Being a ‘Change’

Leader
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 Why are we talking
about this?
• Everyone in this room has a role in change leadership. We can share in this
challenge and share our experiences.

• Being a change leader is difficult. Inspiring staff, coalition/REOW members,

stakeholders to change their communities in ways that have never been seen
and in the face of opposition can be a daunting challenge.

• Increasingly complex communities and problems require talents, creativity, and

leadership of everyone.
video
“A leader is someone who
helps people get where they
want to go…by seeing the
opportunity for getting there.”
–Otis White
 Acknowledgements:
Adapted from “Leadership Development Academy” by Ellen B. Kagen,
MSW, Georgetown University, Leadership for Systems Change, sponsored
by ODMHSAS Systems of Care.

Today is just a brief overview.

 Management Vs
Leadership
“ Leaders have people follow them, while managers have people who
work for them. A successful business owner needs to be both a strong
leader and manager to get their team on board to follow them towards
their vision of success” – go2HR

“Leaders lead people. Manager manage tasks” – changingminds.org

 What kind of leaders
are we?
Management and leadership create different experiences and feelings
 What kind of leaders
are we?
Management and leadership create different experiences and feelings

Management Leadership
 What kind of leaders
are we?
Management and leadership create different experiences and feelings

Management Leadership
• Stable • Unstable
 What kind of leaders
are we?
Management and leadership create different experiences and feelings

Management Leadership
• Stable • Unstable
• Safe • Hard
 What kind of leaders
are we?
Management and leadership create different experiences and feelings

Management Leadership
• Stable • Unstable
• Safe • Hard
• Consistent • Uncomfortable
 What kind of leaders
are we?
Management and leadership create different experiences and feelings

Management Leadership
• Stable • Unstable
• Safe • Hard
• Consistent • Uncomfortable
• Calm • Anxious
 What kind of leaders
are we?
Management and leadership create different experiences and feelings

Management Leadership
• Stable • Unstable
• Safe • Hard
• Consistent • Uncomfortable
• Calm • Anxious
• Order • Chaos
 What kind of leaders
are we?
Management and leadership create different experiences and feelings

Management Leadership
• Stable • Unstable
• Safe • Hard
• Consistent • Uncomfortable
• Calm • Anxious
• Order • Chaos
• Status Quo • Resistance
 10 Habits of a ‘Change’
Leader (Unnatural Leader)
If you want to learn more….”Unnatural Leadership: Ten New Leadership Instincts” by
David L. Dotlich and Peter C. Cairo.
Steps:
1. Use teams of individuals with different types of skills and
experience to encourage creativity and breakthrough
thinking.
2. Conduct or participate in brainstorming sessions.
3. Set goals and objectives which encourage creativity and
innovation.
4. Recognize and reward suggestions for continuous
improvement.
5. Prevent fear of failure from blocking opportunities for
breakthrough thinking.
6. Learn how to overcome your own fears of “doing the
wrong thing” and taking prudent risks. Practice asking
yourself, “What’s the worst that can happen?”

#1
Refuse to be a
prisoner of
experience
Steps:
1. Admit your mistakes.
2. Encourage people to talk about how work is affecting
them.
3. Be willing to express your fears.
4. Create conversations with back and forth dialogue.
5. Engage in meaningful dialogue with people who aren’t
part of your group.
6. Adopt and encourage a learning mentality for parts of the
organization that you and your team don’t know much
about.
7. Make time for reflection and self discovery for yourself and
your team.

#2
Expose your
vulnerabilities
Steps:
1. Adopt a learning attitude toward your vulnerabilities.
Anticipate situations that give you problems and mentally
rehearse for them. Talk to others who have faced what
you are facing and get advice from them. Watch people
you believe handle the situations well.
2. Learn to look at negative feedback and criticism as
potentially useful information that you need to
understand more fully.
3. Think about how you handle high pressure situations and
identify ways you can handle them more effectively.
4. Solicit feedback from others regarding how you handle
stressful situations.
5. Make a point to observe how other leaders deal with
stressful situations.
6. Encourage your direct reports to acknowledge their
shadow side, and provide coaching and feedback that can
help them learn how to manage negative consequences.
#3
Acknowledge your
shadow side
Steps:
1. Use the paradox management tool for decisions that have
no real long-term solution.
2. Avoid trying to answer questions when there is no
solution just because you believe people can’t handle
uncertainty.
3. Pay attention to changes in the external environment that
can have an impact on a significant paradox you are trying
to manage.
4. Work on clarifying what is important to you (for example,
your values and beliefs), so it can be applied in situations
where the data available do not provide a clear direction
5. Be open about the existence of paradoxes, and teach how

#4
to manage them.
6. Challenge yourself to understand the upside and
downside (the competing forces) for each decision you
need to make.
Develop a right-
Versus Right
Decision-Making
Mentality
Steps:
1. Encourage people to say what’s really on their minds.
2. Don’t withhold your ideas and opinions, even if you don’t
agree with others.
3. Hold open monthly meetings with no agenda. Encourage
people to ask questions and communicate barriers
interfering with their effectiveness.
4. Spend time with your team to analyze barriers to timely,
honest, and clear communications.
5. Create task forces and project teams comprising people
with different experiences, skills and abilities.
6. Avoid shooting the messengers with bad news.
7. Make sure that all sides of an important issue get

#5
examined. Assign someone to be the devil’s advocate
8. Design meetings that encourage group discussion and
debate.
9. Survey the team at the end of the meeting to assess how
effective it was (e.g. was everyone’s voice heard?). Create teams that
Create Discomfort
Steps:
1. Spend time getting to know your direct reports as
individuals.
2. Express your confidence in their ability to deliver results.
3. Experiment with giving others the benefit of the doubt
instead of doubting their ability to deliver.
4. Pay attention to how frequently you communicate your
faith in others through your work, actions, and attitude.
5. Challenge your assumptions about trust, and whether
your expectations are impossible for people to meet.
6. Be sure that your actions match your words.

#6
Trust others before
they earn it
Steps:
1. Set a goal to review the performance of your direct reports
regularly.
2. Set stretch goals for your team.
3. Identify someone you respect who excels at coaching and
teaching. Ask her/him to coach you.
4. After every conversation with your direct reports, ask yourself,
“Have I left them stronger and more capable than before?”
5. Learn about the abilities, aspirations, and ambitions of your
staff, and incorporate this knowledge into your work with them.
6. Develop a plan for assessing each direct report’s need for
coaching. Have each one prepare a list of areas in which
he/she thinks coaching would be helpful. Meet individually
with ach person and agree on a coaching contract.
7. Set a goal to review each direct report’s performance once a
quarter and provide feedback.

#7
8. Don’t ignore performance problems; act as soon as they arise.
9. Talk to your direct report(s) on the level of involvement they
want from you in their work.
10. Learn how to be effective at giving and receiving feedback.
11. Set a goal for yourself to assess and develop a full
understanding of the knowledge, skills, abilities, and career Coach, rather than
12.
prospects of each of your direct reports.
Foster peer coaching by example; pick a colleague you trust, and only Lead and
Inspire
coach each other.
Steps:
1. Reward people based on their ability to connect to others.
2. Stay informed by being out in the marketplace and in touch
with customers, competitors, analysts, and academicians.
3. Develop principles that influence everyone in your organization
to work toward the same goals.
4. Identify colleagues whose support is important to your success,
and make it a point to have regularly scheduled meetings or at
least informal conversations over coffee/tea or lunch.
5. Think about departments and organizations that could benefit
from knowing what you are doing, and share information with
them.
6. Form a community of practice around a shared purpose. Check
out suppliers that have web-based products and services for
connecting people, such as particiapte.com,
communispace.com, or placeware.com.
7. Set a goal to learn about the priorities of other departments and

#8
functions.
8. Develop a plan for taking a short-term assignment in another
functional area.

Connect instead of
9. Arrange visits to other companies to benchmark best practices.
10. Look for assignment with exposure to multiple business
functions.
11.

12.
Don’t stay in your office. Make sure that you are connecting
with people and building relationships.
Seek out best practices both internally and externally.
Create
Steps:
1. Learn how to influence others effectively in a matrix structure
by building cross-organizational relationships with key people.
2. Engage in a meaningful dialogue with your team about your
style. Encourage constructive criticism and avoid defensiveness.
3. Use a more informal and spontaneous interactions to check in
on important projects.
4. Set a goal to empower your staff, and give them the freedom
to fail.
5. Pay attention to how much your staff micromanage their
teams/workgroups/coalitions.
6. Make a point to respect boundaries of others by not insisting
that people drop what they are doing and respond immediately.
7. Recruit top players who can be given independence to meet
their responsibilities.
8. Refrain from sending too many e-mails asking for status reports.
9. Spend time confronting your own anxiety about why you have

10.
difficulty letting go.
Let go of control by creating clear performance expectations.
Agree on checkpoints and milestones. #9
11. Don’t schedule meetings impulsively unless absolutely
necessary. Give Up Some
Control
12. Pay attention to how much you trust your team, and don’t be
afraid to delegate the tough issues.
Steps:
1. Be aware of the assumptions you are making every time
you make a key decision or take important actions.
2. Identify the obstacles that are standing in the way of
challenging the conventional wisdom of how things are
done in your organization. Set objectives, and take action
to overcome these obstacles.
3. Make time for activities that will help you gain new
perspectives on your work, including putting yourself in
new situations, listening to people with different points
of view, and exposing yourself to the ideas of first-class
thinkers.
4. Enroll others in challenging worn-out assumptions and

#10
crusading for change.
5. Spend time reflecting and challenging basic assumptions
about doing business.
6. Set a goal to act with courage, and challenge conventional
wisdom. Challenge the
7. Make a point of bringing new, energizing ideas and fresh
perspectives into your team. Conventional
Wisdom
Insert image https://youtu.be/A9yUS2OziDk
“We are the leaders we have
been waiting for.”
Possible Activities:

• What are some of the challenges of leading staff,

stakeholders, and/or coalitions to change your
community?

• What is working when leading staff, stakeholders,

and/or coalitions to change your community?

• What’s the biggest thing you can do to lead your

staff, stakeholders, and/or coalitions to have a
vision for change?