What does it take to be an Effective Change Agent?

It was so much fun to host a Facebook Live talk show on April 2 on “What makes for an effective change agent,” with my colleagues Rob Greenly and Greg Collins. The technology is great, and the conversation was even better. Watch here: https://www.facebook.com/100004519807471/videos/977511429076175

See if your top characteristics show up in our list below:

Building trust:

Setting boundaries to establish trust
Maintaining confidentiality
Focusing on their agenda, being in service of the client
For Remote teams: paying attention to building relationships and trust virtually as a foundation to working together

Communication:

Helping people to be more candid with one another
Listening attentively, making sure I understand what the client needs from me, and asking powerful Qs to help them get clear;
Reflective listening for example: “Are you saying xxx?”
Creating common vocabulary, making sure the team has shared understanding of any jargon

Building capacity:

Building the capacity of the team to ask each other questions: paraphrasing, clarifying, so that we (the consultants) aren’t the only ones asking those questions
Helping the teams and individuals latch on to what we’re sharing so they don’t need us to continue the process in an ongoing way
Help leaders find a balance between getting results now vs. building capacity of their team over time

Best practices in Change management:

Finding people who have credibility to be part of the change effort
Helping leaders to be clear about where they want to go; helping them create a common understanding of where they and the team or orgn. are going
Helping people think more deeply to define the problem and the root causes rather than jumping to fix-it mode, when there’s lack of clarity about the problem.
Distinguishing between working on an orgl. challenge, in which we need to clearly define the problem vs. creating a vision of the desired future, which may be separate from (and additional to) working through an orgl. challenge.

We got great feedback from the audience/visitors in terms of what worked well: