Responsible In Change

Part of being a responsible leader is preparing your people for change.  With any good

organization, there should be change.  There will be change.  And your staff can probably sense it, even if you'd rather think otherwise.  So promise change . . . because it’s a promise you can keep.

In fact, you should be taking advantage of this opportunity to make some changes that you've already identified in your area of the organization.  With your preparation, you need to understand that the workforce will be primed for change, anticipating it, and therefore poised to adapt more readily than usual.

As part of the management team, you're also responsible for helping to “sell” the changes.  But this doesn’t mean you just throw people a sales pitch about the positive side of the changes and how wonderful things are going to be.  There's normally both good news and bad news, and both sides of the story should be told.

So let people know what they can expect.  Give it to them straight.  They deserve to know - they're adults, they can handle it.  Plus, you couldn’t fool them for long anyway.