Not surprising, attributes like trust, flexibility, and collaboration emerged for most organizations. What captured the essence of culture were the stories he told about the pictures. For example, at one organization there was a tradition of having breakfast together one day a week. This was a simple affair: Employees would bring food from home to share, spend time chatting with colleagues, and then start their day. For many, this could seem like an inconsequential event, but for the employees of this organization, the sharing of food, time, and friendship was greatly valued. Take this away and something very fundamental to the health of this organization would be disturbed.
Change Management Versus Change Leadership
When we think about undertaking organizational change, we need to understand values and culture, as people evaluate change by whether it supports their values. Too many change efforts fail because they ignore the human side of change.
No doubt, every independent school is undertaking some sort of change initiative today, as they evolve to meet the needs of students for a world that looks quite different from that of a decade ago. To be successful, school leaders need to understand the difference between change management and change leadership and their very different impacts on culture. Although these terms are often used interchangeably, they are quite different and can mean the difference between success or failure when driving change. Writing at Forbes.com, author and professor John Kotter describes the difference in this way:
Change management, which is the term most everyone uses, refers to a set of basic tools or structures intended to keep any change effort under control. The goal is often to minimize the distractions and impacts of the change. Change leadership, on the other hand, concerns the driving forces, visions, and processes that fuel large-scale transformation.
To drive effective change in schools today, I believe we need to focus more on change leadership and less on change management. The former can be messy and hard, but usually provides much better results. John G. Bruhn, who has written extensively on change, primarily in the health care fields, offers valuable insights on the connection between change and human empowerment. He suggests that change leaders first and foremost believe that the people who work in an organization are the greatest asset in change efforts, while change managers tend to see people as obstacles to change. In my experience, change efforts often die early because we are overly focused on what we perceive as roadblocks. We begin to call out people who will be obstacles to change and fail to launch a change initiative because moving them along will be difficult, if not impossible.
In The Health Care Manager, Bruhn suggests that “the core idea of successful change leadership is to tie the value fulfillments of all employees of the organization to desired goals. … Change leaders protect the culture of the organization while creating change. They believe that they have a moral obligation to involve the entire organization in planning its destiny.” He suggests the differences between change leaders and change managers in the table below:
Using Emotional Intelligence to Adapt to Change
Change is a two-way street though. Just as leaders must consider the community’s culture and values in leading change initiatives, community members must open themselves up to change. Bestselling author and theorist Daniel Goleman suggests that we need to call on our emotional intelligence (EI), particularly the skill of adaptability, in order to embrace change. In “Train Your Brain for Change,” he describes that people develop many routines to get things accomplished, that these routines become ingrained over time, and that they keep us from seeing or choosing alternatives. We need to train our brains to become more adaptable. He outlines the following path, which he describes as “Listen Inside, Look Outside, and Step Outside.”
"Listen Inside" means tapping into emotional self-awareness to recognize what you are feeling, how it impacts your behavior, and whether you are operating from habit.
"Look Outside" is shorthand for looking beyond your usual information sources, paying attention to data that contradicts your current thoughts. This means tapping into skills in organizational awareness, another EI competency.
"Step Outside" involves intentionally stepping beyond your comfort zone and seeking out new experiences, opinions, and environments.
Our journey from rejecting to leading change must begin with internal listening so that we can understand our own emotions around change. Psychologists rightly point out that with all change comes a sense of loss, but is that the only emotion we are feeling, or are we resistant to change because of a wide range of drivers? Kandi Wiens and Darin Rowell, writing in Harvard Business Review, suggest that to regain a sense of control amid change we must first identify our specific emotional response to the particular change. Is it fear, anger, denial, confusion? Once you identify the emotion you can understand more fully your internal blockers. The authors note that this can help you to “separate the emotional reaction and story you are hearing in your head from the actual events.” When you are able to look at those events clearly you can shift your thinking from what changes are “happening” to you to focusing on how you can take a leadership role that benefits both you and the organization.
The education landscape is changing around us at an incredible pace. In January, the announcement that Hampshire College, a well-known and respected college, may not recruit a freshman class because of concerns about long-term sustainability, was a wake-up call for us all—the foundations upon which we once stood are shifting. Every school, no matter how successful, needs to continue evolving to stay relevant. To do so, everyone at the institution needs to embrace their role as a change leader in their particular context. We also need to be honest with ourselves about how we may be a roadblock for needed change. We can and must alter that behavior and embrace change if we are to be leaders of the Third Education Revolution.
