Here we go with my fourth principle of effective change leadership – get them involved. When we think back, most of us have some experience of having resisted change. Maybe your whole department was being split up, or maybe your partner wanted to go to a different restaurant to the one you usually frequent – whatever the scale, experience suggests that those who have change done to them tend to resist, whereas those who are actively involved in the change and have a real ability to shape it are likely to become committed.

Now I imagine that this could come as something of a challenge who are typically in the command and control mentality, but even for those further along the development spectrum it can be quite a challenge to take a piece of strategy that they might have been working on for several months and ask their employees “What do you think and how can we implement this?”  But that is what needs to be done. There are those, and I happen to be one, who would argue that employees need to be involved in strategy development, not just tactical implementation. However not all employee bodies (or indeed bosses!) are ready for this, although it may just be that a forthcoming major change becomes a trigger for developing and the more actively involving employees.

When you do involve your employees, make it real. There is nothing worse than a sham attempt to obtain employee input that is subsequently completely ignored. Even in the extremely unlikely event that they have nothing constructive to add, they deserve some recognition and acknowledgements for the input alongside a coherent explanation of why you chose to ignore them.

So, rather than bang on about how important it is to involve your people I would like to offer you a challenge. The challenge is to set out your change proposal and ask your people about the good and the bad, what will help of what will hinder, hot has been missed in the proposal and what makes no sense to them whatsoever etc. You need to listen to them and it is perhaps more than a coincidence that an anagram of listen is silent.