r10 hosted a well-received webinar on “How organisations are using an Agile Mindset to stay ahead in the changing world of work”.
The attendees submitted questions during the webinar around cultural changes, remote working challenges and lessons learnt. In a series of blogs, we are sharing the answers by r10’s People Advisory experts and presenters, Beth Cooper and Jo Flint. You can watch the webinar here.
Webinar Question #5: I love the sound of this but I’m worried about what my manager might think as they are more traditional, how can I overcome this?
I think this is a challenge that so many of us see, in different ways, within the working environment of how your enthusiasm and understanding may not necessarily be at the same pace of others.
There are two different elements of how you can tackle this.
- The first being active listening, it works both ways so speak with them and understand what their concerns are in regard to what you are proposing, then understand what it is that you could do to reassure them. It’s a great opportunity to experiment and test ideas. Try it, and agree together on a time period in which you review the test phase, and most importantly jointly decide what the success criteria are going to be, so you are both comfortable that if it works this way, you can continue with the new way of working.
- I would also think about it organizationally by focusing on what you have control over. Within your sphere, you can find your allies, people that you have transparent conversations with over social media channels and internal channels. You can ask if you can have a virtual catch up and talk through this in more detail and pick a problem that you have the power to solve. Then, once you’ve done it tell people about it, spread the good news because if you’re doing something effectively people want to know about it, they want to know the secret of your success. If we’re going to talk from a change perspective you can also start thinking about that ripple effect, if around 15% of people change the way that they are doing something it creates a ripple effect and therefore the change experienced becomes much bigger. It’s almost like a snowball that gains momentum and suddenly you’re dealing with a much bigger transformation.
Do you have a question? Get in touch!