A couple of years back I worked with an incredible company that provided excellent services and products. They had phenomenal leadership, an excellent culture, top class talent, and boasted a large loyal client base. This was a dream organisation that anyone would want to work for and be associated with. I put this down to fundamentally one thing – the leadership. When the leadership of this organisation sold out to immigrate and new leadership took over, I watched this amazing organisation fall apart in the space of just 18 months. This isn’t the first time I have seen this happen. Sadly, we see this kind of situation frequently, and it’s not always the change of leadership that causes the demise. It’s the type of leadership. The most important job of a leader is to positively influence the behaviour of people. Influence IS leadership and leadership IS influence, so leaders should influence change.

By dictionary definition, influence means to ‘bring about change without any direct or apparent effort’. Therefore, who you are and how you behave is what inspires people to do what you want to be done without any direct effort because they actually want to do it for you.

What qualifies people to be called leaders is their capacity and ability to influence others to change their behaviour to achieve vital results.

When Apple’s team of developers and engineers presented the first prototype of the iPod to Steve Jobs, he picked it up, carefully scrutinized it and weighed it up in his hand while his team silently watched him in anticipation for his feedback. Eventually, Steve looked up, rejected it, and said “It’s too big, make it smaller”. Much to his team’s dismay, they quickly responded saying that it wasn’t that simple and it’s engineeringly impossible to make it any lighter and smaller. Steve went silent, picked it up, walked over to the fish tank in the offices and dropped it into the water. When it hit the bottom, tiny bubbles floated up out of it, and he said, “Those are air-bubbles, that means there is space in there, make it smaller”

The first iPod was 19.8mm and the most recent iPod is 6.1mm. Steve Jobs had the uncanny ability to inspire others to change and see greatness in their work. He helped them to see the value of change, simplicity and perfection, and so he was able to get his team to make the impossible possible.

Leaders have an enormous influence on others’ behaviours, whether it be a positive impact or a negative impact, because they determine values, culture, change tolerance and employee motivation.

Change

We are living in exponential times, faced with constant change. This makes ‘change’ and Change Management an essential area of concentration in most organisations because change is instrumental to growth.

Companies and their employees are constantly faced with new technology and methodologies that they frequently resist. According to the Harvard Business Review, leadership is often the biggest source of resistance to change. Leaders often understand the need for change and promote it, however, unconsciously respond with behaviours that reveal their struggle to adapt to the very change they are championing. People are no fools. They watch their leaders, and they watch them carefully because people look to their leaders for guidance, support and feedback.

Being agile and constantly changing is crucial to the sustainability of any organisation. As usual, change makes people uncomfortable, which is also why Change Management is now fast becoming a core-competency for business leaders, to help their people adapt to and adopt the ever-changing changes. If leaders don’t embrace the change, it leaves others feeling that they can ignore the change as well. Therefore, one of the main and most important factors to drive successful change in any organisation is leadership. We have a change management training programme focused on Leading Others Through Change.

Here is what you can do to positively influence changes in your organisation.

1. Help them see the value.

   As adults, we learn and change behaviours in a very different way to children. Because we won’t change unless we can see the value it will bring to our lives, as leaders you can help others to adopt a change by helping them see the value it will bring to them.

2. Deal directly with resistance.

   Listen to and encourage participation from those who will be directly affected.

3. Be specific.

   Be clear and specific about the change and consistently and frequently communicate why it’s necessary and the benefits of the change.

4. Communicate and engage – often and consistently.

   Be visible and communicate as often as possible and consistently. Attend project meetings and try to be involved with the project and change management team from as early on in the project as possible. If you are wanting to improve communication, access our Communication Toolkit here.

…It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.

– Charles Darwin “Origin of Species.”