Change is not transition. In a time of constant and increasingly rapid change, transition is often an afterthought...until people we lead get stuck.
How can we become leaders who can lead through change and the transitions that change invokes?
Bunker and Wakefield in their book, Leading with Authenticity in Times of Transition (Center for Creative Leadership), lift up the following 3 steps:
1. Examine your mental models of leadership. What we believe about leadership deep down, from what we have learned in our studies and experiences, will be what we default to when we experience challenges to completing changes we are leading. These may not be enough to lead people through.
2. Understand that change and transition are different. The former involves how processes, activities, and such become different. Transition describes what the effects of change have on the emotional core of people we lead and how these emotions are acted out.
3. Improve your ability to learn. Increasing your ability to learn increases your ability to adjust to change and transition.