Help your coworkers to change roles
During organizational changes, you carefully plan out training sessions and redefining roles. And that’s a good start – but you may be underestimating how tough it is for your colleagues to switch roles.
Changing roles could mean, for instance, joining the board of directors. At the executive level, change is often facilitated by a coach, and everything goes smoothly.
But what happens when some of the tasks usually performed by, say, your management accountant are automated? You train her in new tools and processes. But have you thought about how her roles and identity are changing? How you can support her as she makes the transition?
- Identify the main roles the accountant currently performs. Is she the team facilitator, the point of contact for internal clients, the expert, the mediator, the Swiss army knife, the time keeper? If you find it hard to think beyond the job title, think in terms of archetypes.
- How will these different roles be impacted by the change? Which roles need to be given up? Which will need to be developed?
- Which roles will help her manage the transition phase? Should she spend less time as the team facilitator and more as the “MacGyver”?
It’s your job to clarify these changes with your team, and to keep an eye out for potential conflicts between different roles.
To go further
”How organizational change disrupt our sense of self”
Hal Gregersen & Roger Lehman, (MIT Sloan Management Review, may 2021).
© Copyright Business Digest - All rights reserved
