Leading through Transformation and Change

When faced with challenging conversations, I always go back to an analogy about the weather—there’s no good or bad weather, just weather. There are no good or bad conversations; there are just conversations. Avoiding discomfort is leadership avoidance; it’s letting things continue that you know are not right because you don’t know how to handle it. When you build a culture of trust and transparency, your ability to have difficult conversations improves dramatically. I live by the philosophy that there is room for forgiveness if you speak your truth with grace. I don’t sell perfection; I sell partnership.

- Megan McDonald, senior vice president of Single-Family Sales at MCAP UnLeadership Chapter 10 “Leadership Closes the Gap”?

When you write a book about leadership in 2023, you end up focusing on transformation and change - it’s inevitable. Change and innovation are everywhere, and showing no signs of slowing down. Living and leading through our times can be an enormous challenge, and many leaders are finding that their old toolkits are no longer serving them.? As Megan said, “avoiding discomfort is leadership avoidance.” Anticipating challenges and planning for impact is the work of leadership.?This requires awareness and connection - with your team, industry, and market.?

Successful organization change requires empathetic leadership only available to us through curiosity, awareness and connection. We need proactive, rather than reactive leadership and that begins with a willingness to listen and engage in challenging conversations.? Research from Change Enthusiasm Global, a company led by business leader and speaker Cassandra Worthy who we interviewed for Chapter 53, “Change Enthusiasm?, shows that 78% of working Americans more readily adapt to change when they feel safe sharing their truest emotions.?

That data tells you to listen and to stop leaving emotion at the door of business.??Leaders need to anticipate how employees will react to change and have open communication and feedback. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case. According to a recent survey of over 200 leading executives, only half of those conducting a change effort have considered their team’s sentiment about the change. Going on gut is not a strategy. You don’t always need months of research; even a few conversations with key stakeholders can make a big impact.?

The most important thing for people to understand is that we’re not changing for the sake of changing or because I’m a new CMO and want to redo the website. We’re coming to drive meaningful business change, to align what we’re doing in the marketing organization to the company strategy, and the steps we have to take for that alignment to happen. My listening tour is critical to the process. Stop, start, continue is the first thing I do when I walk in the door. I send out a request to the entire organization asking what they wish the company would stop doing, start doing, and continue doing. I then schedule a series of one-on-ones to understand the context of their answers. I refuse to make decisions for the first 45 or even 60 days. Although people are usually eager to get things moving, I need the information to make good decisions before my listening is complete. Listening is critical to my work, and I have found the higher you are within a company, the farther you are from the work. You need to see the day-to-day challenges. Creating a continuous communication cycle is the only way to know what’s happening in your organization. ?

- Melissa Sargeant, former CMO AlphaSense, Litmus, SugarCRM, ChannelAdvisor. UnLeadership Chapter 54 “Transformative Leadership”

Preparing for change sounds pretty impossible right?? So impossible if it can be overwhelming and a lot easier to ignore. When we understand leadership beyond a title, we can see it as a transferable tool kit of curiosity, vision, communication, and confidence. Few people demonstrate this better than Jeff Adams, Canadian Paralympian, six-time world champion in wheelchair racing, successful entrepreneur and Osgoode Hall Law School graduate (and UnLeadership interviewee). In an interview for Chapter 12, “Leadership is a Mindset Based on Practice,” Jeff shares that, like confidence, resilience takes practice. An athlete doesn’t parachute into the Olympics or Paralympics; you train to face up to whatever barrier is in front of you. You have opportunities to turn the dial and gradually increase the intensity of the barrier, whether real or artificial, and the resilience you need to overcome it. You don’t always have that graduated approach in business, but you can find ways to practice resilience. In UnLeadership, Jeff shares that resilience is a transferable skill as long as you recognize it as a skill in development.

Every single leader we spoke to offered insights on leading through transformation and change. Many leaders are born by facing, and then guiding others through uncertainty. What leadership challenges are you facing in this time of transformation and change and how are you adapting your leadership?

These are just tiny excerpts from an awesome book! Want to read more from Megan McDonald, Cassandra Worthy, Melissa Sargeant, Jeff Adams and more? Looking to learn more about leading through transformation and change? Have we got the right book for you!

More from UnLeadership about transformation and change...

Chapter 41 “Gold Record Leadership'' Joel Carriere, owner of Dine Alone Records, Bedlam Music Management, and New Damage Records talks about finding his way in the music business, starting a record label during the height of MySpace and Napster and growing a brand based on passion. (The list of cameos is long, and now Alison knows how to spell Queensr?che).?

Chapter 44 “The Ingredients of Leadership” - Chef and entrepreneur Matt Basile talks about following your instincts as a leader and shares his adventures disrupting the food industry for over a decade.?

Chapter 56, “Executive Leadership” Debbie Owusu-Akyeeah, Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity, talks Rugby, intersectionality and some of the lessons she’s learned leading an organization through transformation and change.?

Chapter 57 “Leading Through Innovation” Geoff Alexander, CEO of Wow Bao talks about leading through disruption, partnerships, and the question all leaders should be asking themselves.?

Chapter 66, “Crisis Leadership” Offering critical advice for leadership through disruption, Dave Fleet, Head of Global Digital Crisis at Edelman, talks about building trust, improving your listening apparatus, and shares how his understanding of leadership has changed during his career.??

Chapter 59 “Leaders Intervene” Julie S. Lalonde, internationally recognized women’s rights advocate, public educator, speaker, and trainer talks about bystander intervention, the orange problem and the power of storytelling.?