Change, as you may have heard, is hard. Humans are usually creatures who love their routines and have a hard time breaking old habits. When a new boss is named to a department after decades of leadership from the old boss, the potential for both opportunities and challenges is great.
Fortunately, Learning professionals can avert looming conflict and chaos by guiding the process of a new boss taking the reins of a department or function.
Teach and Enforce Establishing Conversations
It’s hard to believe, but there are people who take over management of a department that was run for decades by another person and don’t think to have one-on-one conversations with those who were led by the outgoing boss.
The Learning team could provide templates with a loose outline for this conversation.
The new boss would first acknowledge in a private, one-on-one conversation with each employee that they are new to their role as leader of the department and likely will be doing things differently from the old boss. This is especially true if, say, the new boss is a micromanager by nature and the old boss took more of a laissez-faire approach.
After acknowledging that inevitable change is coming, the new boss then would ask the employee to share what their work routines/practices are like. “Julie, I know the outcome of your work—the updated material on your Website and the content I see in your e-blasts—but I don’t know the process you use to arrive at that outcome. Could you share that with me? What is your system from beginning to end of getting your work done?”
The new boss then would briefly share first impressions that come to mind, including ways that the process differs from their own. The new boss would share how they do the same tasks, or how they have done them in the past or had past work groups do the same tasks.
It’s important that the new boss make no decisions at that point about how they want to proceed to possibly bridge the gap between how they do things and how an employee did things before their reign. They should thank the employee at that point and let them know they will think over everything the employee told them.
Suggestions for Change Conversation
The second one-on-one conversation focuses on the new boss sharing their thoughts and feelings about the employee’s work processes. They then would make suggestions for improvements to the work routines that might take place.
“Julie, you shared with me that you primarily communicate by e-mail, rather than by phone, with our clients, and that, for the most part, that appears to work well. I think we could do even better if we transition to having most of these conversations by phone. I know this is going to be a big change for you, so I want to ask you to just give it a try over the next month. There are technology tools that are available that will automatically record and transcribe the content of these calls, so there is little need for notetaking. That should cut back on some of the added labor and needed time. Let’s talk again in one month after you’ve been doing the new routine of client conversations by phone rather than by e-mail, and you can share with me at that point any concerns you have and any difficulties that have arisen.”
The new boss in closing could say something like: “This is an important change I want to make, but I want to make sure I’m supporting you in making the change. I don’t want you to feel like an unreasonable mandate is being foisted on you.”
Checking Back and Checking in Again and Again
There is a fair chance there will be friction and discomfort when implementing change. The new boss should be trained to not just check in one month after the initial change(s) have been made but to keep checking in on a monthly, or even weekly, basis to see how the changes are going.
They should be genuinely empathetic if the employee is struggling with a mandated change and should work with them to come up with solutions that might ease the difficulty or discomfort.
Importantly, the new boss should keep the lines of communication open in providing feedback about how the employee is doing in making the needed changes. If one or more mandated changes isn’t going well or hasn’t turned out the way the new boss wanted, they should be direct with the employee and let them know they are falling short and talk together about how to fix the impediment(s) to change.
The one-on-one conversations should be exhausted before the new boss escalates concerns about an employee to executives.
You want new bosses who are so well trained and well prepared for change conversations that layoffs (or resignations) are unlikely. Effective communication can be a useful tool that helps a department implement change without the need for life-altering staff changes.
Do you provide training and support to help new bosses bring change to lines of business that were headed for years by the same person?