How do you foster collaboration and trust among different teams and departments during a change process?

Change is inevitable, but it can also be challenging, especially when it affects different teams and departments in an organisation.

How do you ensure that everyone is on the same page, working towards a common goal, and trusting each other during a change process?

Here are some tips to foster collaboration and trust among your internal stakeholders.

Communicate the why and the how

One of the most important steps in any change process is to communicate the purpose, the benefits, and the plan of the change to all the affected parties. This helps to create a shared vision, align expectations and address any concerns or questions. Use clear, consistent and transparent messages across different channels and formats, such as emails, newsletters or webinars.

Invite feedback and input from your teams and departments and acknowledge their contributions and challenges.

Finite time frames with key dates represent some stability in times of change. If your teams are aware of the milestones you are working towards, they can feel that the change is being conducted with them, not to them.

Involve and empower your teams and departments

Another way to foster collaboration and trust is to involve and empower your teams and departments in the change process. Rather than imposing top-down decisions, seek their opinions, suggestions and solutions.

Create cross-functional teams or committees to oversee and implement the change and assign roles and responsibilities to each member.

Provide them with the necessary resources, support, and recognition to help them succeed. Celebrate their achievements and milestones and encourage them to share their learnings and best practices.

Collaboration and trust are critical to the communications process, whether in periods of transformative change or relative stability. Creating multiple spaces to collect feedback and discuss solutions broadens reach to all employees across an organisation and more importantly, broadens the perspective of the change manager to how deep the change process actually goes.

Share the plan to use collected feedback and set a plan to follow up with those who’ve provided it. Not only does this close the communication loop during periods of change, but it builds rapport, values each contributor for their time and reflection, boosts transparency, and encourages continued collaboration.

Helping teams and departments play an active role in change is important if done well. But remember that true transformational change is absolutely terrifying for many people, and as human beings we are largely challenged by the concept of separating our own needs and fears out from the larger demands of the organisation.

Sometimes solutions need to come from leadership, not from the ground up. Knowing where the organisation can be used collaboratively to get at better answers.

Build trust and rapport

Trust is the foundation of any effective collaboration, and it takes time and effort to build and maintain. During a change process, you need to demonstrate trust and rapport with your teams and departments, as well as among them.

Show respect, empathy and appreciation for their work and perspectives.

Listen actively and attentively to their feedback and concerns and address them promptly and honestly.

Avoid blame, criticism, or micromanagement and instead focus on solutions, feedback, and coaching. Create opportunities for informal interactions and social bonding, such as virtual coffee chats, team building activities, or fun contests.

If you want to go even further, create an employee advisory committee to help engage employees throughout the change. Call for volunteers or select a cross-sectional group to bring ideas and feedback.

Create a charter for this group and be sure everyone understands their roles - what it is and what it isn't. If you go down this road, make sure you are committed to listening and acting on feedback and input from this group. and explain why certain feedback can't be acted upon. If the commitment isn't there, don't do it as it will only deteriorate trust.

Allowing people to be a part of the circle of influence lowers stress and anxiety. There are no promises that views, perspectives and suggestions are incorporated but simply enabling the opportunity to speak up and provide input establishes open channels of communication. It goes a long way to helping people adapt to change and lower resistance.

Manage conflicts and resistance

No change process is without conflicts and resistance, and they can hinder collaboration and trust if not managed properly.

As a leader, you need to anticipate and manage potential sources of friction and disagreement among your teams and departments. Identify the root causes of the conflicts and resistance, such as fear, uncertainty, or misunderstanding, and address them with empathy and clarity.

Facilitate constructive dialogue and negotiation among the parties and help them find common ground and mutual benefits. Provide support and guidance to help them overcome their challenges and adapt to the change.

Resistance/conflict is feedback from your team and is often perceived to be negative, but it can be one of your most valuable tools in communicating change.

Often friction comes from an honest perspective and can give you valuable project insight and allow you to adjust your communication planning early in the process. These issues usually need more collaborative engagement with enough time in-between touchpoints for people to truly digest the message.

Gaining clarity on what is most difficult or uneasy for your audience to change can inform how future communication, training, and support can be provided to decrease friction.

Inviting people to express their fear and uncertainties allows the change practitioner to know what to address head-on rather than delay the inevitable pains and frustrations later in the change process.

Although scary, better to know now rather than later.

Monitor and evaluate the change process

Finally, you need to monitor and evaluate the progress and outcomes of the change process and share them with your teams and departments. This helps to measure the impact and effectiveness of the change, as well as to identify any gaps, issues, or opportunities for improvement. Use relevant data, metrics and feedback to track and report the results of the change and highlight the achievements and successes of your teams and departments.

Solicit feedback and suggestions from your teams and departments on how to improve the change process and implement them accordingly.

Measure for desired behaviour and outcomes. You want to know you are achieving (or not achieving) change success so you can adjust or proceed with confidence. Every change management experience leads to learnings whether it is success on the first try or a need to pivot for another effort.

Never leave an opportunity to gain experience by not measuring or reinforcing what is proven to work.

Here’s what else to consider

“If you feed them, they will come.”

So, how about considering a “Food for Thought” lunch with various masterminds/subject matter experts from different departments who rarely get the opportunity to collaborate.

Lunch over brainstorming the hot topics, new services, innovations, etc.

Prior to the meeting, send some thoughts, ideas, or questions that are relevant to our agenda so the group can arrive prepared with some ideas of their own and then we see where it takes us.

Communicate more than you think you need to.

Identify your different audiences and create a communications plan that aligns with the overarching change management plan to address the needs and fears of each of your audiences.

Remember to use your change champions for your communication as well -people trust people!