Managing All-in-One For Dummies

Book VI

Managing Business Change

Five Ways to Build Trust during Change

• Actively listen. Open your ears, make eye contact, and have empathy. As a change leader, you build trust by first listening to understand the other person's perspectives and opinions, and then focusing on leading change, not the other way around.
• Be credible. Change leaders back up their vision for change with resources and action. This means setting targets that the organization can achieve and being genuine when talking about the vision. Then walk the talk and make sure resources are dedicated to the change to make it happen. Don't exaggerate the scope of change or the expected results.
• Be open and honest. Be cooperative with information. When employees ask questions about the future of the change, don't misrepresent the facts to make things sound better. Instead, be compassionate and offer what information you can.
• Create an environment of mutual respect through solutions that suit both you and your employees. Leaders often make the mistake of believing everyone has or should have the same motives as they do. Find out what your employees’ motives are and tell them that you want the change to meet their goals, too.
• Help employees resolve conflict. One of the best ways to build trust is through effectively resolving conflict among group or team members.

Leading change is definitely challenging, but you ...