Organizational change can be stressful for leaders and project teams. We recently commissioned research into how leaders can drive transformation success while minimizing stress. One of the five success factors identified was ensuring dissenting opinions are heard and disconfirming data confronted.
Here an FTSE-100 c-level executive (and veteran of many transformation initiatives) shares experiences of helping transformation teams face uncomfortable realities, voice concerns, and find the courage to admit mistakes.
Embarrassment and fear of failure drive stress
Pick any stress within a transformation program. Look at the root – you will see fear of failure and disappointment. If someone has promised a task will be delivered in 100 days but it actually takes 150, they have missed their commitment. What does that create? Distress and feelings of underachievement. You could pick any stress within a transformation program and I bet you could boil it down to human embarrassment and fear of failure.
I think this sense of embarrassment is the source of 90 per cent of stress not just during transformation programs, but any project. It can also crop up in a meeting when you do not have all the information, so you look a bit daft – which is stressful. Or when a senior person, who is a bit of a Rottweiler, joins a call and you hope they do not ask you a question because you might not have the answer.
Stress also builds over time. If you are an architect who was part of the solution design team you feel responsible when mistakes start coming out of the woodwork. Maybe the team missed some costs or did not think about some licenses – you feel that stress because you were part of the team that addressed it.
This stress and embarrassment both impact self-worth. You might think ‘usually I am a good delivery person, but I failed in this’. This makes you readjust your internal view of yourself as a good project manager, and that can lower your self-esteem.
Accepting we are human and we can be wrong
How do we make sure these stresses do not deflate your team? As leaders, we need to acknowledge fallibility. We need to say to people, 'it is okay to be wrong, no one is perfect. Everybody is imperfect, it is how we deal with it.' Rather than assuming everyone makes a few mistakes, let’s flip it around. Everybody is full of flaws – and I mean that in the nicest possible way – but that is what makes us human beings.
Now you can proactively tackle those flaws. How do you deal with John who jumps from one topic to another and never finishes something off? How do we cope with that Janet, who does not have a good concentration span so didn’t read the document before she approved it? The answer lies in accepting these flaws as the norm rather than the exception.
Admitting our own mistakes
I publicize all my mistakes broadly to my whole team to show them that it is alright to mess up. I am human, just like they are.
But I expect them to do the same, to put their hand up and say, 'Oh, terribly sorry I have made a mistake – and it is almost a million-pound error in the numbers.' We need to remind people that none of them are infallible: I am not infallible and my boss is not infallible.
There is no blame culture, it is more about ‘how do we learn from this?’
Helping people find the courage to speak out
Fear of embarrassment generates a lack of bravery in business. We need to give people, on both supplier-side and client-side, the courage to say 'I think we have overspent. We have not thought about these licenses, and it could cost £1,000,000'. You usually have to drag this out of people. It could be small scale or big scale. I use the word bravery to my team to encourage them to step forward: 'be brave, it is okay'.
I am always the first person to stop a meeting to say 'I do not understand that. Please explain it.' I do that because I want my team to do the same. I do not want them to not say anything because I am the boss. I want people to find problems, and I push them to have the self-confidence within their group to say, 'that sounds rubbish'.
I have found that acknowledging my mistakes and encouraging others to speak builds trust – this is key. My team might not like me or my methods, some might think I am a bit of an idiot – but, above all, the team does trust that I will tell them the truth.
Leading transformation insights
While most of life’s lessons come from experience, you do not always need to go through the challenges yourself. This is where peer insights come in helpful. Our research into Five leadership lessons of leading transformation is based on personal experiences of 120 senior executives with significant experience of leading change.
Download the research to start making your transformation more successful today.