Become The Master of Uncertainty

AUTHOR AND CHANGE EXPERT CURTIS BATEMAN TELLS US HOW TO TURN IT INTO OPPORTUNITY

- DAMIEN MARTIN

Leaders like to have all the answers, and when they don’t, that prevents them from engaging in a dialogue with their employees. That can be a particularly different problem during a period of change implementation. What they should do in such a circumstance is make a list of questions that might come up that they can’t answer at that time but that they can discuss with their teams.

“Own it,” says Curtis Bateman, one of the co-authors of Change: How to Turn Uncertainty into Opportunity. “There are some things I know about the change, there are some things I don’t know, and perhaps we’re going to figure them out together and arrive at better answers than any one of us might get on our own.”

Engaging in that dialogue not only alleviates some of the pressure on the leaders, but it also gives the people affected by the change the chance to play a role in implementing it.

“The resistance goes down, the engagement goes up,” Bateman said.

That gives the initiative a greater chance of success, and it helps things move along faster. The trick is, it’s tough for leaders to let go like that.

The Change Model

Most of us have negative experiences with change, especially at work. This is because of – and probably a contributor to – the fact that 70-75% of organizational change initiatives fail or don’t achieve the desired goals.