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Change is a part of life—and your career.

Is easy to be excited about changes when you’re involved in the decisions. But team leaders and managers know all too well that an announcement (or even whispers) of organizational change can cause all kinds of havoc, even in the strongest company culture.

Leadership vs. Management

Leadership and management are different skills, but today’s leaders must have both. Try out this course from GLOBIS Unlimited to understand the difference, as well as when and why each skill is necessary for motivation, communication, and value.

People want to know what’s expected of them at work. Managing staff expectations when you’re trying to make the best strategic decisions for the company can be a stressful time for everyone.

Is it better to keep a lid on things until you’re sure of what will actually change? Or should you embrace transparency and communicate what the new work environment might be like, even if it’s not final? You don’t want to set unrealistic expectations, but a closed workplace culture often breeds negativity.

Stefan Sacre is the CEO of Carl Zeiss and a lecturer at GLOBIS University. In his GLOBIS Unlimited course, Navigating Change Successfully, he shares insights on how leaders can (and should) lead change within an organization.

The key, he says, is understanding how uncertainty can do more damage than good. Even disappointing news for your team members is better than no news at all. Below is an excerpt of his course in which he discusses why change happens, what happens with staff expectations when information is limited, and how to keep up motivation in times of uncertainty.

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Why Change Happens in the First Place

Stefan Sacre: When thinking about why changes occur, I think basically there are two ways: One is the external world that is changing. And for the other reason, the internal company structure is changing.

Strategy: Understanding the External Environment

To plan strategy on any level, you need to understand your company's external environment. In fact, your level of understanding can impact hiring, budgeting, marketing, or nearly any other part of the business world. Want to learn how to do all that? This course from GLOBIS Unlimited is the perfect first step!

These changes could be motivated from various angles. It could be to accommodate the growth in a company that makes organizational changes necessary, or a new strategy that comes with new people.

And very often, the word “change” does not carry the label of change. It may come in the form of innovations and improvements. But what’s common to all that is the result of change.

Why Leaders Should Manage Expectations with Certainty

Sacre: When thinking about the fears of employees when facing a change situation, I think mostly about the emotion—the negative emotions—of people. And the major, fundamental point is to answer the fear around us.

If you just receive the information that “Change is happening!” of course this could be a change for good or a change for bad.

I think our brain is wired to focus on the negative side. If good comes, we will accept it gratefully, but we worry more about the negative. If the communication in the situation leaves things very open about how things will develop, our mind is filling out these gaps with many negative pictures, assumptions, and theories.

Overall, I call this “uncertainty.”

To navigate this environment, how to address these uncertainties, you must replace uncertainties as much as possible with certainties. These certainties could, in fact, be unpleasant, but very often they are still better than uncertainty.

How to Raise Motivation in Times of Change

Sacre: So when change is introduced, it is obviously not clear what is happening. And this not knowing is creating negative feelings—anxiety, fear—and usually, all these gaps are filled out with rather negative expectations. In this case, the more you can clarify, the less these situations will be affected by negative thoughts.

But it’s not only certainties vs. uncertainties. It’s also the topic of motivation.

You are expecting that while implementing changes to an organization, everyone will continue working happily in the same way. But this may not happen if the organization is distracted and worrying.

So I see the connection between uncertainties and demotivation. Therefore, by creating certainties, we also see that the level of motivation is going up.

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