Leading Change Presentation

Leading Change

• Dr Petya Koleva delivered a presentation on leading change.
• Heriot-Watt University, 2024.

Learning Objectives

• Identify and experiment with different leadership styles.
• Explore skills and qualities needed by effective change leaders.
• Determine how leaders adapt to phases of change.
• Discover ways to sustain and support oneself as a leader.

Pre-Work Discussion Points

• How does the focus on leadership vs. management change across different stages of the change process?
• At which stages of the change process is communication most important and why?
• How important is trust between leaders and followers in managing change?

Dimensions of Leadership

• Transactional and transformational leadership.
• The dark side of leadership (vision and narcissism).
• Emotionally intelligent leadership.
• Collaborative leadership (connective, shared, self-managed).
• Strategic leadership.
• Mindful leadership.

Transactional and Transformational Leadership

• Transactional leadership: This style is characterized by a focus on structured tasks and clear rewards for achieving specific goals. Leaders who adopt this approach often use performance metrics to assess progress, effectively managing their teams by recognizing and rewarding efforts, achievements, and adherence to standards. They may intervene when deviations from expected performance occur, whether through active monitoring or a more hands-off, passive approach. Furthermore, it encompasses a laissez-faire attitude, where leaders provide minimal direction, allowing team members to operate independently while still holding them accountable for outcomes.
• Transformational leadership: Unlike transactional leaders, transformational leaders prioritize building relationships and fostering personal connections. They strive to model ethical behavior, which helps create an environment of trust and mutual respect. By communicating a vision of optimism and encouraging innovation, these leaders challenge assumptions and promote creativity within their teams. Additionally, they offer individualized support, recognizing the unique strengths and weaknesses of each team member, and empowering them to reach their full potential.

Burns' Contextual Approach to Leadership

• Convergent (Stable): Transactional management, focus on status quo.
• Divergent (Dynamic): Transformational leadership, focused on change.

Transactional Managers vs. Transformational Leaders (1 of 3)

• Convergent: Stable conditions; established goals.
• Divergent: Increasingly chaotic environment; established goals are challenged.

Transactional Managers vs. Transformational Leaders (2 of 3)

• Transactional: Optimizes performance, incremental change, maintains the status quo.
• Transformational: Challenges the status quo, changes behaviours and beliefs, creates a new vision.

Transactional Managers vs. Transformational Leaders (3 of 3)

• Incorporates personal characteristics and the leader-follower approach.
• Transactional = Convergent; Transformational = Divergent.

Which Style is Best?

• Alimo- Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe (2000) found in the UK NHS that transactional competencies are not enough on their own.

Neither is Best

• Organizations need both transactional managers and transformational leaders

Transactional Managers vs. Transformational Leaders

• Convergent: Transactional leadership fits well.
• Divergent: Transformational leadership fits well.

Collaborative Leadership

• Connective leadership (Blumen, 2002): Finding common ground and purpose across diverse groups.
• Shared leadership: Sharing accountability for outcomes in an organization.
• Self-managed collaboration: Uncontrolled cooperation outside formal structures, with high levels of interdependence.

Mindful Leadership

• Mindfulness increases awareness (here and now) – psychological, emotional, physical.
• Training can help leaders strengthen expertise, foster creative solutions, develop resilience, improve interactions with others, address unproductive patterns, and improve responses.

Reflect & Discuss

• Reflect on and discuss questions related to leadership in the public eye, significant projects, and not-for-profit organizations.

Five Essential Leadership Qualities and Skills (Cameron and Green, 2017)

• Flexible, integrated framework of essential qualities for successful leaders.
• Synthesis of the best of leadership literature (high-level archetypes, clusters of skills).

The Five Essential Leadership Qualities

• Descriptions of essential leadership qualities, with proportions.

Bridges - Leadership for the different phases

• Acknowledge loss, provide accurate information. Outline what is over/not over, ways to mark the ending.
• Explain the neutral zone- create temporary policies and short-term goals to navigate through.
• Acknowledge the new beginning – define change purpose, and effectively communicate change, create a plan. Help individuals play their role in new systems.

A 'Flow' Culture (Goulding and Shaughnessy, 2017)

• Culture that supports continuous innovation and creativity (like a start-up).
• Elements include harnessing collective intelligence, breaking down tasks, comfort with uncertainty, reducing task completion time, using visualization tools, and participatory process models.

Heroic Management vs. Engaging Management

• Heroic management: Managers are central, importance based on hierarchy, ambitious target-driven strategies.
• Engaging management: Managers enable others, organizations as social systems, emerging strategies from staff needs, iterative and interdependent implementation.

Factors Influencing Manager Effectiveness (1 of 2)

• Past experience, beliefs, and appropriateness.
• Level of creativity, preference for transactional vs. transformational leadership, and flexibility.
• Cognitive style (adaptor vs. innovator, whole thinker vs. left brain thinker).
• Ability to see the bigger picture (organizational context, choices).

Factors Influencing Manager Effectiveness (2 of 2)

• Organisational context (amenable to critical leadership).
• Organisation's commitment to sustainability, diversity, and ethical behaviour.
• Effectiveness of the organisation's management development process.

Leadership, Management, and Change (Figure 14.2)

• 4 quadrants based on creativity vs. organisational-wide/large-scale change.
• Transformational leadership - high creativity, organisation-wide change.
• Transactional management - low creativity, large-scale/structural change.

A Framework for Management, Leadership, and Change (Figure 14.3)

• Framework relates turbulent/stable environments and organisational-wide/individual changes.
• Illustrates transformational and transactional leadership styles in different environments (with respective approaches and focuses).

Sustaining Yourself as a Leader

• Resilience building through sufficient sleep, nutrition, and exercise.
• Regular journaling to rebalance negative emotions.
• Coaching to improve responses to difficulties, thinking and acting.
• Action-inquiry with others to increase capacity and dis-identify from survival emotions.
• Meditation improves focus and reduces reactivity to negative stress triggers.

Reflect & Discuss (2)

• Use Bridges' Ending/Neutral Zone/Beginning advice to support change in another person.
• Discuss advantages and disadvantages of a 'flow' culture, and how to make it work in current teams.