Are you feeling a general sense of discontent at work? Do you have doubt in your leadership? Does a lack of trust seem to permeate the workplace? Let me share a story that may shed some light on the problem that you are experiencing:
The trust survey showed that that middle management didn’t trust their top leadership; clearly, there was a problem.
While the top leaders believed that they were effectively communicating their change strategies down through the organization, their direct reports were not clearly understanding the scope of the changes envisioned or the rationale for them. As a result, mistrust began to foster between these two layers of leadership and front-line morale began to suffer.
We needed to help the top leadership recognize the need to provide the “why” and do a better job of sharing it with their teams.
I started to debrief the trust survey results with each top leader via a personalized coaching session. Prior to each session, executives were presented a “read ahead” which summarized the specific findings that pertained to them and their span of control. We reviewed these findings together at the beginning of the coaching meeting.
Some of the comments from survey participants included:
“We have a budget. But, do we have a plan? I don’t even know what our long-term vision is all about. How do they expect me to make good management decisions, when I’m not sure where we are heading?”
“It’s the flavor of the week around here. No sooner do we finish making a change, when a new change project comes along aimed at changing what we just put in place. Can they just make-up their minds!”
“We never seem to finish what we started. The first phase of the project had a roll-out plan that called for end-user training. We never received it. Now, they want us to go to Phase 2 and we don’t even understand how to work with the stuff that came out in Phase 1.”
Most of the leaders expressed surprise and embarrassment from receiving this kind of feedback. Most wanted some ideas for remedying the situation.
This was the opening I needed to suggest that top leadership deliberately work on defining and providing the reasoning and rationale for the desired changes. I suggested that they communicate this information at their next team meeting, and then, continue to reinforce this messaging every chance they had including one-on-one sessions with direct reports and any related project reviews that they were part of, or sponsoring.
Interestingly, after about a month of this renewed emphasis on explaining the reasons for change, morale began to improve on the front-lines. It seemed that the middle management team took the lead from the top and were providing the “why” to their supervisors, who would then pass that information on to their teams.
The lesson learned: We can improve trust by providing the “why.”
I hope that this story sheds some light on the connection of trust in the workplace and change management. If you need some assistance on your next major change initiative, don’t hesitate to email me.