DA 6

After reading “Leadership Styles for the Five Stages of Radical Change,” consider the stages of
change and what is required of a leader at each stage. Using your current industry locate an
example of a recent or current disruption and discuss how you (as a leader) or another leader
close to you lead through the change. Was it effective or not? Why or why not? What did you
learn about leadership from this experience?
In article, “Leadership Styles for the Five Stages of Radical Change,” Reardon, Reardon, &
Rowe (1998) discuss five stages of radical change, and say that, leaders are required to pursue an
appropriate leadership style suitable for each stage. The stages they discussed are planning,
enabling, launching, catalyzing and maintaining.
The first stage of radical change which is planning, involves collecting vital information,
evaluating options and choosing alternatives, and a logical/inspirational style is most appropriate
for this stage. The second stage, enabling, involves conniving people involved the change by

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explaining the plans and assisting them prepare for the change. The logical, inspirational and

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supportive styles are the three appropriate styles for the enabling stage. The third stage is the

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launching stage, at which, leaders use logic and command to carry out the plans and deliver
results. Catalyzing is the fourth stage. This stage entails motivating and supporting staff through

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the change process and handle different uncertainties. The next and final stage is maintaining, in
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which leaders review progress and guide teams through the change using logic, inspiration and
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compassion (Reardon, Reardon, & Rowe, 1998).
In my current industry, we recently introduced two changes. One was to move to a centralized
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assessment of customs declarations and the other to move from manual to electronic filing and
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payment of taxes. These changes were critical the organization. As member of the transformation
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and modernization team, I watched the changes go through the five stages. We set up separate
project teams for each of these changes. The teams took several months to plan the for the
change, gathering all the necessary baseline information. This was followed by enabling stage in
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which we communicated the change and helped employees to understand why the change was
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important, what their roles will be, and how it supported the overall mission of the organization.
For us, the change did not only affect employees; it affected the entire business community
(importers, custom brokers, large taxpayers, etc.) When we hit the launch stage, we started
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experiencing protest from various segments of the business community about the centralized
customs assessment. Though we had engaged them prior to the launch through the chamber of
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commerce, we had to go back to the wider business community to educate them about the
change. We took another 3 months to resolve the issues and we had to continuously engage the
stakeholders through the catalyzing stage. It was a time-consuming process. We are in the
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maintaining stage and regularly reviewing progress to ensure we are achieving the goals for the
change (one of which is reducing customs clearing time, which is a major indicator of the World
Bank annual Doing Business Report).

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 Reardon, K.K., Reardon K.J., & Rowe, A.J. (1998). Leadership styles for the five stages of
radical change. Acquisition Review Quarterly, 2.
https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/848267/mod_book/chapter/237965/leadership_styles_for
_5_stages.pdf

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