Everyone has a role to play

- I have been in all of the roles of organizational change. As a business owner, I was often the initiator. As a manager, I was often the implementer. As a consultant, I'm generally the facilitator. And as a member of organizations, I've most certainly been the recipient. In each of these roles there are some key things to be aware of to successfully navigate organizational change, and I want to talk you through each one of the four roles so that no matter which role you're taking on, you can manage it more effectively. At the highest level is change initiator. Change initiators are just that, the person that is identifying the need for change and calling for that change to happen. Who this is can vary depending on where in the organizational hierarchy the change is needed. The larger the change, generally the higher up the hierarchical chain the initiator is. You can initiate change at whatever level you are though. This can be personal change, adjustments at the team level, or shifts in the unit or divisional level. Skills you need to bring to bear to successfully initiate change include creating and communicating vision, coalition building, analytic skills, and determination. As a change implementer, you're the one responsible for making the change happen. You're the one taking the plan and putting it in place and guiding the team through it. You're the one that, at the end of the day, is responsible for the change being successful. Necessary skills you need to develop to be a great implementer include clear, concise communication, both up channel and down, a clear understanding of why the change is happening, high motivation and the ability to motivate others, strong organization and planning skills, analysis skills, to be able to tell what's working and what's not, and, finally, the ability to adapt to the unexpected. Change facilitators can be someone internal or external. As a consultant, this is one of the things I'm typically brought in to handle. The facilitators work with stakeholders to identify roadblocks and eliminate those roadblocks. Internal facilitators may not even have an official role in the change, but might have a natural ability to alleviate conflict. Skills that will help you facilitate change include some that identify potential roadblocks, like high emotional intelligence to see relational issues and analytical abilities to see structural or procedural issues. You should also develop skills to remove these roadblocks, like conflict management, mediation, problem solving, and strong communication. No matter where you are in your career, you have likely been a recipient of change. And I'm sure that most of you have had at least one bad experience. So there are some things you can do to make it easier on those that are impacted by any changes, whether you are the initiator or the recipient. When you keep the recipient in mind as you initiate and implement change, be sure they feel they have a voice throughout, give them some control over how changes are implemented. The biggest thing you can do is make sure that you have an open door to explore challenges as your team and customers face them. As a recipient, you can ease into change by recognizing two things, one, someone somewhere initiated this change thinking it would make things better. And, two, things are not going to go exactly as planned. When you embrace these two facts, you're more likely to see the change positively and be able to navigate the change in ways that benefit yourself and the team. No matter what your role is, change is going to happen. So being able to best manage whatever role you're in is going to make you able to manage that change much more effectively.