I previously worked for an organization that was expanding rapidly. As a result of this expansion, many large-scale changes were taking place, including team restructuring, leadership layoffs, and new initiatives.

Many of us had no idea a change was coming until it was already being implemented, so we didn’t always understand why the changes were being made. Many of the decision-making conversations were happening among leadership behind closed doors, and the general emotional undercurrent among everyone else was one of uncertainty and stress.

Change, when not managed effectively, can create a ripple effect of distress throughout an entire organization. The American Psychological Association 2017 Work and Well-Being Survey confirms it: “Workers experiencing recent or current change were more than twice as likely to report chronic work stress compared with employees who reported no recent, current or anticipated change (55 percent versus 22 percent).”

Potentially distressing transitions may include big budget cuts, sudden layoffs, company relocation, or the introduction of different programs or processes that come with undesirable drawbacks. Depending on the circumstances, they can weigh heavily on employee morale and even affect an organization’s reputation.

The reality is that most changes will lead to positive outcomes. Change is part of life, and eventually, we find ourselves being led to where we need to be, even if it’s uncomfortable at first. When an organization is heading in the direction of growth, it’s impossible for things to remain the same. Just as a flower has to break out of its bud in order to expand, a business needs to adjust itself accordingly to accommodate its own expansion.

On occasion, however, an organization may begin heading in a direction that compromises its values or mission. While the hope is that leadership will make decisions that are in the best interest of the organization and its employees, people are imperfect and outcomes can be difficult to foresee.

We’re all vulnerable to what author Daniel Goleman calls the “amygdala hijack” — when fear takes over, it can affect our ability to make optimal decisions. It’s challenging in the moment to know whether our choices are the best ones, and sometimes we don’t understand the impact of our decisions until we view them in retrospect. By then, it’s often too late to turn back. This is one reason why seeking perspectives and requesting feedback is so important to proper change management practices. Often times, others see what we may not see.

External factors such as social progress or shifts in industry impact our organizations in ways we can’t control. But in some areas, we do have control, leaving us with the responsibility of promoting “positive” changes that align with organizational values.

If you or those around you feel an impending change is not a positive one for the organization or its employees, here are 7 tips that can help you effectively navigate the conflict of interest and avoid a change management nightmare:

1. Speak up! Have the conversation.

Bring your concerns to your fellow leaders, even if you fear your perspective may differ strongly from the rest of the group. This is a TIME FOR COURAGE AND A TIME TO BE FIERCE. You may be seeing something that others aren’t. A conversation may not change the trajectory of whatever lies ahead, but any conversation can.

2. Provide an alternative.

Complaining is easy, and it’s not the best way to get others to listen. If you believe you have a valid reason to complain, present an alternative idea instead of the complaint. If something isn’t working related to a recent or expected change, providing an alternative may be the best way to steer the current course of things in a new and better direction. If someone else raises a concern or has a complaint, ask them if they have an idea for an alternative solution.

3. Numbers Don’t Lie.

A benchmark can provide a solid backing for your perspective by illustrating what works and what doesn’t. For example, if a new program is introduced that you believe is less effective than a previous one, compare results from the two different programs, prepare your data, and plan a follow-up conversation. If the numbers show greater results in favor of what you’re supporting, it could potentially shift an outcome in a positive direction.

4. Be Transparent.

Transparency builds trust, and your team needs to be kept in the loop. Share with them what you’re at liberty to share, and ask directly if they have questions, thoughts, or concerns. Big changes can often stir up anxiety when important conversations are happening behind closed doors, so make an effort to bring these topics of conversation out into the open.

5. Encourage others to have the conversation.

The effects of change can be felt across an entire organization, and what everyone is really thinking and feeling sometimes surfaces during happy hours or water cooler conversations. If colleagues are expressing their concerns to each other but not directly to leadership, leaders won’t be able to fully support their teams. Encourage your team members to share their concerns directly with you or with leadership in general, and likewise, encourage your fellow leaders to involve everyone in a decision that will, in fact, impact everyone.

6. Check your context.

Our personal experiences throughout our lives shape our context and create a subjective lens through which we see the world. Context can become an issue when the way we’re choosing to see things isn’t producing the results we want. While it’s important to relay your concerns and stand up for your organization and your colleagues, consider the underlying intentions of the proposed change, and keep in mind that sometimes initially uncomfortable changes can bring desirable outcomes later. Change begets change, so project forward — what positives could occur in the future as a result of this supposedly “unwanted” change?

7. Trust yourself.

If you’ve checked your context and explored any assumptions you might be making, it’s important to trust yourself at the end of the day. To trust yourself means to trust how you truly feel once you’ve eliminated bias and examined your fears. If a big decision is made that lacks integrity or goes against what you value most, you’ll have to decide whether you want to continue being a part of the organization. Have a conversation with yourself about whether you should stay or go. Only you know the answer.

Managing changes — and making decisions that are in the best interest of everyone involved — requires leaders and their teams to have honest, open conversations that get to the heart of the matter.

The cost of missing conversations during times of change directly impacts the bottom line. Download our whitepaper to learn more: The ROI of Skillful Conversation

Every year, organizations invest millions of dollars and countless hours in leadership training. Their intention is worthwhile: produce better leaders and see a return on investment (ROI) in retention, productivity, engagement, growth, the bottom line, and so much more.

Oh, if only this could be guaranteed when you sign the contract and write the check! Sadly, ineffective training leads to an approximate loss of $13.5M per year, per 1000 employees.

If you’re going to invest in your leaders (which I highly encourage), let’s understand why so much money is being lost and where that training is going wrong.

In conversations with our clients, we hear about their experiences with other training programs:

• “We saw no measurable shift in behavior after the training.”
• “We lost money and it didn’t produce the results we hoped.”
• “The content was good, but it didn’t stick after training.”

Ouch. Clearly, ineffective, not to mention so costly. But why?

THE EXPERIENCE IS MISSING

I’ve trained in lots of places with lots of different content. Admittedly, some of it has been dry and boring — but necessary. Thankfully, some of it has been engaging and transformative.

Quite frankly, the two extremes are not as different as you might think. Whether “bad” or “good,” doesn’t matter much if not practiced and experienced in ways that allow whatever has been taught to be replicated, repeated, and applied!

The problem with most leadership training is not content quality. The problem is that the content isn’t actionable. It doesn’t sink in enough to shift behavior in sustainable ways. There was no experience to enable it to stick, to work, to matter.

Leadership training, all training, needs to be an immersive experience with in-the-moment implementation of the concepts being taught and specific, strategic ways in which it can be used again and again once the training is over.

Good concepts and great ideas, though inspiring, are not enough.

Painful rhetorical questions abound when experiential learning evades. How do I apply this? Where? With whom? How can I translate this information into action; into actual behavior? What difference will this make on a daily basis? Now what?

In the absence of clear and obvious answers, the ROI we were hoping for plummets.

Bottom line: results (and ROI) from leadership training rely on experiences, not just intellectual intake.

The 70:20:10 Model for Learning and Development asserts that 70% of our knowledge and learning comes from job-related experiences, 20% from interactions with others, and 10% from formal educational/training events.

If a leadership training program does not create a bridge between formalized training and hands-on experience, it isn’t taking advantage of the most effective ways people learn.

Meaningful connections between content and application are rarely made through one-off, contrived scenarios. Even interactive fishbowl discussions or hypothetical role-playing scenarios diminish learning potential. And while theory is great, you can’t do theory.

Experiential learning allows participants to retain and implement what’s being trained in ways that sustain new behaviors long after the program is completed.

At Fierce, we take this seriously. We acknowledge at the start of every training — both in-classroom and virtual — that we require ‘real play,’ not role play.

We know that no matter how great our content, it is not relevant, actionable, or sustainable without the integration of actual, current, pressing challenges, brought into the room by the very individuals present.

One of the Fierce models I frequently train is CONFRONT. Let’s be honest: whether leaders or not, we tend to avoid the conversations we know are going to be difficult. We play them out in our heads. We anticipate how they’re going to go. And the potential consequences just don’t seem worth the effort or the risk.

So in class, I could easily, even effectively, talk about confrontation, why it matters, why it often fails before it starts, give statistics, and even provide specific how-tos on stepping into those conversations. I could, and I do. But there is so much more.

Participants script out what they need to say… to a real person in a real situation (not a simulation, not pretending, not making something up). Then they practice delivering that “opening statement” with one other person in the room, getting feedback, making adjustments, and doing it again.

This is not easy!

We often prefer to stay in theory, take notes, and hope that, somehow, we will subliminally absorb the wisdom and courage needed to do better. But to hear ourselves speak (out loud)- what needs to be said in a safe, contained environment is a different experience altogether.

It is an experience, period. And that makes all the difference.

I hear leader after leader tell me how powerful the experience was for them, how much they learned about themselves, how practical the models are, how they wish they’d learned them long before, and how they will definitely use them once class is over.

Those comments, combined with what I have the privilege of witnessing day after day — with leader after leader and client after client — assures me that the training has already merited an ROI with far more to come.

GET AT WHAT MATTERS MOST

All leadership programs intend to train people to be more effective. Dig deeper. Identify the programs that offer the how-to, the actual skills, practices, specifics, and repeatable actions that give leaders the capacity to walk their talk.

To communicate effectively through tangible models and practices; to build relationships across, up, and down in ways that produce individual and collective change at a deep, behavioral level. Anything less lessens your training results, your ROI, and most importantly, your leaders’ ability to excel.

And make sure it sticks.

Unfortunately, many organizations still believe there is a silver bullet out there: a training program that will deliver leader transformation after sitting in class for two days. There’s no such thing.

It takes so much more. Experiential learning, hands-on practice, a focus on real issues (not role-play), ongoing support, and significant commitment from the leaders themselves, the organization as a whole, and the company providing the training.

We provide our Fierce clients with the “stickiest” training out there because we know you need and deserve leadership development programs that are more than just a one-and-done event. Training that delivers an acceptable ROI will sustain and reinforce new behavior that lasts and makes a positive, sustained impact on business results.

Don’t settle for anything less.

During the quest for self-improvement, the age-old struggle I often find myself thinking about time and time again is, how do you adopt new behaviors AND make lasting change?

This is the quandary for learning and development departments, tasked with supporting their organizations on how to be more productive, more engaged — happier even — by having employees learn new skills and behaviors and have a system in place that supports long-lasting sustainable change.

The theory is organizations invest in their people through training and reap the rewards of employees who produce more with their heads and hearts engaged. This theory, I would argue, is 100 percent correct, and companies would be better off if they invested more in their people in this way, but one critical piece missing is that we have to redefine a word — training.

WHY REDEFINE TRAINING?

Training is not a one-time event. It’s an on-going experience that involves multiple touch points as individuals go down the hard path of change.

In the last decade, there has been a lot of research on creating behaviors and learning new skills, such as the scary fact that PEOPLE WILL FORGET 90% OF WHAT THEY’VE LEARNED AFTER ONE MONTH. It’s true what they say — if you don’t use it, you lose it!

We know more about the brain and its emotional nature than we ever have before and yet this question, how do you make behavior changes stick, still is a big blue ocean of possibility.

My goal in this blog isn’t to say we have a definitive answer, but to rather help guide your thinking and provide some helpful insight on proven ways we know that support your people on their behavior change journey in order to maximize the company’s investment and your time.

The end goal? Sustainable behavior change.

TIPS TO MAXIMIZE LEARNING

Below are four actionable ways to make the learning stick:

1. Spot the Cue

Learning a new behavior can be like one of those I Spy pictures, where you don’t see the object until someone points it out to you, and then it becomes so obvious.

At Fierce, our data shows that most learners leave the classroom excited to flex their new muscles and yet, what we have heard before from Learning and Development leaders, is that once back immersed into their daily lives, old behaviors start to creep in.

This is when touch points can be critical in setting up your employees for success. For example, with Fierce Conversations, we advise our clients to prompt cues as to when the business wants their learners to use the new skillset.

We’ve had clients ask leaders to use our Coaching model in at least one 1:1 every month. Furthermore, in both our Confront and Feedback model, we spend time in the classroom identifying what conversations are appropriate for what situations and we have the learners identifying conversations they need to have and start the process in the training.

By spending time as a learning team identifying what business results would be better if certain conversations improved and then messaging that back out to your learners, you make identifying the cue of this new behavior so much easier.

2. Simplicity is King

Let’s be honest, in today’s world of Twitter and Instagram, anything that takes more than 160 characters to understand is almost too complicated. While I am all for fighting back against our modern lack of attention span, I think what we can learn from social media is that simpler is sometimes better when you want to make something sticky.

At Fierce, none of our frameworks have more than seven steps or take longer than one page to fill out. The brain can memorize it and, in fact, is designed to be deconstructed even further and made even more simple once you learn the skill set.

We Delegate at four levels, we Coach with just seven simple questions, you can Confront in 60 seconds and make big decisions with your team’s input by filling out one page of information.

The depth comes from the quality of the conversation that arises from the simplicity of the approach. If you make the skillset easy, it becomes a routine that can be applied and followed. Before you know, it’s happening all the time.

3. Make it Worth It

Even the most avid learner has to see the value in spending their time in order to learn and apply something new. People don’t do things without a clear why. When it comes to behavior change, if that why isn’t there, it doesn’t matter if your previous two steps are flawless, you won’t get a commitment. Period.

As learning and developing professionals, you can’t control someone’s intrinsic why. However, at Fierce, we have a few best practices we’ve seen clients leverage with great success to support the reward of using are:

• Tie the why of the training to the larger business strategies and organizational goals. Nobody likes to feel like they’re wasting their time. This best practice ties back to tip number 1 — by helping people understand the why behind the training in the context of the company, they better see themselves supporting those goals and seeing what’s in it for them to make the effort for the change.
• Give champions the chance to share their reward and wins. Inevitably, you will have people who adopt the behavior quicker and you want to give them a platform to share their win. Collective wins can be powerful and having a colleague you respect share how this has positively impacted them can be the best motivators for others to try.
• Literally have a reward! Whether the reward is monetary or recognition, sometimes an external reward helps people focus until other more intrinsic rewards make themselves known.

4. Choose a Training Provider that focuses on Reinforcement

Not every training provider prioritizes the pre or post experience, whether that’s through technology, tools, or strategy, you should partner with someone who has a strong point of view on adoption and sustaining the learning.

At Fierce, we prioritize this with our clients by looking at the bigger picture of continuous change in a strategic way. Pre-training, during the training, and post-training all have an impact on learners prioritizing and changing the quality of their conversations.

When you apply these steps to your learning initiatives, you’ll not only increase the chances of your investment in training being successful, but you’re setting your entire organization up for sustainable and meaningful achievement.

​Here’s a recent statistic from the Edelman Trust Barometer that blew me away and should serve as a wakeup call to organizations everywhere:

63 percent of employees don’t trust their CEOs, claiming their company leaders are somewhat or not at all credible.

That’s huge, especially when combined with what HBR reported about C-suite’s self-awareness skills: only 10 to 15 percent of these leaders fit their study’s criteria of being truly self-aware.

Meanwhile, HR leaders are searching for additional ways to increase employee engagement and first and second tiered management is implementing training with front line employees, achieving small successes overall. Given the statistic shared around CEO trust and the engagement initiatives HR leaders are intending to drive, what is missing from the solution?

It’s C-suite engagement.

Aon’s 2018 Global Engagement Trends identifies the top 5 engagement opportunities for North America, and 2 out of 5 involve Senior Leadership and EVP levels, as both have flatlined year over year. From my perspective, there is a great opportunity here for a change. Let’s explore further.

The current reality is that C-suite often engages differently than the rest of the organization. In turn, this leads to assumptions about their willingness to engage in cultural initiatives. And so, the direct conversations that need to be happening with them are not happening.

Storytelling can spin to a negative, and it’s a curse of human nature. If we want to create real change in our organizations, false stories need to be called out, including the belief that C-suite isn’t and doesn’t want to be involved in training or education.

That’s not to say that there isn’t any truth to what people observe about C-suite and how they may or may not interact with the rest of the organization. What we often hear in the leadership training industry is that C-suite lacks participation in training and struggles to see things differently. Noted. But a bigger issue arises when the conversations needed to increase levels of awareness (including self-awareness) and involvement among top leadership are missing.

If employees don’t trust their company leaders or believe them to be credible, that’s a real problem. If you want to change this reality, HR leaders who are driving these initiatives need to get real with themselves, shift their context, and invite C-suite to the table.

Trust in Leadership and its Direct Tie to Engagement

A story that resonates with me all the way down to my tippy toes comes from Randstad Canada, a Fierce client, and illustrates exactly how involving C-suite can significantly impact engagement. They took the rolling out of Fierce programs to C-suite before rolling out to the next levels of leadership. This initial rollout led to an increase of 14% in employee engagement scores throughout the entire company, where a 2 to 3 percent variance is considered significant. That’s incredible, to say the least! The Randstad approach can be replicated in any organization that’s ready to produce results.

When a company culture isn’t built on a solid foundation of trust and transparency, it shows. Initiatives stall, employees are disengaged, and absenteeism is high. If employees don’t trust the people around them, they won’t execute. They may do what it takes to keep their job and look good, but they won’t go the extra mile.

When it comes to increasing engagement, it’s all about the development of emotional capital, and it starts at the top. If you want to build emotional capital, C-suite needs to interact with everyone in the company across all levels.

Anyone who feels like they need to put on a “face” is inclined to shut down and not freely share what they’re truly thinking and feeling. For example, if a CEO is excited about a strategy that they believe will take the company into the 22^nd century, and yet the rest of the company feels differently, human nature will often lead us to placate our true feelings instead of communicating them. That is if we don’t trust the person we disagree with.

And the cost? We lose everything from our own personal authenticity to engagement and productivity potential. This is why taking a top-down approach with C-suite and getting them involved is effective and more likely to produce results. Employees need to feel comfortable expressing their concerns from the bottom all the way up. When employees gain trust in C-suite, their direct leaders, and their teams, engagement and productivity rise.

Not to mention, leaders need to be modeling the behavior they want to see. Studies have revealed a correlation between C-suite behavior and the model behavior they wanted to be exhibited. If you want the people around you to say “hello” and engage, you need to model this behavior as a leader in the company. Interactions need to be genuine. People can spot inauthenticity from miles away.

Having the Conversation with C-Suite

Depending on the dynamic and current mode of operation within your organization, having the conversation with C-suite about their involvement in initiatives could be easy to have, or it could prove challenging. Regardless, it’s a conversation that needs to happen if you want to see an increase in engagement. It’s time to come out from behind yourself, into the conversation, and make it real.

Here are a few important tips that will help set you up for a successful conversation:

1. Set your intentions beforehand

You know C-suite involvement has the potential to transform a culture and increase engagement. If this is what you want to communicate, set your intention for the level of participation you’re wanting to see. Do you want to create more opportunities for interaction through company social events? Are you wanting them to undergo training and need their buy-in to move it forward? Keep in mind the results you want to produce, and be ready to answer questions they may have about time, budgeting, logistics, etc. The devil is in the details, and they matter!​

2. Talk dollars + Benchmarks

In many organizations, C-suite is involved in conversations around engagement and productivity. It’s important when you go to the table to secure they become a part of the direct solution and gently remind them of annual turnover in percentage compared to your industry benchmarks. Nearly every CEO can understand the cost of a turnover when there is a dollar amount attached to it. If your company is losing $2.75M each year due to turnover, be sure to include the dollar amount in the conversation rather than just the conceptual cost. Present profit and loss numbers, all internal and external measures you can gather, with external statistics and support to convey both the organization’s goals around engagement and the potential gains of more C-suite involvement.

3. Communicate a clear what and next steps

Clearly state there is an issue with engagement and present the solution you believe it requires. For example, where does your organization currently stack up? What’s working and where are there deficits? What evidence do you have to show how your proposed solution can make a difference? Measuring the impact of behaviors among your workforce and on your culture is incredibly important, so you’ll need to communicate how you plan to gauge success. For example, if you intend for C-suite to undergo training, make sure assessments are deployed prior to a workshop, immediately after a workshop, and then again after thirty days of living the new behaviors that have proven successful. This will validate your solution and identify ongoing gaps, as the “keep trying” piece is needed for any organization wanting to maintain a growth mindset.

How leadership interacts and engages with the rest of the company is influencing your levels of employee engagement. It impacts everything from productivity to personal integrity. Addressing the problem head-on involves a conversation that you and your organization can’t afford to miss.