Mastering Change Simple Strategies for Team Leaders ft. Justin Balaski
Leaders are increasingly expected to drive organisational change without having much experience, training or support.
This can be highly stressful, especially if they’re expected to continue managing everyday operational matters at the same time.
But according to change management expert Justin Balaski, the key to nailing change as a team leader is to keep it simple.
In this podcast, Justin speaks with Elise Stevens about how leaders can harness the skills they already have to support their teams through change.
Points raised in this podcast:
- Leaders may find it stressful to juggle their everyday operational tasks with change projects.
- Organisations still want leaders to dedicate most of their focus to operations, which can make change projects particularly challenging.
- People as individuals all experience change differently and at a different pace.
- Fractured perspectives about change, what it means and why it’s important, are a key driver of failure in change projects.
- Bridging those perspectives by speaking to people and allowing space for meaningful dialogue is the most important role of a leader, rather than trying to be across modern change management theory.
- Ideally, leaders will communicate the change in the simplest way possible and keep processes light.
- Lean and Agile principles of change management are best suited to most organisations, rather than more traditional models.
- Leaders, more so than change managers, have the benefit of knowing their team well. They can consider the actual value of the change for the team and encourage team members to find their own way of working in the new environment.
- Starting small means failure is not going to be catastrophic.
- Successful leaders are the ones who have the humility to admit when they cannot do it alone and instead utilise the collective knowledge of the organisation.
About Justin:
Justin Balaski is an award-winning change management professional who helps corporations and government agencies maximise benefits realisation from change initiatives and develop organisational change agility.
After spending more than a decade leading change on digital transformation, culture change, operational excellence, and Agile initiatives, Justin knows that what truly drives successful change, benefits realisation, and change-agile cultures – and it’s not decades-old change models and methodologies. It is a modern approach to change that emphasises co-creation, experimentation, and iteration. Justin is an Agile change management trainer and practitioner who provides training and advisory to people around the globe.
You can connect with Justin on LinkedIn.