Managing Change as A Manager

Lots of unexpected turns can happen within a business, as a manager you need to prepare your team to be change resistant. Whatever the size of the team, if the 1st reaction to any change is resistance and negativity, you are always going to be in trouble.

Things can go wrong anytime even after all the precautions and backup.

• What if your GoogleAds which brings in substantial leads stop running for a day, or
• Your Instagram account on which your team worked very hard gets disabled, or
• Maybe your payment is not following through for a tool because of bank issues and
• What if your vendor shuts shop?
• Practice change management practices.

Find allies, lead the way by taking setbacks gracefully and maintain the principle with your team that change is the only constant.

Something I learned after my 1st stint at management.

Find Allies 

In any team, there are always different kinds of people. There are some who are “influencers” in the sense they have strong connections with lots of people and drive the conversation forward, they are the ones who influence what most of the people think about management, their policies and the general culture. 

So, make sure that you work closely with these people to explain to them your point of view. Try to understand and listen to the concerns and explain the long term and collective impact on the team. If the allies are on your side, the team will be. They will support you and become your strength in the tough times of big changes, and as a manager, you need that.

Lead the way

I cannot stress this enough but when you ask the team to do something, especially being their manager it’s important to walk the talk. If they don’t see you doing something you promised, your words will hold less and less meaning eventually. 

If you ask someone for feedback, get an actionable out of the meeting and the next time you meet with them tell them the update on it. Try to get small wins that impact the morale, that’s your job too. I’ve seen that once the team knows that you are just trying to do a good job and your intentions are good, and not to harass them, they’ll eventually become much better to work with. But it starts with you

Invest in your team

Invest in your team and relationships. Talk to each person as frequently as you can about their personal lives (keeping boundaries intact) and interests, career goals, immediate work related stress, conflicts, problems and the good parts too. Having good relationships makes working together much easier. Your team will absorb and reflect the energy you bring to office, so if you are brooding and silent most of the time, your team will catch on to that. 

So, be the consistent presence that will help them stabilise what they bring from home, which will help them detach, if only for a little while with whatever is going on in their “real lives”. Be the person who understands them but at the same time has the goal of making them succeed. Always be changing something or the other in the positive direction, mostly in small increments but at times optimise. With this your team becomes comfortable in the knowledge that this is going to happen, and expects that this will happen, making them more receptive.

Ofcourse, there are many snippets and examples from what I have learned over the course of my management career. 

Will keep sharing as and when I can write :)