Managing Change

Week 4: Leading & Facilitating Change

Dr. Joshua R. Moon (SPRU)

October 2023

SPRU –
SPRU Science Policy
- Science Research Unit
and Technology Policy Research
 Outline

• Models of Change Agency

•Leading Change •Facilitating Change

•Types of leaders •Primary tasks
•Stories •Consulting Types
•Distributed Leadership •Facilitating Change
•Leadership Styles •Change Kaleidoscope
•Facilitation Skills

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 Essay Drop-Ins
Thursdays 12:00-13:00 every week (starting Thursday 2nd
Nov)

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queue

My office is Jubilee 385 (top of the central stairs, turn right

and right again).

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 Change Agency

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 Agency in Change
Who is active in change? Who is responsible for change?

“A Change Agent is the facilitator of the change.

He/she helps the Sponsor and the Implementers stay aligned with
each other.”
O’Neill (2000)

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 Models of Change Agency
(Caldwell, 2003)
Model Description Strengths Weaknesses Example

Leadership Leaders or Senior Clear vision, power, Top down change may
Executives who and authority to be too directive and
envision strategic ‘make change unresponsive
change happen’

Management Mid-level managers Translate vision to Issues of capacity to

who adapt and carry action, nearer to the control, possibly
forward strategic ‘coal face’ with tacit unequipped for
change knowledge and access responsibility, senior
to feedback managers can simply
shift the blame
Consultancy Operate at multiple Can coach, advice, Can be detached and
levels to provide and work with may have no power or
advice, expertise, multiple levels, authority to force
project management, expertise in change change, may also be
and facilitation management, and driving for short-term
processes (ideally) objective to delivery in order to
the change move on
Team Change is effected by Diversity in team gives Can be just as
a group of individuals change management dysfunctional as the
across management, expertise and organization itself, or
functional experts, business knowledge, can become hyper-
and employees at all and more people to insular and isolate
levels network and build themselves from the
support rest of the
organisation
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 Leading Change

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 Leading change – Types of Leaders

• For Bennis, leaders have and act with vision

• For Kotter, leaders lead not manage
• For Bass, leaders build a following

Visionary (Bennis) Active (Kotter) Transformative (Bass)

Have a guiding vision Set Direction Raise a sense of purpose

Demonstrate passion Align people Have charisma

Act with integrity Motivate people Inspire followers

For all three, leaders need to understand where the change leads and the
process from here to there.

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 Leadership Styles
Style Description Problems

Coercive Useful in a crisis, uses social Limited when used long-term,

pressure to coerce employees causes stress and mis-trust
into action
Authoritative ‘Visionary’ style that can get Requires a credible, respected,
turnaround quickly and enthusiastic leader.
Affiliative Helps to repair relationships and Must be used in connection with
trust other styles for direction-setting
Democratic Effective when expertise is Not useful when used in
distributed, and operates as a inexperienced teams
facilitator
Pace-setting Useful in highly motivated Not employable long-term,
teams exhausts teams
Coaching Useful for teams up-skilling or Bad coaching or unmotivated
dealing with challenges staff will make this style not
work

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 Storytelling & Leading Change

For Gardner, leaders often have a story which gives a

background but also allows followers to picture a future state.

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 Sensemaking
“our brains do not passively sense the world - they knit it from moment to
moment by braiding and knotting remembered encounters from the past”
(Francis, 2018, p.220)

“reality is an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create

order and make retrospective sense of what occurs” (Weick, 1993, p.635)

Neuroscience - “the individual is constantly sensing the world and previous

experiences shapes how the world is sensed and the ways in which those
senses are interpreted.” (Hutton, 2019, p.40)

Organisation Studies – “sensemaking is a collection of individual cognitive

and active processes which constitute the making of organizations and their
behaviours.” (Hutton, 2019, p.40)

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 Embodying the story

Leaders embodying a story must be cautious to actually

embody that story, otherwise come across as a fraud or fake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S0FDjFBj8o&ab_channel
=TEDxTalks

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 Vision isn’t everything!
(Heifetz & Laurie, 1997; Lipman-Blumen, 2002)

Leadership is a human quality!

Global environment now requires dealing with interdependencies and

people so leaders need six qualities:

• Ethical & political sense • Think far, act short

• Authenticity • Lead through expectation
• Politics of Commonalities • Quest for meaning

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 The Hero Leader’s downfall
Senge (1999) found that the traditional view of the leader as ‘hero’ is not
necessarily true, particularly in contexts of crisis or high change

Employees
(New)
aren't able to
Organisational
challenge new
Crisis
status quo

Aggressive/Proa
New CEO to
ctive reforms to
deal with crisis
deal with crisis

In this cycle, no new learning is happening – just constant churn and change
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 Distributed Leadership
Senge (1999) also found that leadership in many companies is
distributed across multiple types:

•Local Line Leader – The front line, lynch-pins in change, focused on

their own teams

•Executive Leader – Board members, change doesn’t start with these

but they provide infrastructure, mentoring, and role modeling for
change

•Network Leader – Significant change occurs in the interstices

between groups & projects, so individuals connecting across
boundaries are important leaders in partnering

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 Kotter’s eight accelerators (2012)
(machine, political, organism)

1. Establish a sense of urgency

2. Form a guiding coalition
3. Create a vision
4. Communicate the vision
5. Empower others to act on the vision
6. Plan and create short term wins
7. Consolidate improvements and produce still more change
8. Institutionalise new approaches

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 Consulting in Change

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 Consulting in Change

Primary tasks of consultants (Block, 2000):

•Establish a collaborative relationship with the organization

•Solve problems long-term, not just short-term

•Pay attention to both the technical problem and the social

context

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 Consulting in Change
The Expert The Extra Pair of The Collaborator
Hands

Brought in precisely This person is brought in This role is more socially

because change requires because the organization expert and can make joint
knowledge that the lacks capacity for change, sense of change, this often
organization doesn’t have, so the role is less about takes the role of
consultant plays a role in knowledge or expertise but facilitation and mediating
directing change simply helping out between leadership and
‘coal face’
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 Facilitating at different levels
Individual Team Organisation
• Help people through the • Help teams identify the • Understand the strategic
learning cycle need for change need for change
• Be clear about practical • Understand how • Help organisations plan
steps for change teamwork can achieve change/ deal with
• High-quality dialogue change emergent change
enables consultants to • Understand requirements
balance advocacy with for change
inquiry • Ensure teams perform all
• Understand peoples’ stages of team change
learning cycles,
motivations, an
personalities

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 Change Kaleidoscope

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 Social Skills in Change Agency

Argyris (1990) – Organisational Defences

“Actions or policies that prevent individuals or segments of the organization

from experiencing embarrassment or threat. Simultaneously they prevent people
from identifying and getting rid of the causes of the potential embarrassment of
threat.”

These defences can:

1. Bypass errors and act as if they don’t exist
2. Prohibit discussion of the bypass
3. Make the prohibition undiscussable.

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 Social Skills in Change Agency

Nevis (1987) – Five basic roles of consultancy

1. Be attentive to the client by observing at multiple scales
2. Be aware of your own experience and be able to share these
constructively
3. Be focused on the energy (or lack thereof) in different areas of a
client system
4. Be facilitating meaningful contact between different areas of a
client system (including yourself)
5. Help the client to be aware of the change process and its own role
in that process

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 Social Skills in Change Agency

Principles of presence (Tolbert & Hanafin, 2006)

•Be honourable – act your values, take a position, state the
obvious, and speak the unspeakable

•Be an effective change agent – Facilitated enhanced

interaction, model a methodology, cultivate an environment
of experimentation, produce results for the client

•Be curious – show genuine interest in the client, be

interested in people, explore relationships

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 Social Skills in Change Agency
Kahn (2001) – facilitating conditions for change
•Optimum range of anxiety
•Trusting movements towards others
•Available, competent holding
•Competent receiving
•Resilient boundaries
•Positive experiences and outcomes

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 Social Skills in Consulting

Block (2000) – Stances for sanity

•Choose learning over teaching
•See learning as a social adventure
•Know the struggle is the solution
•See the question as more important than the answer
•Mine the moments of tension for insight
•Focus on strengths rather than deficiencies
•Take responsibility for one another’s learning
•Let each moment be an example of the destination
•Include ourselves as learners
•Be authentic

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 Leading vs. Facilitating -
Conclusions

•Regardless of whether you’re leading or facilitating change,

significant social awareness and skills are required.

•Both leading and facilitating are as much about networks and people
as they are the technical ideas

•Always remember that change happens to people, you need to

engage with change at all three levels of an organisation

SPRU –
SPRU Science Policy
- Science Research Unit
and Technology Policy Research