing resistance with empathy, monitoring key performance indicators, building cross-functional collaboration, ensuring resource allocation, developing change champions, and integrating feedback loops. These elements complement your leadership approach, driving successful change initiatives.