What are some best practices for supporting your team's mental health and well-being during change?

"Showing Empathy" is flawed terminology. Here's why: We have opposing emotions to empathy and compassion. 1. Fear will stop us from acting because we are afraid to say the wrong thing. 2. Doubt will cloud our judgement. 3. Denial will stop us from asking the right questions. 4. Overconfidence will have us trying to fix the situation without understanding the clear process of support. To truly support your team's mental health during change, you need to be skilled at it. Your habits, behaviors and mindsets need to be assessed and you need to understand a concrete process for support. #ShowingUp #CaringLeadership

I've played with teaching tools for organizational change for maybe 35 years and some very simple realities exist. Dilbert said, "Change is good, You go first." That encapsulates most people's reactions to being around change. My most useful phrase is, "Nobody ever washes a rental car." This refers to the common reality that "this needed change" is somebody else's issue and not yours. If you have no ownership of the issue, why bother? And if you push someone, they WILL push back (a simple exercise in a workshop, really). People naturally resist changes done TO them. So involve and engage people IN the change process and involve and engage them with a clarity of vision and purpose and a low fear of failure and all those other things.

Executives and managers leading change initiatives should never assume employees understand the reasoning behind the change. I've found it's crucial to spend a lot of time not only describing the change, but explaining why it's important. Consequently, employees understand how the change ties to the company's future vision and success and it becomes less "change for changes sake."

Getting feedback and collaboration through a period of change can be a great way of helping people to feel involved in the change and also informally communicating about what is happening. A big stresser for people in times of change is when people feel change is being 'done to them' rather than with their involvement. By involving people in the process if helps to embed the change but also means that you may find challenges or pitfalls earlier and more easily with feedback from the team. Ultimately if you have collaboration with the team you are likely to end up with a better overall result and any additional time taken in the early stages is made up for in benefits at the end.

Consistency is key. Consistently modeling these positive behaviors and attitudes will reinforce the desired culture and inspire your team members to adopt similar mindsets and behaviors.

More and more change is a constant in work environments and it can be easy to say that things will all be better in the future when in reality there will be another change to consider then too! Helping teams to come to terms with the fact that their role will continue to face change can really help in the longer term.

Acknowledge that change can be a challenge and empower your employees to embrace that challenge. Too often we hear things like "just get over it" or "just accept it" or my personal favorite "it's not that bad." Don't minimize your employees thoughts, feelings and concerns. Allow them to express the way they feel without repercussion or judgement. Then you are building TRUST. And the quickest way to enable employees to accept change, is when they TRUST the process.