Change in the workplace doesn’t need to be scary

How is your workplace preparing people for change? We know change happens all the time. But not every workplace prepares people for it or manages the personal impact of change. Continuous process improvement may be essential to the survival of an organization, but by its very design, it can be threatening to people’s livelihood. As such, it is both natural and normal for people to fear change on a personal level. To minimize that fear and maximize cooperation, people need to be interacting with their managers about what change could mean to them and be encouraged to optimize around a win-win solution. No programmatic slogan or rah-rah speech from the big boss will substitute for that personalized connection. So, how can you be both efficient and not scary? • Institutionalize Deep Dialogue: Ensure managers listen to the dreams and fears of employees and engage them in a personal development plan that focuses on growth. Update quarterly. Recalibrate annually. • “It’s Not About the Bike”: That was the name of Lance Armstrong’s 2000 autobiography. His point was to focus less on the mechanism and more on how you use it. In this case, the name of your programs don’t really matter. A more important question might be: How does it impact the people who use it? • Don’t Assume People Know How You Feel: If you love people, tell them. Don’t wait until the exit interview to tell someone that you thought of them as a highperforming, high-quality employee with high potential. • Don’t Assume, Part II: If you don’t like someone, tell them. As soon as possible, please. Don’t assume a poor performer will pick up on muted sarcasm or a damning with faint praise. If there’s a problem to fix, deal with it. If not, cut bait and move on. Spend less time with bad employees, so you can spend more time with good ones. Gary Markle is a senior vice president at Energage, a Philadelphia-based research and consulting firm that surveyed more than 2.5 million employees at more than 6,000 organizations in 2017. Energage is The Denver Post’s research partner for Top Workplaces.