MGMt361 - Revision4 - Leading Change PDF

**Chapter (9): Leading Change** **Change:** the transformation or adaptation to a new way of doing things. **Innovation:** the use of resources and skills to create an idea, product, process, or service new to the organization or its stakeholders. **Forces of Change:** **Culture and Change:** A...

**Chapter (9): Leading Change** **Change:** the transformation or adaptation to a new way of doing things. **Innovation:** the use of resources and skills to create an idea, product, process, or service new to the organization or its stakeholders. **Forces of Change:** **Culture and Change:** As pressure for change increases inside and outside of organizations, not all leaders react and respond the same way. Some perceive the pressure as a threat; others see it as an opportunity. One factor that determines the way leaders and their followers perceive pressures for change is culture, both at the national and organizational levels. National cultural values of tolerance of ambiguity and perception and use of time affect how leaders view change. **Types of Change:** 1. **Planned:** occurs when leaders or followers make a conscious effort to change in response to a specific pressure or problem. 2. **Unplanned:** occurs randomly and suddenly without the specific intention of addressing a problem. 3. **Evolutionary:** gradual or incremental change. 4. **Convergent:** planned evolutionary change that is the result of specific and conscious actions by leaders or followers to change the organization. 5. **Revolutionary:** change that is rapid and dramatic. The different types of change may require different actions from leaders, forex. In the case of planned and evolutionary change, a leader's ability to structure tasks may be important. When facing unplanned and revolutionary change, charismatic and transformational leadership may become central. **Lewin's Model for Change:** **Lewin suggests that change takes place in a three-stage process:** 1. **Unfreezing:** the existing practices and behaviors are questioned, and motivation to change develops. Unfreezing is likely to be easier when the forces for change, whether internal or external, are strong and organizational members and leaders are aware of them. One of the major tasks of any leader is to help followers "unfreeze and realize that there is a need for change. 2. **Changing:** Implementing desired changes is the change itself, where new practices and policies are implemented, and new behaviors and skills are learned. The change can involve technology, people, products, services, or management practices and administration. The leader's role continues to be essential, supporting followers and emphasizing the importance of the change. 3. **Refreezing:** Help change take hold by providing support, resources, and time, the newly learned behaviors and freshly implemented practices are encouraged and supported to become part of the employees' routine activities. The leader's role in this stage is coaching, training, and using appropriate reward systems to help solidify the changes that have been implemented. **The Process of Planned Change:** 1. **Top-down change:** leaders initiating and driving the process. Fits well with traditional, hierarchical, command-and-control organizations and tends to force rapid change. It also may engender more resistance. 2. **Bottom-up change:** individuals and teams throughout the organization start and implement the process. Creates more involvement and participation, thereby reducing resistance. The risk of such an approach is not enlisting leadership support, which is essential to the success of any change. **Dealing with Unplanned Change:** 1. Avoid becoming too formal, hierarchical, rigid, and inflexible. 2. Infuse controlled unpredictability and spontaneity into decisions to help prevent complacency. 3. Be proactive in introducing new strategies, products, services, or processes. 4. Replace and rotate leaders to bring in fresh ideas, methods, and visions. 5. Experiment with new ideas, methods, and processes to help followers practice dealing with change. **Three general causes explain resistance to change:** 1. Organizational factors. 2. Group factors. 3. Individual factors. **Organizational Causes of Resistance to Change:** 1. **Inertia:** a tendency for an organization as a whole to resist change and want to maintain the status quo. 2. **Organizational culture:** if well established, it is hard to change. 3. **Structure:** if well established, it is hard to change. 4. **Lack of rewards for change** 5. **Poor timing** **Group Causes of Resistance to Change:** 1. **Group norms:** 2. **Group cohesion:** members stick together and can provide a supportive environment for learning. **Individual Causes of Resistance to Change:** 1. **Fear of the unknown:** those with internal locus of control or high self-monitors are more likely to be comfortable with change and able to adapt to it quickly. 2. **Fear of failure** 3. **Job security** 4. **Individual characteristics and traits** 5. **Previous negative experiences with change:** If an individual has experienced a job loss or has been through other painful organizational changes in the past, he or she is more likely to be weary of implementing change in the future. **Visionary Leadership:** Providing a vision and inspiring followers are one of the most important functions of leaders during change. **Factors to define the visionary leadership essential to change:** 1. **Importance of vision:** Successful and effective leaders provide a clear vision or help followers develop a common vision 2. **Empowerment and confidence in followers:** Visionary leaders emphasize empowering followers to allow them to act automatically and independently from the leader. This empowerment is possible only if leaders show genuine confidence in their followers. 3. **Flexible and change:** The fast-changing environment requires leaders to focus on flexibility and change in their organization 4. **Teamwork and cooperation:** Successful leaders emphasize teamwork and, maybe more importantly, the development of shared responsibility, as well as the need for trust and cooperation between leaders and followers and among followers. **Building Credibility as part of Visionary Leadership:** 1. Clarifying values 2. Identifying what followers want 3. Building agreement and consensus 4. Communicating values with enthusiasm 5. Standing up for your beliefs 6. Role-modeling desired behaviors **Practices of Exemplary Leadership:** **To motivate followers to change, the leader must:** 1. Set clear standards for behavior and performance that are accepted by followers. 2. Expect the best from followers through a genuine belief in their abilities. 3. Pay attention by being present, walking around, noticing followers, and caring about their behaviors, actions, and results. 4. Personalize recognition not only by considering each follower's needs and preferences but also by making them feel special to the process. 5. Tell a story about followers, events, and performances as a way to motivate. Celebrate together: Leaders must look for many opportunities to celebrate the team and the individual's success together. Role model the preceding principles to gain credibility and reinforce the message. **Factors that help creativity in organizations:** **Creativity:** the ability to link or combine ideas in novel ways. 1. **Leadership style:** Autocratic leaders who demand obedience impede the creative process and open exchange that encourages creativity 2. **Flexible structure:** less centralized and less hierarchical structures allow for a free flow of ideas 3. **Encouraging a questioning attitude:** Leaders can encourage and inspire followers to question assumptions and norms and look for novel alternatives instead of rewarding agreement and obedience. 4. **Tolerating mistakes:** By encouraging experimentation, tolerating, and even rewarding some mistakes, the leader can send a message about the importance of taking risks. **Improvisation:** It involves the creation of something spontaneous and extemporaneously without specific preparation. It occurs without a script and perfect information and requires a combination of preplanned and unplanned activities and materials. Having expertise, Knowledge, and perspective on the situation is also required because, without these elements, the leader is not likely to understand the leadership situation and environment enough to be able to lead. Leaders are willing to take risks. **Chapter (10): Developing Leaders** **Development:** an ongoing, dynamic, long-term change or evolution that occurs because of various learning experiences. **Leader development:** the expansion of a person's capacity to be effective in leadership roles and processes. **Leadership development** focuses on an organization's capacity to get work done through its leadership. **Factors in learning:** 1. The willingness to learn requires both motivation and readiness. The motivational element is related to the unfreezing step in change. 2. The ability to learn through the right combination of intelligence and personality traits. Learning may come easier to some and be more challenging to others. 3. Access to developmental experiences and the opportunity to practice and learn. 4. Organizational culture: must support and sustain learning and development. This support comes not only in the form of learning programs but also in the form of systems that value learning and tolerate experimentation and failure. **The content of leader development:** 1. **Basic knowledge:** information about the content of leadership, definitions, and basic concepts such as communication, feedback, and contingent rewards, typically through classroom education 2. **Personal growth:** Self-awareness and understanding strengths and weaknesses, getting in touch with personal values, dreams, and aspirations 3. **Skill development:** How to apply knowledge includes supervisor and managerial skills such as planning, goal setting, and monitoring, as well as conceptual skills such as problem-solving and decision-making 4. **Creativity:** Expanding the ability to think in novel and innovative ways 5. **Strategic Issues:** Developing mission and strategic planning. **Criteria for effective training:** 1. **Assessment:** Development programs provide participants with assessment data about their strengths, weaknesses, performance, and some information about where they stand regarding the goals and the program and their leadership ability. 2. **Individual awareness and motivation:** the assessment data can help increase individual awareness. To learn, participants must be aware of the need for change and specific area they should address so that they are ready to change. The awareness can result from formal data or informal discussions with a supervisor, coworkers, a mentor, or a coach. 3. **Rich and challenging experiences:** to step outside their zone of comfort and push them to experiment with skills, behaviors, and approaches. 4. **Opportunity to practice:** Leaders must have the opportunity to practice the behavior or skills they have learned. One approach is to consider how artists use the studio system to integrate opportunities to practice with self-awareness and rich feedback from multiple sources. 5. **Feedback and support:** Without having the opportunity to practice, leaders cannot receive feedback about their performance. The feedback can be formal (360 degrees) or informal through discussion with many coworkers or a mentor. 6. **Support from the organization:** Supporting leaders to experiment with their new learning and providing them with training resources, opportunities for rich experiences, and feedback indicate the extent to which the organization as a whole supports learning. 7. **Fit and integration with organizational goal:** At a very basic level, individuals learn and perform best when they love what they do and have passion for their work. The passion comes from a good fit between the person, the organization, and the job. **Other conditions for effective development:** 1. Clear objectives for the training 2. Objectives tied to organizational goals 3. Using a combination of tools and methods 4. Assessment of the training 5. Follow-up to support learning **Methods for leader development:** 1. **Self-awareness:** the cornerstone and starting point of development. - Clarifying values and priorities: a process which is a first step in self-awareness; the person must know what is important and what factors have priorities. - Seeking new experiences that will challenge the leader to move outside of the zone of comfort and provide an opportunity to learn something about oneself, including the opportunity to fail. - Seeking feedback through formal and informal channels as often as possible from as many diverse sources as possible. 2. **Experience is the core of development.** - Leading others is the best way to learn - Based on hands-on practice, have been developed. Ex. Classroom education. - Real experience, through any means, satisfies almost all criteria for effective development. 3. **Coaching:** can address existing problems in a real-life setting, thereby providing an opportunity for feedback and practice, as well as demonstrating support from supervisors and coworkers. - Leadership-related coaching programs are most often used in executive development, where either external consultants or successful current or past company executives provide individualized coaching to leaders. - If the coach is a person internal to the organization, the executive can further benefit from getting a perspective on the organization. - An external coach can bring fresh perspectives and approaches. - Individual readiness and willingness to learn - Consideration of wider organization context - Focus on performance and self-awareness - The sincere and caring process - Meaningful feedback - Supportive climate 4. **Mentoring:** Informal and formal mentoring is a powerful leadership development tool and can lead to life-long supportive relationships between a mentor and a mentee. - A more experienced leader provides guidance and advice to a less experienced one. - Formal mentors are assigned from within the organization or from outside the organization. - Find many mentors instead of looking to one person for all guidance. - Find mentors at different levels. - Informal relationships that provide causal support can be equally helpful. - Add mentors as roles and responsibilities change or as leaders transition to new jobs. 5. **Feedback intensive programs:** 360-degree feedback. - Provide extensive feedback about behavior, often from multiple sources - Assess strengths and weaknesses and identify areas of change - Need careful implementation for sensitive feedback - Assessment is based on a combination of interviews, aptitude tests, personality tests, role plays, simulations, and experiential exercises 6. **Classroom education:** an efficient way of conveying general information and knowledge to groups of people. - Used extensively in supervisory and mid-level management and leadership training programs. - The primary goal of classroom education is to transfer knowledge. 7. **Outdoor challenge:** put participants physically and mentally through increasingly difficult physical activities, such as obstacle courses, climbing sports competitions, and games. - Some suggest that sports in general, whether individual or teams, can be a good source for learning self-management, self-discipline, and teamwork. - Done outside of the regular environment