Change Management

Chapter 11
Communication Skills

Communication Skills
These skills are aimed at involving people
and encouraging commitment to the
change process
Unitarist (director, coach) vs. pluralist
(navigator, interpreter) view
Pluralist no amount of communication will
change a clash of interests

What communication skills does each change

image see as critical?

Key Communication Skills

Four key skills for communicating include:

Listening
Telling stories
Selling change upward
Toxic handling

Listening
There are four types of listening skills:

suspending judgment,
identifying assumptions,
listening for learning, and
Reflecting

Reflection exercise
Select a partner
Tell your partner a story about a time you lied or cheated
Justify your lying or cheating

Partner
suspend judgment and practice reflection
Identify the assumptions behind the justification
Share what you learned with your partner

Switch

Telling Stories
This is an effective way of helping employees
learn from past changes & painting pictures of
the future.
A key interpreter skill
Receives little training or management attention
why?
How can we train people in story telling?
Design an exercise

Selling Change Upward

Issue selling is a way of gaining senior
management attention to changes initiated from
below.
Message, timing, and channel are important
Elevator speech anyone?

Presentation techniques
Link to the logic of the business plan
Raise the proposal continuously
Package the issue incrementally

Bundling
Tie it to:
Profitability, market share, organizational image, or concerns of
key stakeholders

Toxic Handling
Some people in organizations take on a role of
handling the ill-effects of change processes and
absorbing these as a way of shielding others
from their negative impact.

Listening empathetically
Suggesting solutions
Working behind the scenes
Carrying the confidences of others
Reframing difficult messages

Have you ever seen a toxic handler in action or

been helped by one?

Change Conversations
Different change conversations should be used
at different stages of a change process.
Initiative conversations: these draw attention to the
need for change.
An assertion, request, or declaration

Conversation for understanding: this communicates

the type of changes needed and allows for a greater
appreciation of why this type of change.
Specifies conditions of satisfaction
Enables participation and involvement
Confirms the interpretations place on the change

Conversation stages ctd.

Conversations for performance: this focuses
on the actual change that is intended and how
progress will be monitored.

Promises are made

Obligations are entered into
Accountabilities are established
Deadlines are set

Conversation for closure: this signals the end

of the change
Acknowledgments, celebrations, rewards

Conversation stages ctd.

Omitting a stage may cause familiar
communication problems in the change
process
Such as?

Issues
Identifying transitions
can they be nonlinear?

Different perceptions of what stage the

organization is in
Impact of power imbalances
Can all managers be trained in all stages/skills?

Linguistic Modes & Imagery

Need for a balance of linguistic modes.
Ideals (express preferences), appeals (seek support), rules
(seek to control), deals (bargaining)
Over-reliance on one mode leads to problems
Success comes from using different forms at different stages

The use of metaphors influences the images of change.

Need to be in sync with the type of change
These change images include:

Machine: this is based on the fix and maintain view

Developmental: this is based on the build and develop view
Transitional: this is based on the move and relocate view
Transformational: this is based on the liberate and re-create view

Communication with external

stakeholders
Communicating with external stakeholders
is an important (albeit often neglected)
aspect of communicating change.
Research has focused on:
crisis management
impression management
corporate reputation

Some tactics
Impression management
Excuses, justifications, disclaimers,
concealment

Crisis management
Competing accounts, statement of regret,
dissociation (scapegoating)
Mortification, corrective action, bolstering
image, denial, shifting the blame

What is best practice?

Tyco Case
Imagine you are the new CEO of Tyco (or
Enron)
Write a script for your address to the
shareholders after 18 months in the position.
Pay attention to the appropriate use of
linguistic modes or metaphors in your change
conversation

Be prepared to role play your script