Join Blanchard consultants Jim Atwood and Alan Youngblood at The Ken Blanchard Companies LeaderChat blog beginning at 10:05 a.m. Pacific Time for a 50-minute Q&A session.
Jim and Alan will be stopping by right after they finish their WebEx webinar on Keeping People Focused and Productive during Uncertain Times. Over 400 people will be participating in the webinar and many will be gathering at the Blanchard blog to ask follow-up questions.
If you have a question that you would like to ask Jim or Alan, just enter this thread or click on the COMMENTS hyperlink near the title of this post. Type in your question in the space provided and hit SUBMIT COMMENT. Jim and Alan will answer as many questions as possible until they have to leave at 11:00 a.m. Pacific.
And if you can’t stay, be sure to stop by later and see all the questions that were asked. Or better yet, hit the RSS FEED button on the right-hand column and receive updates on a daily basis.
Hi Everyone!
I’m starting the Webinar now, but Jim and I will be back in an hour to answer your questions.
Alan
Hi guys–here’s a question we didn’t get to in the webinar. How do you deal with an employee who might be defensive about changing?
Some people are “wired” to see changes negatively. You may want to adjust your approach so that they can understand the change before judging the change. I would also be curious to understand what is bothing them about the change because they may understand something that I don’t about the impeding change.
Here’s another question from today’s webinar. Uncertain times can lead to creativity, yet you mentioned the importance of stability. Any thoughts on how to maintain a balance between both ideas?
It is important not to confuse stability with stagnation. The balance is to use creativity to address the emerging issues. Then you help people see the constancy that exists (ie: organization’s mission).
We now look to our monthly meetings in our department as ‘more bad news.’ We have also been told we need to do the ‘core’ of our business since we are ‘doing more with less’ people.
Budgets are being written currently for implementation October 1, 2009 and we know so far we will need to lose people. In fact, our boss has told us ‘if you see a job you like-apply for it.’
After every meeting moral goes down for a few days, whispering occurs, and then finally its over. Yet, one can tell everyone is worried. What can be done to keep moral ‘up’? How do you get people to think of writing new mission/vision statements based on the new direction we are heading when people just want to be sure they have a job-which cannot be promised?
Hi Stephanie…It sounds like your dealing with the Information Concerns and Personal Concerns of change. I would suggest the leader tell the people how big of a problem this is going to be. How many people will have to find new positions. I would not expect people to put full energy into creating a revised mission/vision statements until they understand if they will even be in the department at that point.
Here’s another question that came in from the webinar–what’s the biggest challenge with keeping people focused during uncertain times?
To help keep people focused you want consistency to the messages you are giving to your people. In addition you have to control as much as possible the interuptions that your people are experiencing (ie: cellphone, iphones, blackberries, unnecessary meetings) to keep their energy focused on the critical outcomes.
Thank you attending today. If you have any additional questions, feel free to post here and we will be checking the site daily.