A short story to consider. Three employees (Jane, Tom and Sarah) are out at lunch. Jane announces to the other two that she is concerned about all of the gossip in the office around an upcoming merger. Specifically, over the last two days nearly nothing has been accomplished in her department because her fellow employees have been spending significant time talking about the merger and what it means for them. Jane notes that while she feels positive about the change overall, she doesn’t even know what to tell them because she certainly does not have all the information. And she is beginning to wonder if she should be more worried than she is, especially since they are obviously worried.
Sarah says she has heard a little about it from her manager but doesn’t know enough about the impact on the organization as a whole. She also notes that her co-workers seem distracted and they have been missing deadlines. Her manager has asked her to help the others feel positive about the change – but she has no idea where to start. She also does not want to be seen as supporting management and alienating her co-workers, many of whom are friends.
Tom says that two of his co-workers just gave their notice. When he asked why they were leaving, one of them told him that with all of this uncertainty over the last few months, she did not want to risk being out of a job. She would rather job hunt now before everyone else is job hunting at the same time! Tom is wondering if he should start job hunting too.
When we want employees to support change – as apparently must be done in this situation – we need to provide them information from a leadership perspective so that they can then support that change. When employees support change, other employees are more likely to embrace and also support that change. We can’t expect employees to embrace change when we don’t share information with them. There is always something that can be shared and employees do understand that not everything can be shared. Share what you can.
Thinking back to our story, consider the following:
- What is the problem?
- What should each of the employees – Jane, Tom and Sarah – do?
- What would you do in this situation?
