Executive Podcast #276: Coaching Your Team to Become Change Agents

Perry Holley:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. I am Perry Holly, a Maxwell leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. Before we get started, I want to encourage you, like we always do, just to if you want additional resources, we want you to go to maxwellleadership.com/podcast. There you can click on this episode, and Perry has a learner guide that he’s created to go along with the content. Or if you have a question or a topic for us that you’d love for us to discuss here, then you can fill out that form, send that in. We’d love to unpack that. I’d love to love that. What’s really great about that is a lot of what we talk about comes from the field.

Chris Goede:
It comes from us being with organizations, with leaders, whether we’re coaching or we’re facilitating. And so we would love to do that for you. Absolutely. Today’s topic is, can you coach your team to become change agents? I love this, and I think I know the answer, but I think we’ll save that to the end, to the wrap up and we’ll unpack this. But we’ve been recently talking about how leaders lead change. You’ve coming off of the end of last year, you created a content piece for us. By the way, if your team or your organization is going through change, we’d love to come in and help you work through that. You can put that in the form as well, and we’ll get back in touch.

Chris Goede:
And Perry’s kind of helped us create that around a new course. So we’re going to continue that today. And you asked the question in the title of can you coach your team to become change agents? So should we just stop the podcast right here? Can you give them the answer yes or no, or should we dive in?

Perry Holley:
We should probably. But I have another question before we answer the question. The question behind the question was, why would you want to? Aren’t you the leader? What I’m finding in most of my coaching and working with leaders is that they think most people think you or someone above you is the one that’s supposed to be looking for where we need the change. How can we grow, improve incremental improvement, make wholesale changes? How are we going to disrupt status quo? But I’m thinking, why are you, shouldn’t your team be doing that? But I think, do you want that you had a big team? Do you want your people looking for ways to change and disrupt status quo?

Chris Goede:
100%. I was actually talking just this morning with a client that’s a good friend of ours that we’re very familiar with, and we’re talking about change. And the first thing that came up was, hey, I got to make sure that I allow this and I give them grace for it. Right. Because not everybody goes through change the same way. But we do want them to look and to say, how do we improve our business? I was in a team meeting right before I came down here, and we were talking about the fact of, hey, you are closest to the problem. You are closer to the opportunities for improvement than I am. So what should we change? What should we do different? We were talking about a deliverable that they were like, well, it’s not very good.

Chris Goede:
Okay, well, what do we need to change about it? That it would make it better and make it received well. So I would say 100%. We want to encourage our team to be change agents because they know what’s happening, what’s not happening in regards to what we’re delivering to our customers.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. And I totally agree. Great answer. I think that it also makes the change you do undertake a lot easier if others feel like they have a voice in it, that you’re not some behind the curtain manipulating the levers and say, go change this, go change that. No, we should all be thinking about how do we serve our clients better, how do we operate more efficiently, how do we drive more revenue, how do we cut more cost? Everyone needs to be acting like an owner in that. And so when I came up, I put this in the course that you mentioned and about probably seven or eight ways that can you coach your team. How would you start to do that? If you said, I want everybody, like you said, they’re at the front lines? I want you thinking about, are we doing the best that we can do, and is there a better way to challenge status quo? So I’ll throw them out, and we’ll see what you think on that. And one of the first one I put on there with coaching authenticity know, are you honest about the needs and the reasons for change? Just being know, we joked a few weeks ago on here about John saying status quo is latin for the mess we’re in and saying, yes, do people understand that? Are we just call it for real, we are doing okay, but are we doing the best that can be done? And I stole that from Andy Andrews, never forget him saying that.

Perry Holley:
He said that people say we’re doing the best we can do. He said, but are we doing the best that can be done? The answer to that is always no, but are we real about it? Are we authentic?

Chris Goede:
Yeah. Well, with authenticity, and you’ve heard Perry and I talk about this, this comes from Greg Kegel, one of our executive facilitators, that also is out on the front lines with us, coaching and facilitating where authenticity is a trust accelerator. And the key to any change is making sure your team trusts you. And it’s tough, right? Because at times, you’re going to have to be authentic with people that have never been under your leadership before to create that trust, that’s one thing you got to think about. But the other thing is you got to be authentic with the people that know you really well as a leader, because, by the way, they’re going to be able to see right through you. And so either way, you need to be authentic in order to grow the trust that you have, because I think that’s the keys to change. So, 100%, we need to be authentic and we need to coach that in our people, and we need to model that.

John Maxwell:
Hey, John Maxwell here. I’m in the studio. We’ve been recording all day, and I was thinking about, really, one of my very favorite experiences that we have, and that is called day to grow. If you want to grow, you want to grow in every area of your life. I tell people all the time, you don’t want to go to something. You want to grow to something. But if you’re passionate about personal growth, development your team and growing them, you do not want to miss day to grow. I’m going to have some real players with me, Dion Sanders, Jamie Kern, Lima, myself.

John Maxwell:
Oh, my gosh.

John Maxwell:
You don’t want to miss it. So, market, come and see us on day to grow. I will promise you this. You come and bring your team, and at the end of the day, you’ll come up and shake my hand and say, one of the best days I’ve ever invested in for myself and for my team. I’ll see you there.

Chris Goede:
Number two that you have for us here is coach communication. And this is always the word. Communication can be so diverse when it comes to leadership challenges. We’re talking about it specifically here in change. And it’s interesting that all the companies that you and I have worked with and Maxwell leadership gets the opportunity to serve around the world. We always say, hey, let’s talk a little bit. Let’s figure out what is wrong. And communication is always in a top three part.

Chris Goede:
I would say this is essential when it comes to change, is to make sure that we’re doing a good job of communicating and involving those that are going through the change. Involving them very early on in the process. So a couple of things I wrote down here. Okay, so how do you do that? How do you go about doing that? Ask good questions. Right. John wrote a book about asking questions. And so it is essential, as you’re leading people through change and communicating, that you’re asking questions. Hey, what would you do if you were me in this situation? Again, going back to they’re on the front lines, they know the changes that should be made, probably more so than you.

Chris Goede:
You may know some changes need to be made from a bigger picture, but you got to ask them questions. Have you seen this change in the past where you’ve worked before or have you seen it implemented differently? You need to be able to ask questions and communicate early on in the process of change. They also need to know, this is the last thing I wrote down here, which they need to know that this change is going to be good for them and for the organization. Keyword going to be. It may not feel like it in the moment, but you’ve got to be able to communicate that to them. And so you got to have your team and you got to coach them on communication.

Perry Holley:
I think having that, it’s part of communication. It’s part of how it’s okay to talk about it. It’s okay to share about. We do change. We’re looking for change. We’re trying new things. We want to continue to grow and move in a positive direction. We cannot stand still.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Perry Holley:
That status quo to do that kind of leads into number three, which is coaching, collaboration, is that can you increase the share of voice in the communication? So much of what I’m seeing is in the field is that most of the communication around change is coming from the leader or the leader’s leader and it’s not involving the people on the front line. So we’ve taught here over the years about increasing share of voice in the things that we do. Are we including the voice of the people closest to the action? One thing I just learned in the last year, doing the generational diversity stuff we’ve done, Tim Elmore taught us this and I’ve been teaching it a lot lately because it really has rocked my thinking on how I invite others into the conversation is Tim would say in a little combination of words that helped me remember. He says, describe, don’t prescribe.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
And I just love this and saying, my whole mo has always been, I’m going to write you the prescription. Do this, then do that, then do this and that and report back to me. And then people aren’t bought in. They don’t know what to do. They don’t know why the communication is poor. Tim says, describe the big picture. What are we trying to accomplish? And let them prescribe how to get there to do that? I love this. Now I can say I do have a point of view.

Chris Goede:
Sure you do. Yeah.

Perry Holley:
But I’m going to ask you, I’m going to describe. Here’s the big picture. Here’s the puzzle. Can you help me fill in these pieces? How would you do it? And now I’ve increased share of voice. People are starting to lean into. Change is a very common thing around here. We talk about it, we communicate it. We’re authentic.

Perry Holley:
We’re real. And now I can coach that, that everybody on my team knows. I’m expecting you to help me describe, to build the prescription for the description we put.

Chris Goede:
And through that process, your point of view probably changed a little bit. It probably improved.

Perry Holley:
I hope so.

Chris Goede:
You hope so, right? You have the right people around, right? Yeah. That’s good. Well, number four, coach a mindset around change and how you think about it and how you talk about it, I’ll never forget. We talk often here at Maxwell leadership about, I think that we are a leadership organization. We could be called a change organization, right. And with our founder, John, who is always thinking and challenging processes and new opportunities. It’s just part of our culture and it’s part of things. And so Mark Cole came to a leadership meeting about six months ago, maybe seven months ago now.

Chris Goede:
And I’ll never forget, and I talk about this whenever I can when we’re going through some change. He said, I really look at this as people that have three different types of mindset, three different ways that people act or are, or have this mindset around change. Number one, they’re change resistors, right? They’re like, no, we’re not doing this. And we’re going to talk a little bit about that in weeks to come, right? No, they cross their arms, we ain’t doing that. Then you have the change empathizers, which this is dangerous as well, because what they do is they empathize with people that disagree with the change. And then it makes, all of a sudden, it’s like rowing the boat. When we talk about team engagement, all of a sudden the empathizers are in the back of the boat and they’re trying to get the people in the middle of the boat to come to the back of boat, right. And they begin to, oh, yeah, no, I feel that same way.

Chris Goede:
Versus not necessarily rowing, not rowing whatsoever. And then the third one he talks about, and this is again, mindset. Type of people have mindset is are you a change agent? And when I was reviewing kind of the notes leading into what you have brought to us today in regards to content, I was like, oh, this is perfect right here around mindset. What is your mindset when it comes to change? Are you a resistor? Are you an empathizer? Or to Perry’s point and how, we started with the question today, can you coach your team to become a change agent? So are you a change agent? Are you coaching that, use those three words in your next team meeting and ask them where they are and then challenge them. You want to get their eyes open and their lens around becoming a change agent.

Perry Holley:
I love that. And it really is the mindset that we are all on the lookout for how we grow and improve. Number five was, could you coach the vision, painting a picture of the future. Are you the only one that’s thinking about a picture of the future? Then that’s a problem because John talks often about, if you’re the smartest one in the room, everybody looks at you, you’re the smartest one in the room, you’re probably in the wrong room. And so how do I get everybody on my team to be adapting to the vision and adding to the vision? And perhaps maybe there’s things they see that I don’t see. So helping others adopt some ownership of the vision so that they’ll think, well, we’re never going to get there from here doing this. Yes. What do we need to change to go there? And once they own the vision and speak into the vision, if you’re coaching that and really setting an expectation, I need you to have this mindset.

Perry Holley:
I need you to collaborate, I need you to communicate, I need you to be authentic. And all these things we’ve talked about so far, all of a sudden people start raising their head up and saying, you know what we could do? We could really improve in this area by doing. And then they bring you new stuff.

Chris Goede:
And tying that and what they’re doing to that bigger vision, which we talk about this is from a leadership perspective, making sure that they understand how that plays into the bigger picture of what they’re doing. Number six, you have for us here is coach planning. Right. The planning process. I’ve worked for leaders before to where it is, hey, we’re just going to start firing and all those things are changes versus hey, let’s aim and then we’re going to fire, which would come where you’re saying, which is let’s talk about this from a planning perspective. So how do we achieve the results that we desire from the change? And you talked a little bit about it just a minute ago, talking about, hey, let’s describe it. Let’s talk about where we’re going. Let’s not just come in and say this is what we’re going to do and prescribe it.

Chris Goede:
So it made me think a little bit back to an incredible book, the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership, probably John’s most popular book. If you haven’t read it for self development, I want to encourage you to do that. But in there he laid out this acronym in the law of navigation where it’s plan ahead and there’s an acronym and I’m just going to go through this really quick because I think I went back and I looked at it and I thought, man, this is not only in regards to leadership and leading a business, but this is, I think, perfect for change as well as what we’re talking about. So as he lays this out, this acronym just real quick, the p in plan says predetermine the course of action. You know where you need to go as a leader. Now you want to describe that. You want to get feedback from them, but what is the course of action? The l is lay out the goals. What are we trying to accomplish? The a, this is key, adjust the priorities.

Chris Goede:
Isn’t it true that a lot of people that go through change, they want to keep the priorities that they had in everyday business and then oh, we’re going to change and now we want to add these to your priorities. Now all of a sudden you go from four to twelve priorities versus everything that’s, everything’s important. The n in the word plan. Notify key personnel. This is an area, if I’m being transparent, then sometimes I get a little bit ahead of myself and don’t think about this. I think I could do a better job of this. We need to notify key personnel of the change now as we move into the word ahead in a, he says allow time for acceptance. People are only going to change at the capacity of which they’re going to change.

Chris Goede:
And so we have to allow that. We need to know our people we need to lead people the way they need to be led, even through change. Some of them, and you can think of some people on our team, it takes a little bit of time for some change. Others are like, I’m all in, let’s go. And so you need to be able to do that. The h in ahead is man, let’s head into action. We’ve talked about it. We’ve talked about the change.

Chris Goede:
Now let’s go. The e is expect problems. We know that’s going to happen. The a is always point to successes along the way. Let’s celebrate the little wins because change is hard and let’s make sure that we’re doing that. And then finally the d is daily plan. Back to your point. Right, coach planning.

Chris Goede:
We need to get to a point where maybe even daily we’re changing our plan. And digging into that a little bit.

Perry Holley:
There and I’m hearing Andy Stanley in my head saying the vision doesn’t really change, but the plan can change daily.

Chris Goede:
Daily.

Perry Holley:
And you need to be okay with that. Somebody, well, I got a plan I can’t change. No, it can. We need to have planning on that. The other thing about planning is I really gotten to where I expect everybody on my team. I set an expectation. You need to come with a point of view about how we’re going to execute these things. I have a point of view.

Perry Holley:
I want you to have a point of view. I receive that from them to know that they’re making a contribution. Number seven was coaching influence. This is a huge piece of how we teach leadership. But you’re just going to be more successful with change. If everybody on the team is developing their influence with others, you’re not going to be successful with change. If people are not bought in because they’re questioning either your motive, you haven’t thought through, you haven’t planned, you don’t have influence with me. And the more people have influence, every member of the team should be developing their influence with their peers, with their boss, with their subordinates.

Perry Holley:
They should be looking at. And we have many, many lessons on that. We can’t go into that now. But I just think that influence is often overlooked in how we execute change and it really makes things a lot smoother. Like I said, we have some people on our team go, yeah, let’s go. They’re bought in. Why? Because you have influence with them. And when you say it, they go, yeah, I believe Chris, he’s communicated, he’s done these things.

Perry Holley:
I’m in some others maybe don’t have that level of influence, they’re going to say, what do I.

Chris Goede:
Right?

Perry Holley:
And they question that, which is why.

Chris Goede:
The foundation of everything that we work with in organizations is built off of the five levels of leadership. It’s not your title. Right. It’s, have you gone through the different levels? And as Perry said, we’ve talked about, this is what this podcast is completely built off of is everything that we do kind of ties back, not kind of does tie back into that. Eight, what you have for us, number eight here, and the last one is coach leading by example. This is where there’s no doubt that you want the team to work together. You want them to help each other through the change. You want them to add value to this.

Chris Goede:
So what does that look like? I would say this, for me when I think about this is when I coach, by leading through example, through change is, I go back to the word I used just a minute ago about vulnerability. Right. Take time to talk about what are you feeling personally as a leader about the change? What are you learning? What are you thinking about it? If I can say this, it may just suck at times, right? It may. And you need to communicate that and lead by example, and you’re going to open up that line of communication, but by what you’re learning and people are going to share and the dynamics of that. And so I think as a leader, it’s key to make sure that you do that. You go first. Yeah.

Perry Holley:
And the bottom line for all of this, and these eight things are probably more, but just thinking through are the people on my team, do they feel ownership on our direction, toward our vision and how we’re trying to execute and deliver value to our clients? All these types of things, it can’t just be on you. And so can you coach Chris idea that everybody’s responsible and knows the status quo is dangerous? Everybody’s responsible for helping us move to the next, to the future.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. And this is a huge topic. That’s why Perry spent a good bit of time last year digging in and developing this content, because it is relevant to every organization that we’re working with and they’re asking for. It’s very practical.

Perry Holley:
Practical.

Chris Goede:
We’re not going to get very philosophical. No. This is like, what does this look like? If you’re listening to us by now, you know, the fact that we’re not very. So here’s my answer to the question. You absolutely can coach your team to become change agents. And if you are inspiring the vision and you’re cultivating a growth mindset in your team and you’re going through it together. There are going to be times that change may catch you or other people off guard, but you want them looking for opportunities for change and having conversations around it. If you communicate, if you support and you lead by example, I absolutely think that you can coach them to become a change agent.

Perry Holley:
Terrific. Well, thank you, Chris. Always appreciate the insights. Just a reminder, if you’d like to learn more about the offerings on change or anything that we offer, you can do that as well as get the learner guide. Leave us a question or comment. Do all that maxwellleadership.com/podcast we love hearing from you, and we’re very grateful you’d spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast.