Middle Manager as Change Champion: A Course Overview
This two-day learning event provides an opportunity to work through the key elements of managing and leading others during times of organisational transition at three levels of implementation: the organisation’s change strategy, aligning teams to support the change, and preparing team leads to support their members through individual transition.
The Business Case
New research shows that having more top-performing middle managers leads to much better financial outcomes (McKinsey). Leaders who are one below the executive-suite play a critical role in translating the organisation’s vision and strategic goals into reality through the effective leadership of change and transition.
Research has found that an important cornerstone of inspiring and motivating others is the ability to champion change (Zenger Folkman). This includes the ability to be forward-looking, to possess a growth mindset, and to convey a continuous improvement orientation to the day-to-day work.
This two-day learning event provides a foundational framework for looking at change through three levels of implementation: the organisation, teams, and individual transition.
What this Course is about:
This change leadership course for middle managers takes a systems approach to understanding change. That is, the change is looked at considering the context – the interaction of structures, processes and people that contribute to successful outcomes.
At the organisational level, group discussion will centre on how the environment supports the ‘contagion’ of new ideas and how leaders can support the change through their efforts to ‘bring to life’ how the change can have a positive impact on the organisation. We will look at what it means to be an inspirational leader and how this approach to leading change can help build strong advocacy or support for the change.
At the team level the course content will consider the fundamental elements of a change management process and the leader’s role in helping teams understand how their work aligns with the vision for change and the potential impacts on ways-of-working and shifting mindsets. Stepping through a well-established (Kotter) eight-step process for introducing, implementing and sustaining the change, we look at how the leader can support others through early awareness to readiness for implementation.
Finally, the third part of the course builds a practical approach for understanding and addressing the psychological process of personal transition and behaviour change. By understanding what is needed to bring about behavioural change for individuals, we draft a plan to manage resistance, buy-in and change readiness.
Key outcomes for this two-day programme include:
DAY 1:
- Measuring and evaluating success through assessment of change readiness and impact
- Understanding complex change based on Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point concepts
- Recognising two key aspects of a changing organisational system and defining your organisation’s seven levers of change
- Analysis of success/failure through a technology change case simulation
- Understanding important archetypes found in organisational change dynamics
DAY 2:
- Mapping eight steps to managing sustained change
- Creating and presenting a compelling ‘why’ for change
- Building a communication strategy for managing resistance and building buy-in
- Equipping team leads to support the transition process of endings to new beginnings
- Understanding psychological enablers and barriers to transition
Outcomes:
As a result of participation in the course participants will:
- Develop a change plan that emphasises the leader’s role in inspiring and motivating others
- Design a bespoke approach for assessing your teams’ change readiness
- Identify forces for and against the change and create a set of actions for mitigating potential setbacks in change management
- Assess your organisation’s level of change management maturity
Who should attend:
This course is ideal for managers responsible for implementing a change strategy.It will also benefit coaches and HR professionals who support mid-level managers in building change leadership capabilities.
