Leading So People Will Follow

Changing Course Well

Changing times makes it harder than ever to keep your word. Even leaders who try their hardest to do what they say they’ll do often find that circumstances beyond their control require them to rethink and change direction. And when that happens, it’s critical to be as trustworthy in making the change as in making the initial promise.

Pat recently found that she was going to have to approach a restructuring issue differently than she had anticipated and differently than she had communicated to some of her people. What made it even more complicated was that the redirection had come from her superiors and reflected an approach with which she wasn’t entirely comfortable. She thought deeply about how to communicate the change ...