Make Navigating Big Changes a Team Effort

1. No matter how many times you tell people they will be all right and that the changes might help them and “change is good,” people will have fear. They will fear losing something – be it an alliance to the values and culture of the old way, the change in relationships and working conditions, the possible need to learn something new or, ultimately, the concern about whether they will have the choice to stay if desired.

Leaders make the mistake of undervaluing just how much loss is involved in change. It is a grieving process. Further, while you need the team to look forward, stay positive and keep focused, you also have to acknowledge that loss is hard. Grief hurts.

Take-away: Allow people to talk about what they have lost from time to time. Keeping silent about it is the worst approach. Listen, and don’t try to solve. Just understand that moving through grief takes time.

2. Give people different ways to share their observations. In most cases, leadership will have a meeting and then ask, “Any questions or concerns?” and it is crickets in the room. This happens in every single venue and with every single team I have ever seen – even those who have nerve!

When things are changing, there is risk in speaking up. People don’t want to be seen as the naysayer or the troublemaker. Instead, they will observe things that leadership should know, but they won’t bring voice to these things.

In the session this week, we let people write on index cards, anonymously. We had no idea who said what. Then colleagues worked together to read the card and talk about the “why?” and the “what can I do?” Done this way, even though many people were feeling and experiencing the same things, the concerns felt more third-party and objective. It was like hearing an issue from a friend and then brainstorming together about options.

Take-away: There are many different ways to facilitate discussions without putting someone on the spot. If you really want to know what’s going on, find ways to allow people to share that don’t feel like exposure.

3. You really do want to know what’s going on, and this includes clarity about facts and data. But you may have to wade through the emotional components to get to the objective information needed to ensure you are doing all you can to make things work.

At the session this week, it could have been easy to default to the common difficulties when transitioning to a new tech platform. However, once the group felt comfortable enough to open up and the training team and some new leadership proved willing to listen, they understood what was really happening. It will be beneficial to the new company for their next acquisition to learn what worked and what didn’t.

It takes an open-minded team to listen and learn, and it takes the existing team sharing details without fear of reprisal.

Take-away: Rather than make assumptions – “everyone struggles with new technology” or “change is just hard overall” – find ways to allow new team members to share their experiences and insights. Willingness to listen requires confidence, but everyone becomes a better team when this happens.

4. Realize that not everyone is going to be happy, no matter what you do. Some people keep an open mind, are able to focus on the positive and believe they might even be in a better place with change. However, many people are extremely uncomfortable with change.

Those individuals believe they chose a job and a company for certain reasons, and the change takes those reasons away and leaves them wondering what is next. You can’t expect people to be happy when they have lost something. However, you unfortunately also can’t coddle them and tell them it is going to be all right – no one knows what will happen over time.

Allow team members to process on their own timelines, but always remind them that negativity is less desirable than positivity and is often less effective. In order for them to advocate successfully for their views in the new environment, they probably want to project an outwardly upbeat (or at least neutral) attitude.

Take-away: Do your team a favor, and – rather than expect them to be happy and rah-rah about everything when they don’t know what’s next – just ask them to stay neutral. Become a coach to help with outward attitude. You can tell them to vent with friends and family all they want away from the office, but once they walk in, they need to keep their chin up and head held high. Negativity is contagious.

5. Tell the team as much as you know about what’s coming – and also what the unknowns might be. I’ve heard leaders tell everyone “nothing will change,” but that simply isn’t possible. Of course there will be changes, and the extent of them is often unknown.

In the session this week, the team felt a bit thrown off kilter because they believed their clients were told that everything would stay the same. However, now there are new systems to learn, new people they need to depend upon and an inability to respond as quickly as efficiently as they’d always done. This will all get worked out, of course, but sometimes it is better to share a message that says, “We are going to do our best, but there will be some bumps along the way. We’ll keep you informed.”

This is important messaging for internal team members and external clients and partners. To say all is well isn’t reality. Life changes all the time, and any company can experience an unexpected hiccup. Look at what happened during the pandemic. One day it was business as usual, and the next, everyone was trying to figure out how best to make it all work. Making promises of nothing changing puts your team in a tough spot when the first change takes place and more follow behind it. The intention is good, to put people at ease, but honesty and authenticity is better when change is happening.

Take-away: Few people like to hear a message of change – team or client – because the underlying concern is, “What will this mean to me?” Be as honest as you possibly can, and don’t be overly positive about what will happen next. There is a process that takes place where there is disruption. It can’t be avoided. Stay present, stay in communication, and give as much of a window as you can to what you expect will happen next.

Change is hard, but in this world of acquisitions, succession and mergers, it is likely to happen to everyone at some point in their career. As a leader, you can help manage change by being proactive and by admitting to your team you know they will be impacted and you want to help as much as possible. The leaders this week were willing to open themselves up to listening and learning. It takes tremendous EQ and confidence to be able to do this, but the payoff is great when it happens. The team participated by sharing, and it gave the new team members information to help them be more effective. Truly a win-win-win, but only because of leaders who said, “We want to know what we are missing and we know not everyone will tell us directly.”

Change can be beneficial for many people in the long term, but you want to keep your key team members engaged, involved and as happy as possible as you navigate through it. This won’t happen without a focus on it.

Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry, in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. The firm has won the Wealthbriefing WealthTech award for Best Training Solution for 2022, 2023 and 2024. Beverly is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. She is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).

She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.

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