ABRACADABRA! Being the Change Agent

ABRACADABRA!

You are a genie, or an agent of change – whether you know it or not. This is especially true if you work for a #Salesforce Partner or a #MicrosoftDynamics Partner*.

You’re not just there to implement a new software, you are there to affect change – which is something that not everyone would embrace with excitement.

There are many ways to motivate change – from carrots to sticks.

Before that though, you should begin with empathetic, active listening. Get a sense of:
– where they are
– why they feel the way they do
– what are the things on their mind
– what they are worried about

You are going to find it difficult to help someone move to the direction you want if you don’t know where they are starting from.

Just listening will open the door to deeper conversation that could take you that one small step forward.

Sadly it doesn’t work for everything.

When the ninja refuses to wash his hair for x days in a row, I am all out of ’empathetic active listening’ – and I start waving the Stick of “banning all forms of computer games” to create some motivation. 🙄

Day 17 of #30daysofvideos challenge.

*This can also be true of anyone trying to initiate sustainable change within an organisation.

#OnThePeiroll
#ProjectManagement
#ChangeManagement
#Captioned

Transcription

When you’re trying to implement change, sometimes you’re going to encounter resistance as a Salesforce, or CRM consultant, when you go into an organisation, to try and understand how they do things, and what they want to achieve, so that you can help make things better.

One of the things that you might encounter is resistance to change. This is something that you’re to expect, because we are all human beings and we don’t like change. We don’t like sometimes the things that imposed on us when we’re not ready.

For example, what’s happened last year with the pandemic, and having to work from home and deal with kids, and so on and so forth.

So the key thing is that if you’re not ready for change, if there are reasons why you like the status quo, and you don’t like anything that affects it, then you’re going to be one of those people who prefer the notion of staying still.

When you go in to a client side, you can’t just think that you’re there to implement system, and everyone should get on board, because their company is paying for your time to go in to do that.

An organisation is made up of many, many people and there are times when user base or key portions of the user base isn’t very keen on using that sexy new CRM that you’re going to put in.

And one of the key things to understand is that everyone’s different and there are reasons why.

One of the tools that I use is really, really simple.
It’s just empathetic, active listening.
Understanding where they’re coming from.

So you might go in and say, “Hey, I’m here to understand how you run your sales processes”. Or “I’d like to know how you operate your call centre, and your different support services that you provide. Can you talk to me a bit about it?” And you might get from them a level of resistance such as, “Oh, I don’t know, I just do my job”.

So passive resistance, or outright, or “I don’t really know what you’re doing here, because what we’re doing is perfect as it is”. So there might be a range or spectrum of emotions that come at you, when you’re going into your job.

This by the fact, by the way, would affect anyone trying to make a change. So you might be an internal Change Manager, internal department trying to make some changes within the organisation.

The key thing here is just to listen and not to impose, sitting down with them and understanding: “I can hear that you sound quite frustrated about what’s happening. I’d like to understand more about how you feel”.

Or “It sounds like this is something quite unexpected. Can you tell me a bit more?” So just opening up and asking those very simple questions might give you the answers that you’re looking for, without explicitly looking for it.

And once you know where they coming from, and what the root of their frustration, their uncertainty in their fear is, that takes you one step closer to changing your approach, or finding a way that helps them get on board.

Before you start any thing that you do, the very first thing is just active listening. Truly engaging with the other party without anything, any agenda in your head, or any preconception or notions about how they feel or how they are.

The very first thing is just to listen, and you might find that it actually opens doors to the next step in the process.

I hope you found today useful and I’d like to see you again tomorrow, have a great day.

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