Forum: Reflection and Discussion Forum Week 7

Response to Other Student Postings:  Respond substantively to the post of at least two peers, by Friday, 11:59 p.m. EST. A peer response such as “I agree with her,” or “I liked what he said about that” or similar comments are not considered substantive and will not be counted for course credit.

[Continue the discussion through Sunday,11:59 p.m. EST by highlighting differences between your postings and your colleagues’ postings. Provide additional insights or alternative perspectives.

Evaluation of posts and responses: Your initial posts and peer responses will be evaluated on the basis of the kind of critical thinking and engagement displayed. The grading rubric evaluates the content based on seven areas:

Content Knowledge & Structure, Critical Thinking, Clarity & Effective Communication, Integration of Knowledge & Articles, Presentation, Writing Mechanics, and Response to Other Students.

Chapter 1

3.

Setting the Stage for Followership

Your Leadership Challenge

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

13-1

Explain the leader’s highest duty to followers.

13-2

Describe the importance of managing both up and down the hierarchy.

13-3

Summarize what your organizational leader will want from you.

13-4

Identify your followership style and take steps to become a more effective follower.

13-5

Implement appropriate and specific st

rat

egies for effective followership at school or work.

13-6

Apply the principles of harnessing power and courage for effective followership.

13-7

Explain the leader’s role in developing effective followers, including how to use feedback and leadership coaching to help followers grow and achieve their potential.

Introduction

Disappointed hardly begins to describe what Billy Grogan felt when the decision was announced. He had been working for the Marietta, Georgia, police department for 25 years and had been inspired by retiring Chief of Police Bobby Moody to aim for the top job someday. Now that day was here. Grogan was among the finalists and believed he was the best person for the job. So, when he learned that the selection committee had chosen Dan Flynn to be Marietta’s next chief of police, Grogan was bitter and frustrated. Yet, he had always felt that serving the community as a police officer was a calling, not just a job, and he knew his support of the new leader would be critical to Flynn’s effectiveness—and in turn, the effectiveness of the entire police department. As deputy chief, Grogan introduced Chief Flynn at the first full supervisory staff meeting a few days after he started the job, saying, “I intend to support Chief Flynn to the best of my ability because I know when he succeeds, our department succeeds. I ask that each of you do the same.”

Grogan, who was later hired as the first chief of police for the newly created city of Dunwoody, Georgia, said of that time in Marietta: “For the next year and a half, I walked the talk. I supported Chief Flynn, followed him, and learned a lot about good leadership from him in the process.”

Billy Grogan was doing what good followers do. He worked to build a positive relationship with the boss that enabled him to do his best job as a follower and help the leader meet his goals for the organization. In addition to his current job as police chief of Dunwoody, Georgia, Grogan runs an organization and Web site called Top Cop Leadership, which aims to inspire and support law enforcement leaders. In one of his blog posts, Grogan writes, “Have you ever thought about how important a follower is to a leader? If everyone in the organization acted only as a leader, the progress of the organization would come to a screeching halt.”

In this chapter, we examine the important role of followership, including the nature of the follower’s role, what leaders want from followers, and the different styles of followership that individuals express. The chapter explores how effective followers behave, discusses strategies for managing up, and looks at the sources of power and courage for managing up. Finally, we look at what followers want from leaders and examine the leader’s role in developing and supporting followers.

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1.

The Leader’s Higher Duty to Followers

Many leaders in business, government, and nonprofit organizations want to contribute to a better society and a better world. Researchers at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company argue that the place where leaders can contribute broader social value, paradoxically, lies inside the organization in the form of job satisfaction for followers. Today’s best leaders recognize that employees who are happy and feel a sense of well-being are better for both the organization and the community than those who are stressed out and filled with anxiety. Countless studies show a link between employee satisfaction, customer loyalty, and organizational profitability, and employee satisfaction has been shown to contribute directly to shareholder value. Relationships with superiors are the top factor influencing job satisfaction, which in turn is the second most important factor determining an employee’s overall well-being (mental health being the top factor). In a survey, 74 percent of people who described relationships between leaders and employees as very good in their workplace reported being very satisfied with their jobs, compared to only 15 percent of those who described leader–employee relationships as quite bad or very bad.

The McKinsey researchers suggest that the most important question a leader should ask is: “How do I make my [followers’] lives easier—physically, cognitively, and emotionally?” Many leaders focus on what followers can do for them, but a more critical issue is what leaders can do for followers. Leaders should remember that, as Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government professor Barbara Kellerman has said, “Followers are more important to leaders than leaders are to followers.” Particularly today, followers have access to the information and connections that enable them to influence how effectively a leader accomplishes goals. Followers can thoughtlessly go along with the system, doing just what they need to do to keep their jobs; they can sabotage a leader’s best-laid plans and strategies; or followers can throw their energy, talent, and support into accomplishing great things. The success of any activity, project, or organization depends to a great extent on the actions and behaviors of followers, so understanding and appreciating the crucial role of followership is essential to being a good leader. Recall from Chapter 8 that a primary reason people leave organizations is a lack of appreciation. People don’t quit jobs; they quit bad bosses. Indeed, 65 percent of employees in one survey said they would choose a new boss over a pay raise. Leaders should remember that they have a dramatic impact on followers’ well-being—and hence the organization and the broader community—through their everyday behavior and strive to consistently cultivate positive relationships with followers.

Remember This

For leaders who want to create a better society and better world, the best place to start may be inside the organization, providing job satisfaction for followers.

Relationships with superiors are the top factor influencing job satisfaction, which in turn is the second most important factor determining an employee’s overall well-being. Sadly, in one survey, 65 percent of employees said they would choose a new boss over a pay raise.

Studies show that employee satisfaction contributes to customer loyalty, organizational profitability, and shareholder value.

Understanding the crucial role of followership and helping followers feel valued and appreciated for their contributions to the organization is essential to being a good leader.

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2.

The Art of Followership

Everyone—leaders included—is a follower at some times or in some situations. Considering leadership the sole basis for the success of the organization is a flawed assumption, and it limits the opportunity for people throughout the organization to accept responsibility and make active, valuable contributions. For any group or organization to succeed, there must be people who willingly and effectively follow just as there must be those who willingly and effectively lead. A follower can be defined as an individual who voluntarily accepts a leader’s goals and influence and actively participates in pursuing goals. The word voluntary is key because to freely accept the influence of someone means trusting that person. Whether in a medical office, an automobile factory, a religious organization, or an Internet team, people voluntarily follow someone only if they trust that the leader is acting for the good of those they are leading.

Consultant Adam Kahane’s experience facilitating a health policy project with a team of First Nations leaders from the province of Manitoba, Canada, illustrates the importance of trusting the leader. As Kahane was making his presentation, George Muswaggon, a leader of Cross Lake First Nation, spoke up and said, “I don’t trust you.” Kahane realized that he had been so confident in his expertise that he failed to build the trust that is a necessary foundation for a leader–follower relationship. He shifted his approach, becoming less directive and more collaborative. He focused on supporting his First Nations facilitator colleagues and began deferring to them on more matters. Over time, as trust grew, the team made significant progress. Kahane says the First Nations team “became more willing to follow me, but only on certain matters and in certain domains; in other matters and domains, they followed other people, or no one.”

Kahane’s observation is a reminder that leadership is not a given, based on a title or a formal position of authority. Leadership and followership are fundamental roles that individuals shift into and out of under various conditions. Despite the focus on leadership, most of us are more often followers than leaders. Therefore, it is important for people to learn to manage both up and down the hierarchy, as illustrated in Exhibit 13.1.

Exhibit 13.1 Good Leaders Manage Both Up and Down the Hierarchy

Details

Source: Based on Mark Hurwitz and Samantha Hurwitz, “The Romance of the Follower: Part 2,” Industrial and Commercial Training 41, no. 4 (2009), pp. 199–20

6.

13-2a. Learn to Manage Up as Well as Down

Managing up is a skill that helps people consciously and deliberately develop a highly effective relationship with their direct superior to obtain the best possible outcome for themselves, their boss, their colleagues, and the organization.

Being a leader is more about influence than about position and formal authority, so it is crucial that leaders learn to appreciate and adapt to working effectively with people who may have different perspectives, personalities, and work styles, and that includes their bosses. Leaders who get trapped in their own viewpoints, needs, and wants cannot exert the same influence as those who consider the perspectives, needs, and goals of their superiors as well as their direct reports.

People who effectively manage both up and down the hierarchy are more successful. Leaders at higher organizational levels depend on their direct reports for information, support, and assistance in accomplishing the organization’s goals, so your boss needs you to manage up. In addition, your followers depend on you to help them get the information, resources, support, and recognition they need and deserve from higher levels. People like working for leaders who have influence with their superiors because it enhances their own status in the organization and helps them get what they need to do their jobs well. You can’t be a really good leader unless you manage the boss as skillfully as you manage employees.

13-2b. Managing Up Presents Unique Challenges

Put It Into Practice 13.1

Reflect on and write down one way in which your reactions toward a leader at work or a professor at school might be similar to your reaction pattern from your upbringing.

Many new leaders are uncomfortable with the idea of managing their boss. Their overriding concern may be keeping the boss happy, so they hesitate to pass along any information that might not be welcome, and they avoid questioning any of their superior’s assumptions, ideas, or decisions. A person’s pattern of thoughts and actions toward authority figures may be partly conditioned by their childhood relationships with parents or other caregivers. Hence, they might find themselves being highly critical or deferential or oppositional toward a leader because of old habit patterns. In the long run, these self-protective habits may hurt the employee, the boss, and the organization. Conscious and objective strategies for dealing with a boss have a better chance of being helpful to everyone.

Another reason we may have difficulty managing upward is that we’re not “in control” in this relationship as we are in our relationships with direct reports. It is natural that we try to protect ourselves in a relationship where we feel we have little control and little power. Yet in reality we have more power than we know. Bosses need our support—our talent, information, ideas, and honesty—in order to do their jobs well, just as we need their support to do our best work. Everyone benefits when leaders learn to effectively manage relationships with superiors as well as direct reports. Consider the following examples.

Irvin D. Yalom, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, tells a story of a woman who ranted at length in a group therapy session about her boss, who never listened and refused to pay her any respect. As her work with Yalom continued, her complaints about her terrible boss persisted through three different jobs with three different supervisors. It is likely that not only she but also her supervisors, colleagues, and the companies where she worked suffered due to her unproductive relationships with her superiors.

Contrast this woman’s attitude and approach to that of Marcia Raimondo, who once worked for a micromanaging boss who was always nitpicking and correcting her work. Raimondo decided to stop resenting her micromanaging and instead give the boss what she wanted. She began working late so she could send her boss cheerful e-mails twice a day with complete updates of all her projects. After three months of this practice, Raimondo’s boss began giving her more autonomy because she now trusted that the follower was doing things the way she wanted them. As her boss increasingly trusted Raimondo, her micromanaging continued to abate, their relationship continued to improve, and both were happier and more productive.

Marcia Raimondo improved her relationship with her boss by understanding that being supportive and helpful was more productive than being resentful. To effectively manage up requires understanding what leaders want and need.

Remember This

A follower can be defined as an individual who voluntarily accepts a leader’s goals and influence and actively participates in pursuing goals. People voluntarily follow someone only if they trust that the leader is acting for the good of those they are leading.

Leadership and followership are interdependent, and people are followers more often than leaders.

People who effectively manage both up and down the hierarchy are more successful, but managing up can be difficult for new leaders.

Managing up is a skill that helps people consciously and deliberately develop a highly effective relationship with their direct superior to obtain the best possible outcome for themselves, their boss, their colleagues, and the organization.

To manage up with a micromanaging boss, Marcia Raimondo began sending the boss cheerful e-mails twice a day with complete updates of all her projects. After three months, the boss’s micromanaging tendencies had lessened considerably because the boss trusted that Raimondo was doing things the way the boss wanted them.

13-3. What Your Leader Wants from You

Leaders and organizational situations vary, but there are some qualities and behaviors that every good leader wants from followers. The following are ones that have been shown to contribute to productive and rewarding leader–follower relationships.

A Make-It-Happen Attitude. Leaders don’t want excuses. They want results. A leader’s job becomes smoother when followers are positive and self-motivated, get things done, accept responsibility, and excel at required tasks. Leaders value those people who propose ideas, show initiative, and take responsibility when they see something that needs to be done or a problem that needs to be solved. For example, when the night janitor at FAVI, a French copper-alloy foundry, was cleaning one night, the phone rang and she answered it to discover that an important visitor to the company had been delayed and was now waiting at the airport without the promised ride to his hotel. (FAVI’s CEO had left the airport when the visitor didn’t arrive as expected.) The janitor took the keys to one of the company cars, drove 90 minutes to pick up the visitor and deliver him to his hotel, then went back to finish the cleaning she had interrupted three hours earlier. Although this was nowhere close to being within her official job duties, the employee knew that leaders in the company valued and rewarded people who had the gumption to take responsibility for getting things done.

A Willingness to Collaborate. Leaders are responsible for much more in the organization than any individual follower’s concerns, feelings, and performance. Each follower is a part of the leader’s larger system and should realize that their actions affect the whole. Larry Bossidy, former chairman and CEO of AlliedSignal and of Honeywell, tells about a conflict between the heads of manufacturing and marketing at one organization. The two managers didn’t communicate with one another, so inventories were always out of whack. The CEO finally had to fire them both because their refusal to cooperate was hurting the organization. They got their jobs back when they jointly called and said they got the point and would change their behavior.

The Motivation to Stay Up-to-Date. Bosses want followers to know what is happening in the organization’s industry or field of endeavor. In addition, they want people to understand their customers, their competition, and how changes in technology or world events might affect the organization. Most people try to learn all they can in order to get a job, but they sometimes grow complacent and fail to stay current with what’s going on outside the narrow confines of their day-to-day work.

The Passion to Drive Your Own Growth. Similarly, leaders want followers who seek to enhance their own growth and development rather than depending solely on the leader to do it. Anything that exposes an individual to new people and ideas can enhance personal and professional development. One example is when followers actively network with others inside and outside the organization. Another is when followers take on difficult assignments, which demonstrates a willingness to face challenges, stretch their limits, and learn.

Remember This

There are some qualities and behaviors that every good leader wants from followers.

Leaders want followers with a make-it-happen attitude. They value followers who are positive and self-motivated, get things done, accept responsibility, and excel at required tasks.

Leaders also want followers to demonstrate a willingness to collaborate, stay up to date in their industry or field of endeavor, and seek to enhance their own growth and development rather than depending solely on the leader to do it.

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4.

Styles of Followership

Despite the importance of followership and the crucial role that followers play in the success of any endeavor, research on the topic is limited. One theory of followership was proposed by Robert E. Kelley, who conducted extensive interviews with leaders and followers and came up with five styles of followership, as shown in Exhibit 13.2.

Exhibit 13.2 Followership Styles

Details

Source: Based on information in Robert E. Kelley, The Power of Followership (New York: Doubleday, 1992).

These followership styles are categorized according to two dimensions, as illustrated in the exhibit. The first dimension is the quality of independent, critical thinking versus dependent, uncritical thinking. Critical thinking means approaching subjects, situations, and problems with thoughtful questions and in an unbiased way, gathering and assessing ideas and information objectively, and mentally exploring the underlying implications of various alternatives. This recalls our discussion of mindfulness in Chapter 5; independent critical thinkers are mindful of the effects of their and other people’s behavior on achieving organizational goals. They are aware of the significance of their own actions and the actions of others. They can weigh the impact of decisions on the vision set forth by a leader and offer constructive criticism, creativity, and innovation. Conversely, dependent, uncritical thinkers do not consider possibilities beyond what they are told, do not contribute to the cultivation of the organization, and accept the leader’s ideas without assessing or evaluating them.

According to Kelley, the second dimension of followership style is active versus passive behavior. An active individual participates fully in the organization, engages in behavior that is beyond the limits of the job, demonstrates a sense of ownership, and initiates problem solving and decision making. A passive individual is characterized by a need for constant supervision and prodding by superiors. Passivity is often regarded as laziness; a passive person does nothing that is not required and avoids added responsibility.

13-4. Styles of Followership
Despite the importance of followership and the crucial role that followers play in the success of any endeavor, research on the topic is limited. One theory of followership was proposed by Robert E. Kelley, who conducted extensive interviews with leaders and followers and came up with five styles of followership, as shown in Exhibit 13.2.

Exhibit 13.2 Followership Styles

Details
Source: Based on information in Robert E. Kelley, The Power of Followership (New York: Doubleday, 1992).

These followership styles are categorized according to two dimensions, as illustrated in the exhibit. The first dimension is the quality of independent, critical thinking versus dependent, uncritical thinking. Critical thinking means approaching subjects, situations, and problems with thoughtful questions and in an unbiased way, gathering and assessing ideas and information objectively, and mentally exploring the underlying implications of various alternatives. This recalls our discussion of mindfulness in Chapter 5; independent critical thinkers are mindful of the effects of their and other people’s behavior on achieving organizational goals. They are aware of the significance of their own actions and the actions of others. They can weigh the impact of decisions on the vision set forth by a leader and offer constructive criticism, creativity, and innovation. Conversely, dependent, uncritical thinkers do not consider possibilities beyond what they are told, do not contribute to the cultivation of the organization, and accept the leader’s ideas without assessing or evaluating them.

According to Kelley, the second dimension of followership style is active versus passive behavior. An active individual participates fully in the organization, engages in behavior that is beyond the limits of the job, demonstrates a sense of ownership, and initiates problem solving and decision making. A passive individual is characterized by a need for constant supervision and prodding by superiors. Passivity is often regarded as laziness; a passive person does nothing that is not required and avoids added responsibility.

13-4b. Leader Style Influences Follower Style

Leaders have a lot to do with whether employees are alienated followers, conformists, pragmatic survivors, passive followers, or effective followers. For example, one way leaders help followers be more effective is by pushing responsibility to lower levels, which makes people responsible for their own decisions and for thinking critically and independently about their work. The department store chain Nordstrom gives each salesclerk the responsibility for serving and satisfying the customer, including the authority to make refunds without supervisor approval.

Alienated followers may have been effective followers who experienced setbacks and obstacles within the organization and perhaps promises broken by their leaders. The passive followership style can often result from leaders who are overcontrolling of others and who punish mistakes. Followers learn that to show initiative, accept responsibility, or think creatively is not rewarded and may even be punished by the leader, so they grow increasingly passive. Conformists often result from rigid rules and authoritarian environments in which leaders consider recommendations from direct reports as a challenge or threat. In general, highly authoritative or dominance-based leadership encourages passive and conformist—even submissive—followers.

This can be particularly harmful for the organization if leaders are engaging in unethical practices. Conformist followers may engage in wrongdoing simply because they carry out orders without questioning whether the actions are right or wrong, as evidenced by the mortgage example in the previous section. Recall our discussion from Chapter 6 of crimes of obedience, which are actions performed in response to orders or pressure from superiors that are generally considered unethical or illegal by the larger community. As another example, to meet goals for increased credit card sign-ups among small business owners, some salespeople at American Express allegedly misrepresented fees and rewards, checked credit reports without consent of the business owner, and even issued cards that were not requested, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal.

Remember This

One model proposes five follower styles that are categorized according to two dimensions—critical thinking versus uncritical thinking and active versus passive behavior. The five follower styles are alienated, conformist, pragmatic survivor, passive, and effective.

Critical thinking means thinking independently and being mindful of the effects of one’s own and other people’s behavior on achieving the organization’s vision. In contrast, uncritical thinking means failing to consider possibilities beyond what one is told and accepting the leader’s ideas without thinking.

The alienated follower is an independent, critical thinker but is passive in the organization. The conformist follower participates actively in the organization but does not use critical thinking skills in their task behavior. The passive follower exhibits neither critical, independent thinking nor active participation.

A pragmatic survivor is a follower who has qualities of all four extremes (alienated, effective, passive, conformist), depending on which style fits with the prevalent situation.

An effective follower is a critical, independent thinker who actively participates in the organization. Effective followers have the courage to initiate change and put themselves at risk or in conflict with others, even their leaders, to serve the best interests of the organization.

A group of followers at Facebook have functioned as effective followers by actively encouraging the social media giant to make changes to decrease sensationalism and polarization.

Leader behaviors have a lot to do with whether employees are alienated followers, conformists, pragmatic survivors, passive followers, or effective followers.

Leader style influences follower style. Highly authoritative or dominance-based leadership encourages passive and conformist—even submissive—followers.

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5.

Strategies for Managing Up

There is growing recognition that how followers manage their leaders is just as important as how their leaders manage them. Two aspects of managing up are understanding the leader and using specific tactics to improve the leader–follower relationship.

13-5a. Understand the Leader

We all spend time and energy trying to understand people who are important to us, so it only makes sense that you do the same with your boss if you want to have a productive working relationship. It is up to you to take the initiative to learn about your leader’s goals, needs, strengths and weaknesses, and organizational constraints.

In addition, effective followers study their leader’s preferred work style. No two individuals work alike or behave alike under the same circumstances. Effective followers learn their leader’s preferences and adapt to them. Interviews with senior executives confirm that this strategy is both effective and appropriate for influencing the leader–follower relationship. You can pay close attention to the leader’s behavior in the following areas to know how to be a more effective follower:

Does the leader like to know all the details of your plans, projects, and problems, or do they just want the big picture?

Is the leader controlling or empowering? Does your leader want to closely supervise and be in control of people’s behavior or delegate freely and look for opportunities to help individuals grow and develop to their highest potential?

Does the leader like to carefully analyze information and alternatives before making a decision, or are they more inclined to make quick decisions and take action?

Is the leader a reader or a listener? Do they like to have materials presented in written form so they have time to study and analyze them first, or do they prefer an oral presentation where they can ask questions on the spot?

Is the leader a numbers person or a word person? Do they want statistics and figures to back up your report or request?

Is the leader an extrovert or an introvert? Do interactions with large groups of people energize or tire them? Do they like to be involved with people all day or need time alone to think and recharge?

Put It Into Practice 13.4

Over the next week, pay careful attention to the behavior of the instructor of the course in which you are using this text. Write down what you discern about the instructor’s communication and work style according to the bulleted list in this section of the chapter.

Effective followers seek out all the information they can about their leader from talking to the boss, talking to others, and paying attention to clues in the leader’s behavior, so that they are sensitive to the leader’s work style and needs. For example, people working with U.S. President Joe Biden know that he is an extrovert who enjoys oral briefings and interacting with a lot of different people when considering decisions. In his wife Jill Biden’s memoir published in 2019, she wrote that her husband “can do a rally with thousands of people and leave feeling energized and ready to take on the world.” Biden likes going with the flow and getting things done, making relatively quick decisions. 35 In contrast, President Barack Obama, with whom Biden served as vice president, is an introvert who likes to have time to reflect. When he was in the Oval Office, Obama preferred to have decision memos, briefing materials, and other items in writing so he could carefully study them and think of questions he wanted to ask. Obama liked taking time to consider a lot of information and a variety of ideas and opinions before acting.

Chapter 14. Shaping Culture and Values

Introduction

Dear “Ask a Career Coach”: My friend, who loves his job in Amazon’s corporate office, convinced me to leave my job at Google for a new position working with his team there. He says it’s a great place to work, and they are giving me a very generous salary, but the long hours, constant pressure to achieve, and intense focus on performance improvement is starting to affect my health. Overall, I think Google is a much nicer place to work. Should I try to get my old job back? Signed, Sadder but Wiser.

People who have worked at both Google and Amazon understand what “Sadder but Wiser” is talking about. Brad Stone, who has studied Amazon for decades and written two books about the company, says “some people say it’s the most productive work environment they’ve ever had, and other people kind of get one taste of the corporate culture and flee.” Amazon has a very strong achievement-oriented culture, which can feel harsh to some people. If you don’t achieve at Amazon, you’re pushed out. The culture at Google, in contrast, provides employees with more freedom to explore and innovate without pressure from the top, and people typically feel a better work–life balance.

Amazon and Google are both highly successful companies, and both have been ranked at or near the top of various “great places to work” lists, but the organizations have quite different corporate cultures. In Chapter 7, we talked about creating an inspiring vision and defining the strategies to help achieve it. Successful leaders recognize that culture is a core element in helping the organization meet strategic goals and attain the vision, and different goals may require different culture values. Leaders align people with the vision by influencing organizational culture and shaping the environment that determines morale and performance.

Most leaders understand that culture is an important mechanism for attracting, motivating, and retaining talented employees, a capability that may be the single best predictor of overall organizational excellence. In a survey of Canada’s top 500 companies, 82 percent of leaders said culture has a strong impact on their company’s performance. One long-term study discovered that organizations with strong cultures outperform those with weak cultures two to one on several primary measures of financial performance. In another Canadian study, the three-year average revenue growth for the top 10 companies ranked as having positive cultures was 63 percent higher than that of the 60 largest public companies in Canada.

This chapter explores the role of leaders in shaping organizational culture and values. The first section of the chapter describes the nature of corporate culture and the functions of culture in organizations. Then we turn to a consideration of how shared values can help the organization stay competitive and how leaders influence cultural values for high performance. We define the role of cultural leadership and describe different types of corporate cultures. The final section of the chapter briefly discusses spiritual values and how values-based leadership shapes an organization’s cultural atmosphere.

14-1a. What Is Culture?

Some people think of culture as the character or personality of an organization. How an organization looks and “feels” when you enter it is a manifestation of the organizational culture. For example, if you visit headquarters at ExxonMobil, you will likely get a sense of formality the minute you walk in the door. Most employees are in conventional business attire, desks are neat and orderly, and the atmosphere is tinged with competitiveness and a rigorous, analytical approach to taking care of business. “They’re not in the fun business,” said one oil industry analyst. “They’re in the profit business.” At a company such as Zappos, though, where fun is a core value, employees may be wearing jeans and sneakers, sport pierced lips or noses, and have empty pizza boxes, coffee cups, and drink bottles on their desks. Both of these companies are highly successful, but the underlying cultures are very different.

Culture can be defined as the set of key values, assumptions, understandings, and norms that is shared by members of an organization and taught to new members as correct. Norms are shared standards that define what behaviors are acceptable and desirable within a group of people. At its most basic, culture is a pattern of shared assumptions and beliefs about how things are done in an organization. As organizational members cope with internal and external problems, they develop shared assumptions and norms of behavior that are taught to new members as the correct way to think, feel, and act in relation to those problems.

Culture can be thought of as consisting of three levels, as illustrated in Exhibit 14.1, with each level becoming less obvious. At the surface level are visible artifacts and audible behavior, such as manner of dress, patterns of behavior, physical symbols, office sayings, organizational ceremonies, and office layout—all the things one can see, hear, and observe by watching members of the organization. Consider some observable aspects of culture at John Lewis & Partners, a successful retailer in Great Britain. People working in John Lewis stores are typically older than staff members at other retailers and are called partners, not employees. Everyone shares in company profits and has a say in how the business is run. The entrance to leaders’ offices is small and functional rather than ostentatious, and stores exude an air of simplicity, calmness, and order. At a deeper level of culture are the expressed values and beliefs, which are not observable but can be discerned from how people explain and justify what they do. These are values that members of the organization hold at a conscious level. For example, John Lewis partners consciously know that dependability, service, and quality are highly valued and rewarded in the company culture.

Exhibit 14.1 Levels of Corporate Culture

Details

Some values become so deeply embedded in a culture that organizational members may not be consciously aware of them. These basic, underlying assumptions are the essence of the culture. At John Lewis, these assumptions might include

(1)

that the company cares about its employees as much as it expects them to care about customers,

(2)

that individual employees should think for themselves and do what they believe is right to provide exceptional customer service, and

(3)

that trust and honesty are an essential part of successful business relationships.

Assumptions generally start out as expressed values, but over time they become more deeply embedded and less open to question—organization members take them for granted and often are not even aware of the assumptions that guide their behavior, language, and patterns of social interaction.

14-1b. The Functions of Culture

When people are successful at what they undertake, the ideas and values that led to that success become institutionalized as part of the organization’s culture. Culture gives employees a sense of organizational identity and generates a commitment to particular values and ways of doing things. Culture serves two important functions in organizations:

(1)

it provides a foundation of shared values so that people know how to relate to one another, and

(2)

it helps the organization adapt to the external environment.

Foundation of Shared Values

The values and norms of an organization’s culture have a strong influence on shaping individual behavior. It is culture that guides day-to-day working relationships and determines how people communicate in the organization, what behavior is acceptable or not acceptable, and how power and status are allocated. Consider the culture at W. L. Gore & Associates, where self-direction, individual responsibility, collaboration, innovation, and informal leadership are key values. Founder Bill Gore described the organization as “one that involves direct transactions, self-commitment, natural leadership, and lacks assigned or assumed authority. We don’t manage people here, people manage themselves.” At Gore, people choose what to work on, and any individual feels free to reach out to any other individual—even the CEO or the chair of the board—to gather information, seek assistance, or test ideas. Leaders are not assigned; they emerge when followers trust their abilities and commitment to handle a specific project or issue in a way that benefits the entire organization.

Culture can imprint a set of unwritten rules inside employees’ minds, which can be very powerful in determining behavior, thus affecting organizational performance. Many organizations, like W. L. Gore & Associates, want strong cultures that encourage teamwork, collaboration, and mutual trust. In an environment of trust, people are more likely to share ideas, be creative, and be generous with their knowledge and talents. As another example, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons, India’s largest conglomerate, has always put strong emphasis on creating an organizational environment in which people learn from and collaborate with others. “Learning cannot be achieved by mandate,” Chandrasekaran says. “It has to be achieved by culture.”

Put It Into Practice 14.1

On a visit to your favorite retail store or restaurant, look carefully into its culture. Write down one way in which you think the behavior of the employees might be influenced by the organization’s culture.

External Adaptation

Culture also determines how the organization meets goals and deals with outsiders. The right cultural values can help the organization respond rapidly to customer needs or the moves of a competitor. Culture can encourage employee commitment to the core purpose of the organization, its specific goals, and the basic means used to accomplish goals.

The “right” culture is determined partly by what the organization needs to meet external challenges. This is one reason for the differing cultures at Amazon and Google, as described in the chapter opening example. Google, with profit margins at over 30 percent, can afford to have a more laid-back culture. Amazon, with much smaller margins of between 5 and 10 percent, needs a culture that impresses upon employees the need to be frugal and to continually push for business improvements. In addition, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos continually reinforced the value of customer focus. For example, in a meeting where someone mentioned something about what Walmart was doing, Bezos immediately stood up, interrupted the meeting, and emphasized that customer focus rather than competitor focus should underly all decision making. An organization’s culture should embody the values and assumptions needed by the organization to succeed in its environment. If the competitive environment requires speed and flexibility, for example, the culture should embody values that support adaptability, collaboration across departments, and a fast response to customer needs or environmental changes.

Think on This: Here Is Your Assignment

You will receive a body. You may like it or not, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.

You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.

There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works.”

A lesson is repeated until it is learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it; then you can go on to the next lesson.

Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

“There” is no better than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here,” you will simply obtain another “there” that will, again, look better than “here.”

Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.

What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need; what you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

Whether you think you can or can’t, in either case you’ll be right.

What do you think?

All effective cultures encourage adaptation to the environment in order to keep the organization healthy and profitable. This chapter’s Think on This highlights the importance of individual learning and adaptability. Just like people, effective organizational cultures grow and change to meet new challenges.

Remember This

Creating the right culture is one of the most important jobs of a leader. Culture is the set of key values, assumptions, understandings, and norms that is shared by members of an organization and taught to new members as correct.

Culture serves two critically important functions—to provide a foundation of shared values so that people know how to relate to one another, and to help the organization adapt to the external environment.

Culture can imprint a set of unwritten rules inside employees’ minds, which can be very powerful in determining behavior.

Natarajan Chandrasekaran, who helped create an organizational environment at Tata Sons in which people learn from and collaborate with others, says, “Learning cannot be achieved by mandate. It has to be achieved by culture.”

14-2. Culture Strength and Performance

Culture strength refers to the degree of agreement among employees about the importance of specific values and ways of doing things. If widespread consensus exists, the culture is strong and cohesive; if little agreement exists, the culture is weak. Some leaders worried that the extended period of remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic would weaken their corporate cultures. As restrictions eased, many leaders insisted that employees return to working in the office rather than continuing remote work because they believe their companies function best when employees interact in person. Mat Ishbia, president and CEO of United Wholesale Mortgage, said, “I have never wavered on this. We are better together. If you have an amazing culture, and great people that collaborate and work together, you want them in the office together.”

A strong culture increases employee cohesion and commitment to the values, goals, and strategies of the organization, but the effect of a strong culture is not always positive. Research at Harvard into some 200 corporate cultures found that a strong culture does not ensure success unless it also encourages a healthy response and adaptation to the external environment. A strong culture that does not encourage responsiveness can be more damaging to an organization than a weak culture. To improve your understanding of a responsive culture, go Leadership Practice: Know Yourself 14.1.

Leadership Practice: Know Yourself 14.1. Working in a Responsive Culture

Instructions: Think of a specific full-time job you have held. Indicate whether each of the following items is

Mostly False

or

Mostly True

according to your perception of the managers above you when you held that job.

Mostly False

Mostly True

1.

Good ideas got serious consideration from management above me.

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2.

Management above me was interested in ideas and suggestions from people at my level in the organization.

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3.

When suggestions were made to management above me, they received fair evaluation.

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4.

Management did not expect me to challenge or change the status quo.

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5.

Management specifically encouraged me to bring about improvements in my workplace.

blank 1

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6.

Management above me took action on recommendations made from people at my level.

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7.

Management rewarded me for correcting problems.

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8.

Management clearly expected me to improve work unit procedures and practices.

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9.

I felt free to make recommendations to management above me to change existing practices.

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10.

Good ideas did not get communicated upward because management above me was not very approachable.

blank 1

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Scoring and Interpretation

To compute your score: Give yourself one point for each Mostly True answer to questions 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 and for each Mostly False answer to questions 4 and 10. Total points:blank 1.

An adaptive culture is shaped by the values and actions of top and middle executives. When managers actively encourage and welcome change initiatives from below, the organization will be infused with values for responsiveness and change. These 10 questions measure your management’s openness to change. A typical average score for management openness to change is about 4. If your average score was 5 or higher, you worked in an organization that expressed cultural values of responsiveness. If your average score was 3 or below, the culture was probably a resistant one.

Thinking back to your job, was the level of management openness to change correct for that organization? Why? Compare your score to that of another student and take turns describing what it was like working for the managers above you. Do you sense that there is a relationship between job satisfaction and management’s openness to change? What specific manager characteristics and corporate values accounted for the openness (or lack of) in the two jobs?

Source: Based on S. J. Ashford, N. P. Rothbard, S. K. Piderit, and J. E. Dutton, “Out on a Limb: The Role of Context and Impression Management in Issue Selling,” Administrative Science Quarterly 43 (1998), pp. 23–57; and E. W. Morrison and C C. Phelps, “Taking Charge at Work: Extrarole Efforts to Initiate Workplace Change,” Academy of Management Journal 42 (1999), pp. 403–419.

In addition, a strong culture can sometimes encourage negative or unethical values and cause harm to the organization and its members. One example is Bear Stearns, which failed in 2008 as part of the global financial crisis. Bear Stearns had a strong, highly competitive corporate culture that supported pushing everything to the limits in the pursuit of wealth. As long as an employee was making money for the firm, leaders took a hands-off approach, which allowed increasingly risky and sometimes unethical behavior.

14-2a. Toxic versus Healthy Cultures

Although strong corporate cultures are important to organizations, they can sometimes promote or support negative values and behaviors.

A toxic culture exists when persistent negative sentiments and infighting cause stress, unhap

pine

ss, and lowered productivity among subgroups of employees.

Sometimes toxicity reveals itself in an emergent “bro” culture in which young males’ values related to sports, partying, and sex become unhealthy or allow misogynistic behavior toward female employees. One current issue is when toxic male values lead to sexual harassment and misconduct.

Put It Into Practice 14.2

Imagine yourself being part of a super strong organizational culture. Write down how you feel, such as, for example, being part of something larger than yourself or losing your individuality.

In recent years, millions of women have come forward sharing their personal career stories online using the hashtag #MeToo. The MeToo furor sparked many organizations to begin looking more closely at their own handling of misconduct and its impact on culture. Andrew Cuomo resigned as governor of New York in August 2021 after New York’s attorney general released the results of an investigation that found Cuomo sexually harassed several women, many of whom had worked for him or the state. Cuomo’s resignation is “a testament to the growing power of women’s voices since the beginning of the #MeToo movement,” said Debra Katz, a lawyer for one of his accusers.

Companies in various industries have been affected by toxic culture–related issues. For example, former employees of CrossFit say the owner and CEO created a culture in which vulgar talk about women and their bodies was rampant, top male managers pressured female employees to consider sharing hotel rooms with them, and male employees would rank female professional CrossFit athletes according to how much men wanted to have sex with them. In a quite different industry, former employees of the Willows Inn on Lummi Island off the coast of Washington State, a famed culinary destination, say the organization has a toxic culture that includes routine faking of “island” ingredients; physical and verbal intimidation, including racial, sexist, and homophobic slurs; and sexual harassment of female employees by male staff members.

In contrast, a healthy culture is one that promotes positive values and creates an environment in which all people feel valued, commit themselves to the organization’s goals, and can meet their needs for personal fulfilment and self-development. At Southwest Airlines, for example, the culture focuses on values of providing people “a stable work environment with equal opportunities for learning and personal growth.” Leaders are expected to treat employees with the same care, concern, and respect that they are expected to provide to Southwest customers. Four elements of a healthy culture are described in the following:

Leadership without ego. We have talked about the importance of leader humility in various places throughout this text. In healthy cultures, leaders use their power and influence ethically and responsibly to serve followers and the organization rather than to serve their own egos or selfish needs.

Freedom in the workplace. People in healthy cultures feel safe to try things out, to learn, to experiment and possibly make mistakes. They don’t fear that leaders will shame or punish them for failures.

Control assets, not people. Leaders can assert control over financial assets rather than people. Leaders help everyone understand the organization’s vision and goals. They also make sure people have the resources and support they need to freely accomplish their daily responsibilities, to develop their potential, and to use their full capabilities.

A philosophy of equal respect for all. Every individual is treated with respect and has opportunities and support to grow, achieve, and advance. Moreover, there are no double standards or special privileges in healthy cultures.

Healthy culture values such as these encourage self-responsibility, accountability, trust, and a sense of community. Healthy cultures help companies achieve their goals and adapt to changes in the external environment.

An organization’s culture may not always be in alignment with the needs of the external environment. The values and ways of doing things may reflect what worked in the past. The difference between desired and actual values and behaviors is called the culture gap. Many organizations have some degree of culture gap, though leaders often fail to realize it. An important step toward shifting the culture toward more adaptive values is to recognize when people are adhering to the wrong values or when important values are not held strongly enough.

Culture gaps can be immense, particularly in the case of mergers. Leaders at Alpha Natural Resources Inc. struggled to merge two distinct cultures after acquiring Massey Energy Company. Massey was in control of a mine in West Virginia at which an explosion killed 29 workers a decade ago. Alpha CEO Kevin Crutchfield makes safety a core value, and he scheduled 400 training sessions to train every Massey employee in the management system called Running Right. “There is no ton of coal worth an injury, an accident, or God forbid, a life,” he says. “It’s just a ton of coal. So, if we can’t get it out the right way, we’re not going to bother. I think that is a little different from what the Massey folks were used to.”

Despite the popularity of mergers and acquisitions as a corporate strategy, many fail. Studies by consulting firms such as McKinsey & Company, the Hay Group, and others suggest that performance declines in almost 20 percent of acquired companies after acquisition. Some experts claim that 90 percent of mergers never live up to expectations. One reason for this is the difficulty of integrating cultures.

14-2b. The High-Performance Culture

Creating and sustaining an adaptive, high-performance culture is one of the most important jobs for organizational leaders. A number of studies have found a positive relationship between culture and performance. In Corporate Culture and Performance, Kotter and Heskett provided evidence that companies in which leaders intentionally managed cultural values outperformed similar companies whose leaders did not.

Companies that succeed have leaders who pay careful attention to both cultural values and business performance. Exhibit 14.2 illustrates four organizational outcomes based on the relative attention leaders pay to cultural values and business performance. For example, leaders in Quadrant C of Exhibit 14.2 pay little attention to either cultural values or business results, and the company is unlikely to survive for long. Leaders in Quadrant D are highly focused on creating a strong culture, but they don’t tie the values directly to goals and desired results.

Exhibit 14.2 Combining Culture and Performance

Details

Source: Adapted from Jeff Rosenthal and Mary Ann Masarech, “High-Performance Cultures: How Values Can Drive Business Results,” Journal of Organizational Exellence (Spring 2003), pp. 3–18; and Dave Ulrich, Steve Kerr, and Ron Ashkenas, Figure 11-2, GE Leadership Decision Matrix, The GE Work-Out: How to Implement GE’s Revolutionary Method for Busting Bureaucracy and Attacking Organizational Problems—Fast! (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), p. 230.

When leaders don’t connect cultural values to business performance, the values aren’t likely to benefit the organization during hard times. For example, the corporate culture at The LEGO Group headquarters in Billund, Denmark, nearly doomed the toymaker when sales plummeted as children turned away from traditional toys to video games. At that time, LEGO leaders reflected the characteristics found in Quadrant D of Exhibit 14.2. Imagination and creativity, not business performance, were what guided LEGO. The attitude was, “We’re doing great stuff for kids—don’t bother us with financial goals.” A new CEO, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, transformed the culture with a new employee motto: “I am here to make money for the company.” Shifting leader attitudes to incorporate bottom-line results as well as values had a profound effect, and LEGO has become one of the most successful companies in the toy industry.

Quadrant A in Exhibit 14.2 represents organizations in which leaders focus primarily on bottom-line results and pay little attention to values. This approach may be profitable in the short run, but the success is difficult to sustain over the long term because the “glue” that holds the organization together—that is, shared positive cultural values—is missing. Consider how leaders at money management firm Pacific Investment Management (Pimco) are facing a need to pay more attention to building a positive culture as the environment has shifted. Pimco’s cutthroat reputation has long attracted ambitious, hard-working people who were willing to endure the grueling hours, dog-eat-dog environment, and capricious management decisions in exchange for big paydays. The company seemed to pay little attention to how employees felt about their working conditions or inequities in pay and promotions. Today, though, the excessive focus on performance over values is hurting the firm. Today’s younger workers are less willing to accept unfair working conditions, and a wave of complaints and recent lawsuits alleging discrimination and harassment against women and people of color has pushed executives to take a hard look at the culture. Clients are paying attention too. “Culture matters, teamwork matters, inclusivity matters,” said Elizabeth Burton, investment chief of the Hawaii Employees’ Retirement System, a longtime client. Pimco has revised how employees are evaluated, trained, and promoted and now factors leadership, values, and other people skills into those decisions.

Companies that maintain success over the long term have leaders who fit into Quadrant B of Exhibit 14.2. They put high emphasis on both culture and solid business performance as drivers of organizational success. Quadrant B organizations represent the high-performance culture, a culture that

(1)

is based on a solid organizational mission or purpose,

(2)

embodies shared responsive values that guide decisions and business practices, and

(3)

encourages individual employee ownership of both bottom-line results and the organization’s cultural backbone.

In Quadrant B companies, leaders align values with the company’s day-to-day operations—hiring practices, performance management, budgeting, criteria for promotions and rewards, and so forth. For example, when he was CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch helped GE become one of the world’s most successful and admired companies. He achieved this by evaluating and rewarding leaders throughout the company based on whether they honored important cultural values in addition to “making their numbers.” As another example, managers at Amazon cannot advance unless they adhere to and promote the right cultural values because 50 percent of a leader’s performance assessment is tied to core values.

At companies with high-performance cultures, leaders care about both values and performance. A study of corporate values by Booz Allen Hamilton and the Aspen Institute found that leaders in companies that report superior financial results typically put a high emphasis on values and link them directly to the way they run the organization.

Remember This

Culture strength is the degree of agreement among employees about the importance of specific values and ways of doing things. The effect of a strong culture is not always positive. A strong culture that promotes or supports negative values and behaviors can damage the organization.

A toxic culture exists when persistent negative sentiments and infighting cause stress, unhappiness, and lowered productivity among subgroups of employees.

Former employees of CrossFit say the owner and CEO created a toxic culture in which vulgar talk about women and their bodies was rampant.

A healthy culture is one that promotes positive values and creates an environment in which all people feel valued, commit themselves to the organization’s goals, and can meet their needs for personal fulfilment and self-development.

A strong, healthy culture can drive high performance. The difference between desired and actual values and behaviors is called the culture gap.

A high-performance culture is based on a solid mission, embodies shared responsive values that guide decisions, and encourages individual ownership of both bottom-line results and cultural values.

Leaders build high-performance cultures by emphasizing both values and solid business operations as the drivers of organizational success.

Managers at Amazon cannot advance unless they adhere to and promote the right cultural values because 50 percent of a leader’s performance assessment is tied to core values.

14-3. Cultural Leadership

An organization exists only because of the people who are a part of it, and those people both shape and interpret the character and culture of the organization. That is, an organization is not a slice of objective reality; different people may perceive the organization in different ways and relate to it in different ways. Leaders in particular formulate a viewpoint about the organization and the values that can help people achieve the organization’s mission, vision, and strategic goals. Therefore, leaders enact a viewpoint and a set of values that they think are best for helping the organization succeed. A primary way in which leaders influence norms and values to build a high-performance culture is through cultural leadership.

A cultural leader defines and uses signals and symbols to influence corporate culture. Cultural leaders influence culture in two key areas:

The cultural leader articulates a vision for the organizational culture that employees can believe in. This means the leader defines and communicates central values that employees believe in and will rally around. Values are tied to a clear and compelling mission, or core purpose.

The cultural leader heeds the day-to-day activities that reinforce the cultural vision. The leader makes sure that work procedures and reward systems match and reinforce the values. Actions speak louder than words, so cultural leaders “walk their talk.”

For values to guide the organization, leaders model them every day. WestJet Airlines, which is consistently ranked as having one of Canada’s most admired corporate cultures, provides an illustration. Employees (called West-Jetters) regularly see top leaders putting the values of equality, teamwork, participation, and customer service into action. At the end of a flight, for example, everyone on hand pitches in to pick up garbage—sometimes even the CEO. Customer-facing employees have “guidelines” rather than rules in terms of what they can do for customers, and no one is ever punished for well-intended errors of judgment. A new gate agent who gave free tickets to an entire flight for a minor inconvenience, for instance, was praised for her effort, even though leaders coached her through understanding the impact of her action on the company so she might make a less costly decision the next time.

Creating and maintaining a high-performance culture is not easy in today’s turbulent environment and changing workplace, but through their words—and particularly their actions—cultural leaders let everyone in the organization know what really counts. Some of the mechanisms leaders use to enact cultural values are organizational rites and ceremonies, stories, symbols, and specialized language. In addition, they emphasize careful selection and socialization of new employees to keep cultures strong. Perhaps most importantly, leaders signal the cultural values they want to instill in the organization through their day-to-day behavior. For example, Apple fired a prominent advertising-technology executive only a few weeks after hiring him because of complaints by employees about sexist and misogynistic comments the executive had previously made. The symbolic message was intended to communicate the standards of behavior and values expected of everyone. A spokesman said, “At Apple, we have always strived to create an inclusive, welcoming workplace…. Behavior that demeans or discriminates against people for who they have no place here.”

14-3a. Ceremonies

A ceremony is a planned activity that makes up a special event and is generally conducted for the benefit of an audience. Leaders can schedule ceremonies to provide dramatic examples of what the company values. Ceremonies reinforce specific values, create a bond among employees by allowing them to share an important event, and anoint and celebrate employees who symbolize important achievements.

A ceremony often includes the presentation of an award. Leaders at Mary Kay Cosmetics, one of the most effective companies in the world at using ceremonies, hold elaborate award ceremonies at an annual event called “Seminar,” presenting jewelry, clothing, and luxury cars to high-achieving sales consultants. The most successful consultants are introduced by film clips like the ones used to present award nominees in the entertainment industry. These ceremonies recognize and celebrate high-performing employees and help bind sales consultants together. Even when they know they will not personally be receiving awards, consultants look forward to Seminar all year because of the emotional bond it creates with others. In 2020 and 2021, Mary Kay held Seminar virtually because of COVID-19.

Chapter 15. Leading Change

Your Leadership Challenge
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

15-1

Describe the environmental forces creating a need for change in an organization and how leaders can serve as role models for change.

15-2

Summarize the eight-stage model of planned change.

15-3

Describe how appreciative inquiry can engage people in creating change by focusing on the positive and learning from success.

15-4

Describe the five techniques for expanding your own and others’ creativity for innovation.

15-5

Explain the seven techniques to overcome resistance and help people change.

Introduction

When former Apple executive Ron Johnson was hired as CEO of JCPenney, hopes were high that he could breathe new life into the struggling retailer. Penney needed radical change, but Johnson’s approach to implementing changes doomed them almost from the start. He began poking fun at the company’s traditional way of doing business practically from the moment he took the job. The new CEO failed to listen to long-established leaders, customers, or employees and even shunned suggestions made by board members. Employees felt that the new managers Johnson brought in ridiculed them and made them feel dumb and uninteresting.

Johnson got rid of many of Penney’s long-standing processes and systems, radically redesigned many stores, and eliminated hundreds of brands, even running an Oscars ad telling customers they “deserved to look better.” Customers decided they deserved to shop at a store that respected them instead. Johnson was fired after only 17 months and new leaders began repairing the damage that had been done by his ill-planned and poorly implemented turnaround strategy.

As the example of JCPenney illustrates, change—especially radical change—is tough to accomplish. Johnson made mistakes, but major turnarounds are exceedingly difficult for any leader. This chapter explores how leaders can effectively facilitate change, creativity, and innovation. We first look briefly at the role of leader as change agent and examine a step-by-step framework for leading change. We explore the appreciative inquiry technique and how it can be used to lead both major changes and ongoing, everyday change. Next, the chapter examines how leaders instill the conditions that nurture creativity within people and organizations. The final sections of the chapter consider why people resist change and how leaders can overcome resistance and help people successfully make needed changes.

15-1. Leadership Means Leading Change

It is the job of the leader to make sure organizations change as needed to respond to threats, opportunities, or shifts in the environment. Recall from our definition used throughout this book that leadership is about change rather than stability. Leaders have to help people see the need for change and buy into a new way of doing things.

Change is necessary if organizations are to survive and thrive, and rapid environmental shifts have forced leaders in all industries to take a fresh look at how they do business. For example, to address growing concerns over damage to the natural environment, leaders at BlackRock recently announced that the giant firm is fundamentally shifting its investment policy by making investment decisions with environmental sustainability as a core goal. BlackRock, the largest investment management corporation, will begin to exit investments in companies that “present a high sustainability-related risk,” such as those in coal producers, and intends to put pressure on management teams and companies in all industries to disclose their sustainability efforts. In a quite different industry, leaders at NASCAR are addressing another significant shift in the environment. The auto racing company’s leaders were already working to expand the sport’s fan base, made up of mostly older and mostly White people, when national unrest over the killing of Black men and women by police exploded in the summer of 2020. The obvious expression of a changing environment accelerated the changes at NASCAR, and leaders realized that an important step was to get rid of a symbol that many people considered hostile to Black people. President Steve Phelps says, “banning the Confederate flag at all NASCAR races was something that was critical” to the organization’s change efforts.

Exhibit 15.1 shows some of the environmental forces, such as rapidly changing technologies, shifting social attitudes, globalization, increasing government regulation, changing markets, the growth of e-commerce, and the swift spread of information via the Internet, that are creating a greater need for change leadership within organizations.

Exhibit 15.1 Forces Driving the Need for Change Leadership

Details

15-1a. Resistance Is Real

Leaders initiate many changes, but most of these don’t meet expectations. Consider that among leaders in 166 U.S. and European companies making major changes, only about one-third reported success in most types of their changes. Some studies have estimated that 90 percent of strategies fail to achieve intended objectives and that 70 percent of all change initiatives in organizations fail.

There are many reasons why change programs don’t produce the intended results. One significant problem is that most people have a natural tendency to resist change—even when the changes are ones that could make their lives better. At Rio Tinto, the world’s second largest metals and mining corporation, for example, leaders wanted to make changes to create a more egalitarian workplace with less separation between management and workers. They did away with all the separate uniforms for electricians, fitters, operators, foremen, and so forth; eliminated the time clock for hourly workers; and got rid of the separate parking lot for managers. Each change was resisted. Employees said they liked the uniforms because they were less costly and identified who they were compared to wearing different clothes every day. Workers were strongly opposed to elimination of the time clock because, they said, “We won’t be able to prove we’ve been to work, so they’ll be able to cheat us on our pay.” They were suspicious that doing away with the managers’ car parking was so employees couldn’t see that managers could afford a new car every year. If people resist changes designed to add value to their lives, imagine what it is like trying to implement changes that significantly shift their job responsibilities, task procedures, or work interactions!

Leaders should be prepared for resistance and should find ways to enable people to see the value in changes that are needed for the organization to succeed. Later in this chapter, we will talk about how leaders can overcome resistance and help people successfully change.

Put It Into Practice 15.1

Think of a time when you resisted a change in some part of your life. Identify one reason why you were resistant to the change and one way someone could have reduced your resistance.

15-2. A Framework for Change

When leading a major change project, it is important for leaders to recognize that the change process goes through stages, each stage is important, and each may require a significant amount of time. Exhibit 15.2 shows a model developed by John Kotter that can help leaders navigate the change process.

Light a fire for change. People have to believe that change is really needed. Leaders communicate the urgency for change in a way that touches people’s emotions—in other words, they help people feel the need for change rather than just giving them facts and figures. The profusion of innovations in the health care industry unleashed by the COVID-19 crisis illustrates how a sense of urgency can spur change. Fearing a shortage of ventilators to help critically ill patients breathe, health care workers began experimenting with other options, ranging from simply flipping patients onto their stomachs to transforming hooded hair salon dryers into personal negative-pressure chambers. As one example, at Northwell Health, New York’s largest health care provider, pulmonologist Dr. Hugh Cassiere and his colleagues spent several days figuring out how to convert the hundreds of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) and bilevel positive airway pressure (BiPAP) devices that were gathering dust in hospital storage rooms into makeshift ventilators.

Get the right people on board. Considering the complexities of change, no single person can implement a change, especially a major one, alone. For successful change, leaders build a strong coalition of people with a shared commitment to the need for and possibility of change. They include people with enough power to make sure the change happens, as well as people who can make the change more acceptable to end users.

Paint a compelling picture. People need a clear vision and strategy to inspire them to believe that a better future is possible, and that they can achieve it through their actions. The energy for true change comes from seeing how the change can be positive for individuals and the organization. Leaders create a picture that helps people understand why the organization is undertaking the effort and how the change will help it to achieve long-term goals. It’s also important to develop a strategy for achieving the vision and let people know how they fit into the big picture.

Communicate, communicate, communicate. Leaders tell the message not just once but over and over again. Change throws everyone into doubt and uncertainty, and people don’t listen well when they feel anxious. Another point to remember is that actions speak louder than words. Change leaders model the new behaviors needed from employees. When Peter Löscher was CEO of Siemens, he mapped the amount of time the company’s top executives spent with customers and presented it at the annual leadership conference. Löscher was number 1, having spent 50 percent of his time with customers. He told people that he expected everyone to start spending more time focused on customer contact and said the rankings would be presented each year to see if people running the businesses were honoring the new values.

Get rid of obstacles and empower people to act. Leaders give people the time, knowledge, resources, and discretion to take steps and make the change happen. This might mean revising structures, systems, or procedures that hinder or undermine the change effort. For example, after setting a vision and broad outline for change, Bill Glavin, former CEO of OppenheimerFunds, Inc., gave his team members leeway to move forward with their own ideas for implementing desired changes. Glavin said his approach was to meet with direct reports regularly and to “try to keep a light hand on the tiller.”

Achieve and celebrate quick wins. Energy and motivation can wane during a major change project unless people see positive results of their efforts. To keep the momentum going, leaders identify some short-term accomplishments that people can recognize and celebrate. A highly visible and successful short-term accomplishment boosts the credibility of the change process and renews everyone’s enthusiasm and commitment.

Keep it moving. Don’t get stuck on short-term wins. One study suggests that nearly 50 percent of all change initiatives crumble simply from lack of attention. It’s important for leaders to build on the credibility of early accomplishments and keep the change process moving forward. At this stage, they confront and change any remaining issues, structures, or systems that are getting in the way of achieving the vision.

Find ways to make the changes stick. At this stage, leaders look for ways to institutionalize the new approach, striving to integrate the new values and patterns into everyone’s work habits. At Del-Air, a Florida heating, ventilation, and air conditioning contractor, managers linked a new GPS-enabled time-tracking system with the company’s bonus system. Employees who are more efficient with their time get rewarded for it. By integrating the change with the incentive system, managers made the new time-tracking system an accepted, integral part of everyone’s daily work.

Put It Into Practice 15.2

Think of a change you would like to make at your home, school, or workplace and write down how you would “light a fire” for the change so that people believe the change is really needed.

Stages in the change process generally overlap, but each of these stages is important for successful change to occur. When dealing with a major change effort, leaders can use the eight-stage change process to provide a strong foundation for success.

Exhibit 15.2 The Eight-Stage Model of Planned Organizational Change

Details

Sources: Based on John P. Kotter, Leading Change (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1996), p. 21.

Remember This

Major changes can be particularly difficult to implement, and leaders should recognize that the change process goes through stages, each stage is important, and each may require a significant amount of time.

Leaders can help to ensure a successful change effort by following the eight-stage model of planned change—light a fire for change; get the right people on board; develop a compelling vision and strategy; go overboard on communication; empower employees to act; generate short-term wins; keep up the energy and commitment to tackle bigger problems; and institutionalize the change in the organizational culture.

At heating and air conditioning contractor Del-Air, leaders linked a new GPS-enabled time-tracking system with the company’s bonus system so that employees who are more efficient with their time get rewarded for it.

15-3. Using Appreciative Inquiry

One of the most exciting approaches to leading change is a process known as appreciative inquiry. Appreciative inquiry (AI) engages individuals, teams, or the entire organization in creating change by reinforcing positive messages and focusing on learning from success. Rather than looking at a situation from the viewpoint of what is wrong and who is to blame for it, AI takes a positive, affirming approach by asking, “What is possible? What do we want to achieve?” For example, rather than looking at a problem such as decreasing sales, AI would investigate what makes sales increase. Appropriately framing a topic—to investigate what is right rather than what is wrong—is critical to the success of AI because it gets people away from blame, defensiveness, and denial and sets a positive framework for change. As David Cooperrider, cocreator of the AI methodology, puts it, “the more you study the true, the good, the better, the possible within living human systems, the more the capacity for positive transformation.” AI can be applied on either a large or a small scale.

15-3a. Applying Appreciative Inquiry on a Large Scale

AI can accelerate large-scale organizational change by positively engaging a large group of people in the change process, including leaders and employees, as well as people from outside the organization, such as customers or clients, partners, and other stakeholders.

Once a topic has been identified for exploration, the group follows a four-stage AI process, as illustrated in Exhibit 15.3.

Leadership Practice: Know Yourself 15.2. Are You a Change Leader?

Think specifically of your current or a recent full-time job. Please answer the following 10 questions according to your perspective and behaviors in that job. Indicate whether each item is Mostly False or Mostly True for you.

   
Mostly False

Mostly True

 1.

I often tried to adopt improved procedures for doing my job.

blank 1

blank 1

 2.

I often tried to change how my job was executed in order to be more effective.

blank 1

blank 1

 3.

I often tried to bring about improved procedures for the work unit or department.

blank 1

blank 1

 4.

I often tried to institute new work methods that were more effective for the company.

blank 1

blank 1

 5.

I often tried to change organizational rules or policies that were nonproductive or counterproductive.

blank 1
blank 1

 6.

I often made constructive suggestions for improving how things operate within the organization.

blank 1

blank 1

 7.

I often tried to correct a faulty procedure or practice.

blank 1

blank 1

 8.

I often tried to eliminate redundant or unnecessary procedures.

blank 1

blank 1

 9.

I often tried to implement solutions to pressing organizational problems.

blank 1

blank 1

 10.

I often tried to introduce new structures, technologies, or approaches to improve efficiency.

blank 1

blank 1

Scoring and Interpretation

Please add the number of items for which you marked Mostly True, which is your score: blank 1. This instrument measures the extent to which people take charge of change in the workplace. Change leaders are seen as change initiators. A score of 7 or above indicates a strong take-charge attitude toward change. A score of 3 or below indicates an attitude of letting someone else worry about change.

Before change leaders can champion large planned change projects via the model in Exhibit 15.2, they often begin by taking charge of change in their workplace area of responsibility. To what extent do you take charge of change in your work or personal life? Compare your score with other students’ scores. How do you compare? Do you see yourself being a change leader?

Source: Academy of Management Journal by E. W. Morrison and C. C. Phelps. Copyright 1999 by Academy of Management. Reproduced with permission of Academy of Management in the format Textbook via Copyright Clearance Center.

Exhibit 15.3 Four Stages of Appreciative Inquiry

Details

Source: Based on Gabriella Giglio, Silvia Michalcova, and Chris Yates, “Instilling a Culture of Winning at American Express,” Organization Development Journal 25, no. 4 (Winter 2002), pp. 33–37

Discovery. In the discovery stage, people identify “the best of what exists”—the organization’s key strengths and best practices. This stage is about discovering the unique qualities of the group that have contributed to success. Leaders interview people, asking them to tell stories that identify the best of their experiences with the organization. During an AI session focused on building a winning culture at American Express, for example, leaders asked people to describe an instance when they felt the most proud working for the company. Based on these stories, people together identify common themes.

Dream. Next, people reflect on what they learned during the discovery stage and imagine what it would be like if these extraordinary experiences were the norm. For instance, what if people at American Express experienced the kind of environment every day that made them feel proud of working for American Express? The dream stage is about imagining “what could be” and creating a shared vision of the best possible future, grounded in the reality of what already exists. By allowing people to express their dreams for the future, AI inspires hope and energy for change.

Design. The design stage formulates action plans for transforming dreams into reality. This involves people making decisions about what the organization needs to do in order to be what it wants to be. At American Express, people identified the values that would support the kind of culture they wanted, the leadership behaviors that would instill and support the values, and the structures, systems, and processes that would keep the new cultural values alive.

Destiny. The final stage of AI is creating a destiny by translating the ideas identified in the previous stages into concrete action steps. This involves both celebrating the best of what exists and pushing forward to realize the dream by creating specific programs, activities, and other tangible forces that will implement the design and ensure the continuation of change begun during the AI process. For example, specific changes in training programs, performance evaluation, and reward systems were part of the destiny stage at American Express.

Using the AI methodology for a large-scale change may involve hundreds of people over a period of several days and may be conducted off-site to enable people to immerse themselves in the process of creating the future. A wide variety of organizations, including businesses, school systems, churches and religious organizations, communities, government agencies, and social service organizations, have used AI for large-scale change. The general manager of a five-star hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, used AI to address the problem of the organization’s failure to meet its strategic goals for growth. Occupancy rates, restaurant sales, and loyalty program memberships had all declined from the previous year or failed to meet targets, while customer complaints and employee turnover had increased. Managers noted that poor employee attitudes toward their responsibilities was a key problem. All employees from six departments participated together in “Discover and Dream” sessions. Groups of about 12 people, made up of employees from different departments, shared their thoughts and experiences about excellence in their work. The teams worked with an external facilitator and the management team to design a method to share the ideas for excellence across the organization. As a result of all the sessions, leaders implemented 79 improvements in personnel practices and policies, and the performance appraisal system was revised to measure employees against the new standards. Employees felt a new sense of commitment and enthusiasm when they saw that leaders followed through on the recommendations that grew out of the group sessions. Rather than pointing out problems and demanding they be solved, leaders had engaged everyone in discussions focused on the positive aspects of what they were doing and about how they could provide excellent service to every customer every day, thereby transforming employee attitudes and improving service.

15-3b. Applying Appreciative Inquiry Every Day

AI can also be applied by individual leaders on a smaller scale. The nature of leadership means influencing people in many small ways on an ongoing basis. This chapter’s Leader’s Bookshelf describes a three-stage change model that incorporates some elements of AI and can be used for everyday change efforts. Good leaders work daily to gradually shift attitudes, assumptions, and behavior toward a desired future. When individual leaders in an organization are involved in daily change efforts, they have a powerful cumulative effect.

Leaders can use the tools of AI for a variety of everyday change initiatives, such as developing followers, strengthening teamwork, solving a particular work issue, or resolving conflicts. Again, the key is to frame the issue in a positive way and keep people focused on improvement rather than looking at what went wrong. One example of the everyday use of AI comes from the time Jim (Gus) Gustafson took over as director of sales and marketing for a major electrical manufacturer. Gustafson described how, while sitting in on several employees’ performance reviews with the outgoing executive, he noticed that two employees in particular were treated by the outgoing manager with disrespect and disinterest as they were given poor evaluations of their performance. Gustafson decided to use AI by asking the two employees questions such as, “What have you done in the last six months that you are most proud of?” “What is your greatest source of job satisfaction?” and “What motivates you to excel?” He worked with the two to identify how they could be satisfied and productive, carrying forward the best from their past but moving toward a better future. Thanks to Gustafson’s coaching and the use of AI, both employees were eventually promoted to management positions in the organization.

Leader’s Bookshelf Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

“Big changes can start with very small steps. Small changes tend to snowball,” write authors Chip Heath, a professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, and Dan Heath, a senior fellow at Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship. “But this is not the same as saying that change is easy.” Indeed, the stories told in Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard illustrate just how difficult change can be, whether it is a personal change such as losing 40 pounds or an organizational change such as improving how employees treat customers.

A Three-Part Framework for Change Switch offers some solid advice that can be applied to both individuals and organizations that need to change. Here is a quick summary of their three-step plan for change:

Provide Direction: Look for the Bright Spots. The first step involves setting a clear direction and scripting the moves that can help people get there. A key point here is to focus on the positive. Many people facing a need for change are demoralized and depressed. To bring about change, leaders shift people to thinking about things they have done in the past that were positive and how to do those kinds of things more often. To help solve the chronic malnutrition problem in Vietnam, for example, the Save the Children organization stopped looking at what was wrong and instead looked for the children who were well-nourished, learned what their parents were doing, and taught the parents of undernourished children to follow the same steps.

Get Emotional: Motivate People to Change. Why do charitable organizations use photos of needy children to attract donations? Because they appeal to people’s emotions. The lesson is that people don’t “think” their way into a new behavior. Change depends on changing emotions. Microsoft leaders kept telling a group of programmers that customers couldn’t figure out how to use a new feature, but the stubborn programmers thought their software was brilliant. Only when the programmers actually watched customers struggling with using the feature and becoming frustrated and unhappy did they start looking for ways to make it more user friendly.

Shape the Path: Make Change More Comfortable. Old habits die hard, but the opportunity for change to take hold is enhanced when the new habits are more comfortable. One of the best illustrations of this step comes from Bart Millar, a teacher in Portland, Oregon, who transformed his classroom by getting the most disruptive students to come to class early and sit in the front row. How did he do it? He put a comfortable sofa at the front of his history classroom. It didn’t take long for the students who used to be back-seat wisecrackers to start showing up early enough to get the cool seats.

Test Your Change Leadership

One of the most interesting features of Switch is the use of “Clinics,” which are sidebars describing real-life situations needing change. Readers are invited to apply what they’ve learned from a particular section of the book to craft a change strategy. Then, the authors describe what actually happened and what they would advise based on their change research. The numerous rich examples, combined with research pulled from the fields of psychology, sociology, and other disciplines, make Switch a fun, inspiring read.

Source: Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, is published by Broadway Books.

Remember This

An exciting approach to change management known as appreciative inquiry (AI) engages individuals, teams, or the entire organization in creating change by reinforcing positive messages and focusing on learning from success.

Rather than looking at a situation from the viewpoint of what is wrong and who is to blame, AI takes a positive, affirming approach and follows the stages of discovery, dream, design, and destiny.

AI is powerful for leading both major changes and smaller, everyday changes.

A five-star hotel in Kuala Lumpur used AI as part of a major change effort to address the problem of the organization’s failure to meet its strategic goals.

During his career as a leader, Jim (Gus) Gustafson has routinely used AI to coach and develop followers.

15-4. Leading Creativity for Change

The American Management Association asked 500 CEOs the question: “What must one do to survive in the twenty-first century?” The top answer? “Practice creativity and innovation.” Effective leaders find ways to promote creativity and innovation, particularly in the departments where it is most needed. For example, some organizations, such as hospitals, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations, may need frequent changes in policies and procedures, and leaders can promote creativity among administrative workers. For companies that rely on new products, leaders promote the generation and sharing of ideas across departments and, increasingly, with outsiders.

Creativity is the generation of ideas that are both novel and useful for improving the efficiency or effectiveness of an organization. Creative people come up with ideas that may meet perceived needs, solve problems, or respond to opportunities and are therefore adopted by the organization. However, creativity itself is a process rather than an outcome, a journey rather than a destination. One of the most important tasks of leaders today is to harness the creative energy of all employees.

15-4a. Instilling Creative Values

Leaders can build an environment that encourages creativity and helps the organization be more innovative. Fostering a creative culture and promoting collaboration will spread values for creativity throughout the organization.

Foster a Creative Culture

For creative acts that benefit the organization to occur consistently, the interests and actions of everyone should be aligned with the organization’s purpose, vision, and goals, and leaders should make a commitment of time, energy, and resources to support creativity. One popular approach is to provide an idea incubator.

An idea incubator provides a safe harbor where ideas from people throughout the organization can be developed without interference from company bureaucracy or politics.

Companies as diverse as Yahoo, Boeing, Adobe Systems, and UPS have used idea incubators to make sure good ideas don’t get lost in the day-to-day organizational system.

To build a culture that encourages corporate entrepreneurship, leaders encourage the creative spirit of all employees by promoting cultural values of curiosity, openness, exploration, and informed risk-taking. Managers at 3M believe in the value of “empowering every person in the organization to come up with ideas.” Many of 3M’s successful products owe their existence to the company’s so-called 15 percent rule, a long-standing philosophy that lets all employees devote 15 percent of their time to “experimental doodling.” A recent 3M product line that had its origins in experimental doodling is the Emphaze AEX Hybrid Purifier, a clarifying filter that pulls contaminants and certain DNA out of cell culture as scientists develop new protein-based drugs. The product began selling in the mid-2000s but gained new attention in 2020 as researchers worked to speed development of drugs and vaccines to fight COVID-19. An important outcome of entrepreneurship is to facilitate idea champions. Idea champions are people who passionately believe in an idea and fight to overcome natural resistance and convince others of its value. Change does not happen by itself. Personal energy and effort are needed to successfully promote a new idea.

A creative culture is an open culture that encourages people to look everywhere for new ideas. Leaders promote openness by rotating people into different jobs, allowing them time off to participate in volunteer activities, and giving them opportunities to mix with people different from themselves. Leaders can also give people opportunities to work with customers, suppliers, and people outside the industry, which contributes to a flow of fresh ideas. Executives at Mexican multinational building products company Cemex ride in cement trucks to get ideas about customer needs, for instance.

Promote Collaboration

Although many individuals have creative ideas, creativity soars when people work together. Rather than leaving people stuck in their departmental silos, smart leaders find ways to get them communicating and collaborating across boundaries. Coming up with ways to solve big problems or exploit big opportunities typically requires the combined ideas and expertise of people from diverse backgrounds and disciplines who bring different knowledge, skills, and ways of thinking. That’s one reason companies use cross-functional teams and self-managed teams, as described in Chapter 10. Some remodel their physical spaces so that people from different areas work side by side on a daily basis. Many companies use internal Web sites that encourage cross-organizational collaboration. For example, Arup Group, a British engineering services company, developed an online “knowledge map” that shows the company’s different areas of expertise and how departments and employees are connected to one another in terms of important information flows.

A recent approach to promoting one-on-one collaboration is speedstorming. Speedstorming, as the name suggests, was inspired by the phenomenon of speed-dating. It uses a round-robin format to get people from different areas talking together, generating creative ideas, and identifying areas for potential collaboration. People are divided into pairs, with each person from a different department, and given a specific topic with a goal of generating ideas to pursue collaboratively by the end of each three- to five-minute round. By the end of the session, the goal is for each participant to have formed ideas for creative collaboration with several others. Speedstorming can be a fun experience that enriches existing approaches to collaboration.

Put It Into Practice 15.3

Think back to a specific problem faced by your team at school or work. Come up with two specific ideas that would have helped team members be more creative to solve that problem.

15-4b. Leading Creative People

Many organizations that want to encourage change and innovation strive to hire people who display creative characteristics. Complete the exercise in Leadership Practice: Know Yourself 15.3 to see if you have a creative personality. However, recent research on creativity suggests that anyone can learn to be creative and can get better at it with practice. That is, everyone has roughly equal creative potential. The problem is that many people don’t use that potential. Leaders can help individuals be more creative by facilitating brainstorming, promoting lateral thinking, enabling immersion, allowing pauses, and nurturing creative intuition, as illustrated in Exhibit 15.4.

Exhibit 15.4 Tools for Helping People Be More Creative

Details

Facilitate Brainstorming

One common way to encourage creativity is to set up brainstorming sessions focused on a specific problem or topic. Assume your organization faces a problem such as how to reduce losses from shoplifting, speed up checkout, reduce food waste, or lessen noise from a machine room. Brainstorming uses a face-to-face interactive group to spontaneously suggest a wide range of creative ideas to solve the problem. The keys to effective brainstorming are:

Put It Into Practice 15.4

Think of a time when you had a creative idea and identify the factors that contributed to that moment of creativity.

No criticism. Group members should not criticize or evaluate ideas in any way during the spontaneous generation of ideas. All ideas are considered valuable.

Freewheeling is welcome. People should express any idea that comes to mind, no matter how weird or fanciful. Brainstormers should not be timid about expressing creative thinking. As a full-time developer of ideas at Intuit said, “It’s more important to get the stupidest idea out there and build on it than not to have it in the first place.”

Quantity desired. The goal is to generate as many ideas as possible. The more ideas the better. A large quantity of ideas increases the likelihood of finding excellent solutions. Combining ideas is also encouraged. All ideas belong to the group, and members should modify and extend ideas whenever possible.

Brainstorming has both ardent supporters and intense critics, but it remains a common way leaders use groups to generate new ideas. Leaders are continually searching for ways to improve the brainstorming process. Some companies are practicing an extreme type of brainstorming, based on the popularity of television reality shows, that puts people together for an extended time period to come up with ideas. Under a program called Real Whirled, for example, Whirlpool sends teams of people to live together for several weeks—and to use Whirlpool appliances for cooking and cleaning, of course. Best Buy has used a similar program, with teams of people who previously didn’t know one another living together for 10 weeks in a Los Angeles apartment complex.

Another recent approach, called virtual brainstorming, or brainwriting, brings people together in an interactive group over a digital network. People can submit ideas and can also read and extend others’ ideas. Austin, Texas-based ad agency GSD&M uses virtual brainstorming sessions that include outsiders as well as employees to quickly come up with ideas for ad campaigns. Leaders say the sessions generate thousands of ideas, and keeping things anonymous “keeps the boss and the new hire on the same level.” Studies show that virtual brainstorming generates about 40 percent more ideas than individuals brainstorming alone, and 25 percent to 200 percent more ideas than regular brainstorming groups, depending on group size. Why? Primarily because people participate anonymously, the sky’s the limit in terms of what they feel free to say. Creativity also increases because people can write down their ideas immediately, avoiding the possibility that a good idea might slip away while the person is waiting for a chance to speak in a face-to-face group.

Leadership Practice: Know Yourself 15.3. Do You Have a Creative Personality?

Instructions: In the following list, check each adjective that you believe accurately describes your personality. Be very honest and check all the words that fit your personality.

 1.

affected blank 1

 16.

intelligentblank 1

 2.

capableblank 1

 17.

narrow interestsblank 1

 3.

cautiousblank 1

 18.

wide interestsblank 1

 4.

cleverblank 1

 19.

inventiveblank 1

 5.

commonplaceblank 1

 20.

mannerlyblank 1

 6.

confidentblank 1

 21.

originalblank 1

 7.

conservativeblank 1

 22.

reflectiveblank 1

 8.

conventionalblank 1

 23.

resourcefulblank 1

 9.

egotisticalblank 1

 24.

self-confidentblank 1

 10.

dissatisfiedblank 1

 25.

sexyblank 1

 11.

honestblank 1

 26.

snobbishblank 1

 12.

humorousblank 1

 27.

sincereblank 1

 13.

individualisticblank 1

 28.

submissiveblank 1

 14.

informalblank 1

 29.

suspiciousblank 1

 15.

insightfulblank 1

 30.

unconventionalblank 1

Scoring and Interpretation

Add one point for checking each of the following words: 2, 4, 6, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, and 30. Subtract one point for checking each of the following words: 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 17, 20, 27, 28, and 29. The highest possible score is +18 and the lowest possible score is –12.

The average score for a set of 256 assessed males on this creativity scale was 3.57, and for 126 females was 4.4. A group of 45 male research scientists and a group of 530 male psychology graduate students both had average scores of 6.0, and 124 male architects received an average score of 5.3. A group of 335 female psychology students had an average score of 3.34. If you received a score above 6.0, your personality would be considered above average in creativity.

This adjective checklist was validated by comparing the respondents’ scores to scores on other creativity tests and to creativity assessments of respondents provided by expert judges of creativity. This scale does not provide perfect prediction of creativity, but it is reliable and has moderate validity. Your score probably indicates something about your creative personality compared to other people.

To what extent do you think your score reflects your true creativity? Compare your score to those of others in your class. What is the range of scores among other students? Which adjectives were most important for your score compared to other students? Can you think of types of creativity this test might not measure? How about situations where the creativity reflected on this test might not be very important?

Source: Harrison G. Gough, “A Creative Personality Scale for the Adjective Check List,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, No. 8 (1979), pp. 1398–1405.

Promote Lateral Thinking

Most of a person’s thinking follows a regular groove and somewhat linear pattern from one thought to the next. But linear thinking does not often provide a creative breakthrough. Linear thinking is when people take a problem or idea and then build sequentially from that point. A more creative approach is to use lateral thinking. Lateral thinking can be defined as a set of systematic techniques used for changing mental concepts and perceptions and generating new ones. With lateral thinking, people move “sideways” to try different perceptions, different concepts, and different points of entry to gain a novel solution. Lateral thinking appears to solve a problem by an unorthodox or apparently illogical method. Lateral thinking makes an unusual mental connection that is concerned with possibilities and “what might be.” The value of lateral thinking is illustrated by a study that asked separate groups of carpenters, roofers, and in-line skaters for ideas on how to improve the design of carpenters’ respirator masks, roofers’ safety belts, and skaters’ kneepads. The researchers found that each group was much better at coming up with solutions for the fields outside its own. When people aren’t constrained by previous knowledge and expertise, they can look at a problem through a fresh lens.

Companies such as Boeing, Nokia, IBM, and Nestlé have trained people to use lateral thinking as a way to help the organization meet the demands of a rapidly changing global environment. To stimulate lateral thinking, leaders provide people with opportunities to use different parts of their brains and thus to make novel, creative connections. If the answer isn’t in the part of the brain being used, it might be in another that can be stimulated by a new experience. The latest medical innovation for assisting difficult births, recently licensed by Becton Dickinson, resulted from lateral thinking. The idea came not from scientists, researchers, or obstetricians, but from an Argentinian car mechanic. Jorge Odón became enthralled with a YouTube video on using a plastic bag to retrieve a cork from inside an empty wine bottle. As he watched the process, the father of five realized the same principle could be used to save a baby stuck in the birth canal.

Put It Into Practice 15.5

Write down an unresolved issue or problem you currently face. Look at opposites to stretch your thinking for resolving the issue.

Alex Osborn, the originator of brainstorming, developed many creative techniques. One effective technique that is widely used to stimulate lateral thinking is the checklist in Exhibit 15.5. The checklist seems to work best when there is a current product or service that needs to be improved. If the problem is to modify a smartphone design to increase its sales, for example, the checklist verbs in Exhibit 15.5 can stimulate an array of different perceptions about the item being analyzed.

Exhibit 15.5 Lateral Thinking Checklist

Verb

Description

Put to other uses?

New ways to use as is? Other uses if modified?

Adapt?

What else is like this? What other ideas does this suggest?

Modify?

Change meaning, color, motion, sound, odor, form, shape? Other changes?

Magnify?

What to add: Greater frequency? Stronger? Larger? Plus ingredient? Exaggerate?

Minify?

What to subtract: Eliminate? Smaller? Slower? Lower? Shorter? Lighter? Split up? Less frequent?

Substitute?

Who else instead? What else instead? Other place? Other time?

Rearrange?

Other layout? Other sequence? Change pace?

Reverse?

Transpose positive and negative? How about opposites? Turn it backward? Turn it upside down? Reverse role?

Combine?

How about a blend, an alloy, an assortment, an ensemble? Combine units? Combine purposes? Combine appeals? Combine ideas?

Source: Based on Alex Osborn, Applied Imagination (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963).

An exercise of considering opposites will also stretch the mind in a lateral direction. Physical opposites include back/front, big/small, hard/soft, and slow/fast. Biological opposites include young/old, sick/healthy, male/female, and tortoise/hare. Management opposites would be bureaucratic/entrepreneurial, or top-down/bottom-up. Business opposites are buy/sell, profit/loss, and hire/fire.

Enable Immersion

Lateral thinking might be considered thinking outside the box. Immersion means to go deeply into a single area or topic to spark personal creativity, which has been called thinking “inside the box.” One approach to immersion is to focus on the internal aspects of a situation or problem. People can take a product, situation, or process and break it down into component parts. Manipulating the components in unusual ways can create a valuable new idea. For example, contact lenses arose by removing one component—the eyeglass frame.

Another way to get people to break out of habitual thinking patterns and ingrained perceptions is to immerse them in new experiences that give them a different perspective on a familiar topic. The personal care products company Nivea knew a lot about deodorant but wondered if habitual thinking was blinding them to new opportunities. Managers immersed themselves in an online analysis of social media discussions about deodorant use and found to their surprise that the key preoccupation was not fragrance, irritation, or effectiveness but the staining of clothing. This insight led to the development of a new anti-stain deodorant that was the most successful product launch in the company’s 130-year history. Some leaders reorganize often to immerse people in different jobs and responsibilities. Frequent change can be unsettling, but it keeps people’s minds fresh and innovative.

Allow Pauses

Some of the best ideas often occur when people take time off from working on a problem and change what they are doing. Allowing pauses activates different parts of the brain. Research in creativity suggests that having an “aha moment” often requires that a person stop trying to solve a problem and allow the mind to wander. “When you are trying too hard to focus your attention, you are going to miss new ideas,” says Jennifer Wiley, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. For example, pioneering chef Farran Adriá created more than 1,300 signature dishes and helped earn his restaurant, El Bulli, the rating of “world’s best” a record five times. Adriá once said the key to his and his staff’s creativity was closing the restaurant for six months each year. “The pressure to serve every day doesn’t offer the kind of tranquility necessary to create,” he says. “The most important thing is to leave time for regeneration.”

Creativity often occurs during a mental pause, a period of mixed tension and relaxation. In the shower, or while exercising, driving, walking, or meditating, the mind reverts to a neutral, somewhat unfocused state in which it is receptive to issues or themes that have not been resolved. If the analytical part of the mind is too focused and active, it shuts down the spontaneous part. The semi-relaxed mental “pause” is like putting the analytical left brain on hold and giving room for the intuitive right brain to find the solution in the subconscious mind. C. S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, was fond of long, contemplative walks to facilitate his creative thinking. Similarly, Jerry Kathman, president and CEO of brand design agency LPK, says he gets many of his ideas during his morning jog. Exercise is often considered a good way to give the mind a chance to work freely.

‘After you plant a seed in the ground, you don’t dig it up every week to see how it is doing.”

William Coyne , former head of R&D at 3M

Leaders can apply this idea by allowing people to have quiet spaces when they need them. Simply breaking up a group session and telling people to go take a walk or work on something simple and repetitive for a while can kick-start the creative process. David Rock, cofounder of the NeuroLeadership Institute, has worked with leaders in many organizations and says leaders have generated a 100 percent to 500 percent improvement in the ability to solve complex problems by using techniques and models that allow pauses so that people have mental space to reflect.

Nurture Creative Intuition

The creative flash of insight leaders want to awaken is actually the second stage of creativity. The first stage is data gathering. The mind is gathering data constantly, especially when you are studying background material on a problem to be solved. Then the creative insight bubbles up as an intuition from the deeper subconscious. It may be hard to trust that intuitive process because it seems “soft” to many business executives. The subconscious mind remembers all experiences that the conscious mind has forgotten. Creative intuition has a broader reach than any analytical process focused solely on the problem at hand.

To understand your own creative intuition, consider the following question:

A man has married 20 women in a small town. All the women are still alive, and none of them is divorced. The man has broken no laws. Who is the man?

If you solved this problem the answer came in a sudden flash: the man is a preacher, priest, or justice of the peace. That flash of insight arose from your creative intuition.

Here are some additional problems that might be a little tougher. Each of the following sets of three words has something in common. Do not overanalyze. Instead just relax and see if the common element pops up from your intuition.

1.

rat

blue

cottage

2.

pine

crab

sauce

3.

curtain

fisherman

nuclear reactor

4.

envy

golf

beans

5.

bowling alley

tailor

wrestling match

Don’t rush to find the answers. Give your intuitive subconscious time to work. After it’s finished working on these problems, consider the following question you might be asked if you interview for a job at Microsoft: How would you weigh a large jet aircraft without a scale? This question combines logical thinking and intuition. Before reading on, how might you compute the airplane’s weight doing something that is technologically feasible even if not realistic?

The next challenge may appear to have no solution until your intuition shows you the obvious answer. In the following illustration, remove three matches to leave four.

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Here is another problem that may force your mind to respond from a different place to get the answer. The matches are an equation of Roman numerals made from 10 matches. The equation is incorrect. Can you correct the equation without touching the matches, adding new matches, or taking away any matches?

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Have you given adequate time to your creative intuition? The answers to these creative challenges follow:

For the word sets, the correct answers are (1) cheese, (2) apple, (3) rods, (4) green, and (5) pins.

One answer to weighing the jet aircraft would be to taxi the jet onto a ship big enough to hold it. You could put a mark on the hull at the water line and then remove the jet and reload the ship with items of known weight until it sinks to the same mark on the hull. The weight of the items will equal the weight of the jet.

The answer to the first match puzzle depends on how you interpret the word “four.” Rather than counting four matches, remove the matches at the top, bottom, and right and the answer is obvious—the Roman numeral IV. For the second match puzzle, you can solve this problem by looking at it from a different perspective— turn the page upside down. Did your creative intuition come up with good answers?

Remember This

Leading creativity for change and innovation is a significant challenge for today’s leaders. Creativity is the generation of ideas that are both novel and useful for improving the efficiency or effectiveness of an organization. Some people demonstrate more creativity than others, but research suggests that everyone has roughly equal creative potential.

Leaders instill creative values in particular departments or the entire organization by fostering a creative culture and promoting collaboration.

An idea incubator provides a safe harbor where ideas from people throughout the organization can be developed without interference from company bureaucracy or politics.

Corporate entrepreneurship refers to an internal entrepreneurial spirit that includes values of exploration, experimentation, and risk taking. An important outcome of corporate entrepreneurship is to facilitate idea champions, people who passionately believe in an idea and fight to overcome natural resistance and convince others of its value.

One approach to promoting greater collaboration is speedstorming, which uses a round-robin format to get people from different areas talking together, generating creative ideas, and identifying areas for potential collaboration.

Leaders can increase individual creativity by facilitating brainstorming, promoting lateral thinking, enabling immersion, allowing pauses, and fostering creative intuition.

Brainstorming is a technique that uses a face-to-face group to spontaneously suggest a broad range of ideas to solve a problem. Virtual brainstorming brings people together in an interactive group over a digital network and is sometimes called brainwriting.

The advertising agency GSD&M uses virtual brainstorming sessions that include outsiders as well as employees to quickly come up with ideas for ad campaigns.

Lateral thinking is a set of systematic techniques for breaking away from customary mental concepts and generating new ones.

When people aren’t constrained by previous knowledge and expertise, they can look at a problem through a fresh lens. Researchers asked separate groups of carpenters, roofers, and in-line skaters for ideas on how to improve the design of equipment and found that each group was much better at coming up with solutions for the fields outside their own.

Immersion means to go deeply into a single area or topic to spark personal creativity.

The cofounder of the NeuroLeadership Institute reports that leaders have generated a 100 percent to 500 percent improvement in the ability to solve complex problems by using techniques and models that allow pauses so people have mental space to reflect.

15-5. Implementing Change

Leaders often see innovation and change as ways to strengthen the organization, but many leaders struggle to effectively implement the changes they desire. One big reason for this is that they fail to recognize and deal with the many barriers that impede change. Exhibit 15.6 illustrates the change leadership iceberg, which can help leaders understand that 90 percent of the work to implement change is moving the huge unseen part of the iceberg.

Exhibit 15.6 The Change Leadership Iceberg

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Source: Summary of Wilfried Krüger’s Change Iceberg, based on “The Change Iceberg,” Value Based Management, www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_change_management_iceberg.html (accessed August 13, 2021).

The essence of change implementation is dealing with barriers, mostly human psychological barriers. The typical leader promptly considers the issues shown above the surface at the top of the iceberg, such as cost, quality, customer concerns, and competitors. These are the things that leaders readily see in simplified form. However, below the surface are a myriad of issues that make implementation really challenging. To effectively implement change, a leader must consider the soft elements of human attitudes, perceptions, fears, and psychological resistance that lie below the surface and may be anchored in people’s good intentions for the organization. For example, opponents may have a negative general attitude toward change, or a specific dislike for the proposed change, while being strongly attached to and believe in their current work habits and procedures. Hidden opponents may appear on a superficial level to be supporting change, while they are in fact taking actions to prevent it. Of course, there will also be supporters and even potential promoters of the change. The leader’s responsibility is to devise implementation strategies to harness the enthusiastic engagement of supporters and change the attitudes and resistance of opponents.

A critical aspect of leading people through change is understanding that resistance to change is natural—and that there are often legitimate reasons for it. This chapter’s Think on This box takes a lighthearted look at why employees may resist changes in some overly bureaucratic organizations.

Think on This: Dealing with a Dead Horse

Ancient wisdom says that when you discover you are astride a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. In government and other overly bureaucratic organizations, many different approaches are tried. Here are some of our favorite strategies for dealing with the “dead horse” scenario:

Change the rider.

Buy a stronger whip.

Beat the horse harder.

Shout at and threaten the horse.

Appoint a committee to study the horse.

Arrange a visit to other sites to see how they ride dead horses.

Increase the standards for riding dead horses.

Appoint a committee to revive the dead horse.

Create a training session to improve riding skills.

Explore the state of dead horses in today’s environment.

Change the requirements so that the horse no longer meets the standards of death.

Hire an external consultant to show how a dead horse can be ridden.

Harness several dead horses together to increase speed.

Increase funding to improve the horse’s performance.

Declare that no horse is too dead to ride.

Fund a study to determine if outsourcing will reduce the cost of riding a dead horse.

Buy a computer program to enhance the dead horse’s performance.

Declare a dead horse less costly to maintain than a live one.

Form a work group to find uses for dead horses. And … if all else fails …

Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position. Or, in a large corporation, make it a vice president.

What Do You Think?

Source: Author Unknown. Another version of this story may be found at https://beyond-agility.com/riding-a-dead-horse-strategies (Accessed August 9, 2021).

15-5a. Helping People Change

Some leaders don’t understand why change is so difficult for many people. But for something new to begin, something old has to end, and most of us have a hard time letting go of something we value, even if we want something new. For example, we want to lose weight, but giving up the chocolate cake seems too much to ask. Rather than focusing on a new beginning and what we might gain from a change, our emotions are stuck on the ending of our current situation and what we might lose.

Put It Into Practice 15.6

Think of a time you wanted to change something about yourself and failed. Identify the reason the change failed.

Changing behavior always depends on changing people’s emotions about the situation. People have to psychologically and emotionally let go of the old before they can embrace the new. Exhibit 15.7 illustrates the transition people have to go through to make a successful change. To help someone change means first dealing with the emotions associated with endings and losses rather than denying those emotions or trying to talk people out of feeling them. Then, people move into a neutral zone, where they’ve let go of the old but the new hasn’t yet gelled into an accepted pattern. Finally, they transition into a new beginning. No one gets to a new beginning without first dealing with an ending.

Exhibit 15.7 Endings Precede Beginnings for Successful Change

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Source: Based on Ideas in William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change (Cambridge, Ma: DA Capo Lifelong Books, 2009).

Leaders who want to implement change always have to ask, “who’s going to lose what?” In organizations, changes in job design, technology, or structure may mean that some people will no longer have the same type of power or prestige they once had. For example, one CEO who wanted to do away with private offices to encourage values of openness, egalitarianism, and collaboration ran into strong resistance from some managers who viewed their offices as symbols of their power and prestige in the organization. In addition, when changes are imposed from outside the individual, many people feel a loss of control over their own lives and circumstances, which provokes a strong emotional reaction. Efforts at many companies to require employees to get vaccinations for COVID-19 have met with very strong resistance, for instance.

Sometimes a change conflicts with the seemingly legitimate goals of some individuals or departments. At pharmaceuticals company Pfizer, top executives wanted to implement a computerized system for collecting and processing research trial data, which could cut 40 percent off the cost of new drug development. Research and development managers fought the change, citing their concern that the automation and standardization of case report forms would hamper their flexibility and creativity.

Change also means that people have to give up their stable routines. Hospitals have spent millions of dollars adopting electronic medical records, but some are having a hard time getting doctors to use them. One reason is that electronic records require doctors to change how they go about their daily work, and many are having trouble giving up their standard routines. Most people have at least some fear of the unknown and are more comfortable dealing with the tried-and-true. Particularly when people don’t understand how a change will affect them, they find it more reassuring to stick with what they know, even if it is unpleasant, than to jump into the unknown.

Put It Into Practice 15.7

Write down your full signature on a blank sheet of paper. Now write down your full signature with your other hand. Identify what you felt after writing with your non-dominant hand that helps you understand the difficulty of implementing new habits for employees.

At work, employees might worry that a needed change in procedures will mean an end to the camaraderie among their work group or fear that a new technology might cause them to lose autonomy or status. At SuperShuttle, a national transportation provider, for example, drivers were opposed to using GPS-enabled phones. The drivers felt that the new technology meant an end to their freedom, since managers could track their movements. SuperShuttle learned that, “if you don’t tell employees what to expect, they’ll invent something, and inevitably, it will be bad.”

15-5b. The Keys That Help People Change

Most of us think if we were given a clear choice—change or die—we’d change in a hurry. But in fact, scientific studies demonstrate that most people have a hard time changing even when told that not changing will lead them to an early grave. For example, Dr. Dean Ornish, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, found that an astonishing nine of ten critically ill patients couldn’t change their poor diet and exercise habits even though it meant they would die.

But change is possible when leaders approach it thoughtfully and use effective implementation strategies. Tina Sandri took over as CEO of the Forest Hills of D.C. nursing home in May of 2020, while the COVID-19 virus was raging across the country. Three residents at the facility had died from the virus and 17 others had become ill, along with 45 staff members. When a vaccine became available in early 2021, almost half of Forest Hills staff members declined to get the shot. Sandri embarked on a vigorous campaign to change their minds, trying everything from bombarding employees with text messages about the science behind the vaccines to running a television special made by actor and director Tyler Perry to fight vaccine hesitancy on a continuous loop. Nothing seemed to work. Sandri decided to take a different approach. She started talking with people one on one, asking them what their specific concerns were and what information they needed to feel comfortable getting the shot, tailoring her approach to what would resonate most with each person. It was a “time-intensive, conversation-intensive, case-by-case uphill climb,” Sandri says, but it paid off. By the end of March, the percentage of partly or fully vaccinated staff had reached 79 percent, surpassing the goal set for nursing homes by the American Health Care Association. “Everyone’s fears are real, whether or not they are grounded in science or in something they believe right now,” Sandri said. Beliefs change with time or new knowledge, so we have to ride it out. Listen hard, don’t judge, and let them move at their own pace.”

Changing people’s thinking and behavior is possible, and the keys to doing so incorporate seven elements: a positive emotional attractor, top management support, supportive relationships, communication and education, repetition of new behaviors, participation and involvement, and after-action reviews.

Provide a positive emotional attractor. Similar to how a powerful vision motivates people to work toward the desired future, as described in Chapter 7, a positive emotional attractor (PEA) is something that awakens a person’s hopes and dreams about the future, about possibilities of what could be, rather than focusing on trying to “fix” weaknesses or shortcomings. People learn and change because they want to, not because they ought to, which means they need an inspiring vision of what the future can be. For example, studies by Dr. Dean Ornish, introduced earlier, show that when people feel convinced that they can enjoy life more, they are much more likely to make significant changes in their lifestyle and stick with the changes over the long term. Instead of motivating with the “fear of dying,” Dr. Ornish began inspiring people with a clear vision of the “joy of living.”

Ensure top leader support. The visible support of top leaders makes people aware of the importance of a change and gives the change project legitimacy. One of the primary correlates of the success of new business ventures is the strong support of top leaders, and top leadership support and involvement has been shown to play a crucial role in successful new-product development. One key to Pfizer’s success in developing a COVID-19 vaccine in record time was the active involvement and support of top leaders. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla participated in twice-weekly meetings with the vaccine development team and continually pushed researchers and other staff to go beyond even their own highly ambitious goals. “On March 19, 2020, as COVID-19 swept across the world, I challenged everyone at Pfizer to ‘make the impossible possible’: to develop a vaccine more quickly than anyone ever had before, ideally within six months and certainly before the end of the year,” Bourla said. “ Uğur Şahin, the CEO of our partner BioNTech … did the same with his team.”

Top leadership support is especially important when a change involves multiple departments or when resources are being reallocated among departments. Without support from the top, changes can get bogged down in squabbling among departments or contradictory orders from lower-level managers.

Make sure people have a support system. Leaders help people establish new, emotional relationships that provide hope, make people believe they have the power to change, and inspire people with the expectation that change will happen. Effective leaders of social movements, for example, are highly skilled at giving people hope and faith that change is possible. This emotional relationship with a leader, a mentor, or a community helps people learn and practice the new skills and habits needed to change. This is what Alcoholics Anonymous or Weight Watchers meetings are all about, for example.

Communicate and educate. Communication and education are used when solid information about the change is needed by users and others who may resist implementation. This can be especially important when the change involves new technical knowledge or users are unfamiliar with the idea. For example, to implement an electronic health care records system at Cancer Treatment Centers of America, leaders held regular presentations at all levels to communicate the reasons for the change, explain how the system could help employees do their jobs and improve the quality of care, and educate people in using the new system.

Use repetition. People need the opportunity to experiment and practice the new skills and habits over and over until the new pattern of behavior becomes automatic. At Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, an epidemiologist used an experiment that showed doctors and other staff that their hands were covered with gobs of harmful bacteria. By showing one of the filthiest images as a screen saver on the hospital’s computer network, everyone was continually reminded of the importance of frequent hand washing. With repeated practice, hand-hygiene compliance eventually spiked to nearly 100 percent and stayed there.

Involve people early. When people are involved in helping to design the change, they will be more committed to it. Although this approach is time-consuming, it pays off by giving people a sense of control over the change activity. They come to understand the change better and become committed to its successful implementation. Leaders at contracting and research firm Noblis wanted to do away with traditional job titles and replace the system with “career bands” that would enable people to move sideways, not just up the hierarchy. They knew it could be a tough sell, so they had a group of employees spend six months studying the new plans and seeking feedback from people all around the company. “It was a fine-tooth comb with all our stakeholders, because we wanted to have a model that was built by Noblis for Noblis,” said Amy Rivera, a member of the HR team.

Apply after-action reviews. An excellent mechanism for evaluation and feedback on a change is the after-action review. After-action reviews are quick sessions during which leaders review the outcome of change activities to see what worked, what didn’t, and what can be learned from it. The concept of after-action reviews comes from the United States Army. After every identifiable activity—whether in field operations or training simulations—people take 15 minutes to ask four simple questions: What was supposed to happen? What actually happened? What accounts for the difference? What can we learn? Many businesses, including consulting firm Jump Associates, oil giant BP, and Steelcase, Inc., which makes office furniture, have used after-action reviews for feedback and learning.

In the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, one company used an after-action review to learn how to address the challenges as the pandemic progressed. Top leaders brought together field leaders for a virtual meeting. They learned that some individual offices that had quickly provided resources to meet the immediate needs of customers and remote workers—such as financial assistance, safety education, and technical support—were thriving. Leaders then applied these strategies across the entire company.

Put It Into Practice 15.8

Think of a small change you would like to make at home, school, or work. Identify the positive emotional attractor you could apply to increase chances of acceptance and a successful implementation.

Effectively and humanely leading change is one of the greatest challenges for leaders. The nature and pace of change in today’s environment can be exhilarating, but it can also be inconvenient, painful, and downright scary. Savvy leaders can help people navigate the change process and make it successful.

Remember This

One reason many leaders struggle to effectively implement the changes they desire is a failure to recognize and deal with the many barriers that impede change.

The change leadership iceberg can help leaders understand the need to identify barriers so they can devise implementation strategies to change the attitudes, fears, and resistance of opponents and drive the enthusiastic engagement of supporters.

Leaders should strive to understand why people resist a change. For something new to begin, something old has to end, and most people have a hard time letting go of something they value.

Leaders can help people change by changing emotions so that people can let go of the old and embrace the new. They can provide a positive emotional attractor, top leadership support, supportive relationships, communication and education, repetition of new behaviors, participation and involvement, and after-action reviews.

To successfully implement an electronic health care records system at Cancer Treatment Centers of America, leaders held regular communication and education sessions at all levels of the organization.

With after-action reviews, people ask four simple questions: What was supposed to happen? What actually happened? What accounts for the difference? What can we learn?

Leadership Skill-Building Exercises

What Do You Appreciate?

The purpose of this exercise is for you to experience the feelings that arise during an employee appreciative inquiry interview, both as the interviewer and the interviewee. This exercise can be done individually or in student pairs.

In Class or Online (optional as indicated by your instructor):Divide into student pairs sitting facing each other. One person volunteer to interview the other and make notes of answers in the space following each question below. Then switch roles, with the second person asking the questions below and making notes of the other person’s answers.

Ask the following questions with respect to your associate’s role as either a student or an employee. (If you are doing this exercise alone, make notes below for your answers to the questions.)

What gives life to you? Reflect on an experience that really made you feel engaged or alive and describe that experience.

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What would be your strategy for having more of those experiences in your life?

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Without being humble, what do you value the most about yourself—as a human being, a friend, a parent, a citizen, or a son/daughter?

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When you explore your boldest hopes and highest aspirations, what is it that you ultimately want?

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After both people have answered the questions above, explore the following questions as a pair or in the larger classroom setting, as indicated by your instructor.

How did it feel to answer the questions above compared to thinking about the things that are wrong in your life?

What did you learn from this appreciative inquiry experience that would apply to your future as a change leader?

Chrystal Gardens Role Play

You are the new director of the Chrystal Gardens not-for-profit nursing home following the COVID-19 pandemic. All patients and employees have been vaccinated. Chrystal Gardens is one of 20 elder-care centers managed by Franklin Resident Care Centers. Chrystal Gardens has 56 patients and is completely responsible for their proper hygiene, nutrition, and daily recreation. Many of the patients can move about by themselves, but several require physical assistance for eating, dressing, and moving about the nursing home. During daytime hours, the head of nursing is in charge of the four certified nursing assistants (CNAs) who work on the floors. During the night shift, a registered nurse is on duty, along with three CNAs. The same number of CNAs are on duty over the weekend, and either the head of nursing or the registered nurse is on call.

Several other staff also report to you, including the heads of maintenance, bookkeeping/MIS, and the cafeteria. The on-call physician stops by Chrystal Gardens once a week to check on the residents. You have 26 full- and part-time employees who cover the different tasks and shifts.

During your interviews for the director’s job, you became aware that the previous director ran a very tight ship, insisting that the best way to care for nursing home patients was by following strict rules and procedures. He personally approved almost every decision, including decisions for patient care, despite not having a medical degree. Turnover was always high under the director, and now several beds are empty because of the time required to hire and train new staff. Other elder-care facilities in the area have a waiting list of people wanting to be admitted.

At Chrystal Gardens, the nonnursing offices have little interaction with nurses or each other. Back-office staff people seem to do their work and go home. Overall, Chrystal Gardens seems to you like a dreary place to work. People seem to have forgotten the compassion for patients and for each other that is essential to working in a health care environment. You believe that a new strategy and culture are needed to give more responsibility to employees, improve morale, reduce turnover, and fill the empty beds. You have read about concepts for leading organizational change and would like to implement some new ideas to make the culture at Chrystal Gardens more creative, decentralized, and participative. You decide to start with the idea of engaging employees in decision making and encouraging more direct collaboration between departments. If those two ideas work, then you will implement other changes.

During your first week as the director, you have met all the employees, and you have confirmed your understanding of the previous director’s rigid approach. You call a meeting of all employees for next Friday afternoon. Your assignment for this exercise is to decide how you will implement the desired changes and what you will tell employees at the employee meeting. The first part of this exercise can be done by individual students or in small groups.

In Class or Online (optional, as indicated by your instructor): Your instructor may divide the class into small groups of three to four people to formulate the answers to the following questions and to brainstorm the key points to cover in the vision speech to employees.

Either individually or in small groups, start by deciding how you will accomplish each of the first three steps in the model in Exhibit 15.2. Write your answers to these three questions:

How will you get employees to feel a sense of urgency?

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How will you form a guiding coalition, and who will be in it?

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What is your compelling vision?

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Your next task is to prepare a vision speech to employees for the changes you are about to implement. In this speech, explain your dream for Chrystal Gardens and the urgency of this change. Explain exactly what you believe the changes will involve and why the employees should agree to the changes and help implement them. Sketch out the points you will include in your speech:

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Role Play and Discussion: After student groups have decided what the director will say, the instructor can ask for volunteers from a few groups to actually give the speech to “employees” (the class) that will start the Chrystal Gardens transition toward a more adaptive organization.

The key questions for class discussion are: Did the speech touch on the key points that inspire employees to help implement changes? Did the speech convey a high purpose and a sense of urgency? Did the speech connect with employees in a personal way, and did it lay out the reality facing Chrystal Gardens?