Man lives in IKEA

It was the summer of 2000 and the temperature in the Israeli desert was over 90 degrees. Surprisingly, this didn’t bother me one bit since I was focused on learning and understanding how my organization, The Israeli Defense Force (IDF), operates. Hundreds of cadets and I were participating in a combined arms live fire exercise (CALFEX), in which we got to truly experience what other military units do, live their culture and also ride around in tanks and helicopters.

CALFEX was one of the most enlightening experiences of my military service and I believe it helped me become a better officer. The IDF and other armies, including the U.S. Army, go to such lengths to provide this experience to their cadets so that they can experience firsthand how they (and their unit) fit into the bigger picture and appreciate the combined power of their organization.

Recently, the Ketchum Pleon Change team in Munich worked with a client to help encourage one of the company’s executives to be more empathetic toward other colleagues during a merger process, and the exercise reminded me of an interesting article I came across in the German newspaper Suedeutsche Zeitung titled the “A Case for the Facilitator.”

The article discusses a new approach in change management that focuses on facilitating and how to avoid one of the most common reasons for failure in change programs: The missing sensitivity of executives when talking to their employees. Quite often, managers are under pressure during change programs and may not be fully aware of all their employees’ fears.

The article makes the case that a manager’s ability to be empathetic, and put himself or herself into the employees’ shoes, is what makes a crucial difference. Facilitating, as a new form of advice, is different from traditional counseling.

Facilitators, in this definition, are truly like therapists who listen, ask about personal problems and talk to the employees. It’s facilitators’ mission to find out why employees are frightened or apprehensive of change, and adapt themselves or their behaviors accordingly. In this way, facilitating means working out solutions with all people involved, not just implementing programs from the top down.

Another role of facilitators described in the article is helping to lead managers through workshops to get to know the instruments of “integrative leadership,” such as motivation techniques and constructive feedback.

But most important is self-reflection. The article suggests that only when you know yourself and your emotions well enough can you treat others with respect and fairness.

Speaking of emotions, facilitators say that repressing emotions is the worst thing to do during a change process. It’s the person who should be in focus during a change process – especially with their inner problems that make them hesitant to changes.

What drives change? Models on change and transformation suggest that it requires a cause – a critical reason why to change in the first place. This can be a less or more dramatic cause, commonly known as the sense of urgency, or the burning platform. Fair enough. Changing habits, patterns, beliefs and behaviors requires a lot of effort. So why the hassle if it wasn’t for a significant reason?  In reality this does not always seem to work out. Even the most dramatic situation – be it in personal or business life – does not necessarily get the change going. As change communication consultants, we usually address this kind of change resistance by reinforcing the cause; adjusting the cause story; spending time and effort on structuring the upcoming change process into goals, phases, and milestones; and creating toolkits and trainings for managers.