Unlocking A Highest & Best Use (HBU) Workplace: High-EQ Change Management

The following is an excerpt from, “Avoiding the All-Or-Nothing Workplace: Enabling People to Operate at their Highest & Best Use,” by Brea Starmer, Founder & CEO of Lions & Tigers.?

Most organizations will need to change in order to shift their mindset and practices away from an All-or-Nothing workplace, and into a Highest & Best Use (HBU) workplace. This change management practice takes skill, time, and lots of communication.?

My team has learned a great deal from Dr. Renee St. Jacques, especially about Emotional Intelligence. Emotional Intelligence (aka “EQ”) is defined as the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, as well as recognize and influence the emotions of those around you. More and more, this has become a critical skill for both our leaders and our contributors at work.?

“As a licensed psychologist and executive coach, I work with leaders who make change with a high degree of EQ. It’s a challenge to balance making the right choices for the future of the business while centering the emotional, psychological, and relational needs of people. I first coach them to prioritize validation of how challenging change can be for individuals (no toxic positivity!). Then, they must generate clarity (clear is kind!). Finally, I encourage co-creation. The result? In my experience, I see these brave leaders win connectors and loyal followers for the years to come because they showed their genuine and effective care.” – Dr. Renee St. Jacques, Coach at Lions & Tigers?

Emotionally intelligent change management, then, is the idea that we move an organization or an entire ecosystem along a journey while managing the emotions of all of those involved. This is rarely done at work. Rarrrrrrely.?

Our model for EQ Change Management is aptly called TRUST:?

Blending Our Workforce: Natalie’s Example?

Let’s play out how a leader interested in introducing a blended workforce would use the TRUST Change Management process.?

“Natalie” is a fictional executive, based on a few client stories I’ve blended together:?

Scenario: A Senior Director, Natalie, at a SaaS B2B company needs to build an expanded marketing team with a new charter. She currently has 4 full-time employees; one is about to go on maternity leave. Her team has just been asked to take on Loyalty Marketing, working with the Customer Success team. She has a budget of $1.5 Million.?

Step 1: Transparency - Clear Outcomes?

• Natalie researches recent employee and customer survey data, and makes it available to her team.?

• She uses the Highest & Best Organization framework to document her 3Ms and publishes her findings for her team and managers to review.?

• Natalie uses a consultant to facilitate an OKR planning session to align with the Customer Success leader resulting in co-created objectives. She then cascades them to her team where they contribute to Key Results for their new charter.?

Step 2: Relationships – Center People in Change?

• She meets with each member of her current team using the Highest & Best You framework to check on their sentiment, career aspirations, and discusses areas they want to de-emphasize going forward. This process helps her identify who is ready for leadership projects, who needs to reskill, and where she can gain efficiency. This builds a scope of work for her to down-source.?

• Natalie meets with members of her leadership team and ensures they buy in to her strategy, including HR to advocate for accommodations?

• Natalie meets with their customer advisory council to ensure their needs are being met by her team alignment.?

Step 3: Uproot – Incremental New Steps?

• Natalie brings in a Change Management and Operations consultancy to design a new operating model for her organization, from ticketing through production. Their process takes 3 months to design and 6 months to install, ensuring her team is engaged in each step.?

• She taps in her DEI (Diversity Equity and Inclusion) and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) leads at the company to help design her team culture strategy to be inclusive and community-oriented.?

• Natalie uses the Highest & Best Community assessment to determine her stakeholders, agencies, and alliances she needs to build trust with to succeed.?

Step 4: Sustainability – Reinforce Changes?

• Since once of the data points on her employee survey was an issue with work/life balance, Natalie uses the scope she created for down-sourcing and engages a workforce design consultant to build out a staffing plan with a 6-person non-employee workforce.?

• This flexible workforce provides 1/ the excess capacity to cover the increase in charter, 2/ the specialized skills needed to build out a Loyalty Marketing program, which her team was unfamiliar with, and 3/ maternity leave coverage for her employee.?

• As a whole blended team, Natalie and her 4 employees + 6 independent workers met to document their Team Agreements of how they work together.?

Step 5: Tribute – Reward Behavior?

• Natalie’s team is outperforming their peers, with higher sentiment and lower attrition. Natalie is recognized among the leadership team for her ability to lead through change.?

• Among Natalie’s team, she built a bonus structure to reward behaviors that uphold their team values, advance their 3Ms, and offer empathy to colleagues.?

Get the Hybrid Workplace Playbook?

“Avoiding the All-Or-Nothing Workplace: Enabling People to Operate at their Highest & Best Use?” is an open-source playbook written by Brea Starmer, Founder & CEO of Lions & Tigers. It was built to empower you with the information and frameworks you need to de-risk P&Ls, unlock skills agility to keep pace with customers and competition and create access to more diverse and inclusive talent, driving profitability and innovation. ? ?

If you are a Senior Leader, Chief of Staff or Team Manager, the playbook guides you to manage your talented team’s skills and capacity against business priorities, while establishing a culture of innovation driven by inclusion.? ?

Read, download or listen to the playbook here.?