I have posted articles this month on helping leaders understand what they have to do to help their team go through change. Today’s focus will be on helping the leader as they navigate the change for themselves.
I talked about the stress of change on people going through a workforce reduction or reorganization, but for the leader of a team, it is even more stressful. Here are some of the reasons why and what they can do to help themselves.
Many times these types of changes are driven by people at much higher levels in the organization than you are. You have no say in what will happen, when it will happen, and may not have a say in who is impacted. You are just asked to execute it. This means that you will most likely know about the change way before your team knows. Every day you will have to pretend that nothing is going on and everything is just business as usual in front of your team. It is the worst feeling ever.
I have been through these situations more times than I would like. Sometimes I knew information and other times I found out at the same time as everyone else. Although challenging to know ahead of the team, at least I was able to deal with the change myself and begin to accept it before having to share it with them. When you find out at the same time as your team, they don’t know that you didn’t know in advance. The team assumes you have been in on it, simply because you are a leader. They don’t understand why you don’t already have answers to all of the questions that they have. At that point, you may not know if you are going to be impacted by the change as well. It is a lot to manage all that internally and not show it.
You are the face of the organization to your team. This is not an easy position to be in because sometimes you don’t always have the time to deal with what is going on in advance. Change may be thrown at you and you are expected to manage it in real-time. My advice is to meet with your peers who are going through the same thing as you are on a regular basis. That may be in one-on-ones or as a group. You need an outlet to be able to talk about what is going on, learn more information and continue to process it for yourself. It helps to have others who are there in the trenches with you and understand the situation.
You may also want to leverage an external support network of leaders. You may not be able to share details, but you can talk about the experience you are going through with people who have been through it. Unfortunately, it is much more prevalent that someone in their career has been through this type of change at least once and possibly multiple times. They can help guide you or just be there to support you.
The bottom line is that you are not alone. You shouldn’t go through it all by yourself, especially the first time. It won’t be easy, but be kind to yourself and know that you will get through this change. Remember, change is constant, there will be more in your future. This is a part of being a leader and you will be able to make the difference for people going through the experience by learning how to manage change for yourself.