hi all
I've just been asked to prepare a workshop( about 6 hours) to a group of women leaders about the role of women leaders in managing change. does any one have ideas about a program, exercises or tips to help me in this endeavor
thank you
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4 Responses
more information needed
Dear Yousr
A "workshop"….or are you looking at making a presentation looking historically at the stated subject?
What is your "angle"? Are women different to men? If so, in what way and why?
What are you trying to achieve with this event? Inspiration, skill development, or is it simply an FYI "lecture"?
I’d suggest that without you being clear on these things there is little hope of getting much useful response
Rus
women leadership and change management
Thanks for your reply
Actually, a have a group of women that represent leaders from all walk of life( media, politic, public sector …) they share the fact that they are leaders. My purpose is to give them new insights about their roles of “ change agent”…. How to facilitate change, who to deal with resistance …. How to communicate vision. I aim also to help them in developing new skills in change management.
As I am designing my workshop, I am looking for exercises and ideas that would help me to enhance the impact of my stuff
Thanks for your interest
Change Mgt workshop
Explain what you intend to cover & the intended outcomes. By doing this early, you can revisit later & check everyone is happy outcomes have been met. Don’t make them too precise!
If the group hasn’t worked together before, prepare an ice-breaker/introduction – they need to "meet" each other. a 3 minute partner intro with "an interesting fact" works well.
As you’re covering change management, allow time for your audience to articulate barriers – Post-it notes that can be put up on a specified wall space are a good idea. Assure people you’ll go back to these. You may find it helpful to have a slide that covers broadly what the barriers might be – people feel more secure if they think barriers are common but not insuperable, but let them get these out of their system before you show / discuss!
Though not specifically aimed at/tailored for women….
…here are a few thoughts.
1. As leader it is not your job to plan the detail of change, but to have a vision of what the change will result in and to articulate that and, almost more importantly, the rationale for the change (ie not change for the sake of change)
2. People are worried about the effect of any change; a disturbance of the status quo has consequences….if you aren’t open about the probability of change from the very outset people leap to conclusions. this is especially true if there are rumours (squashing them just makes it worse). As soon as you think there is going to be any change tell people, even if you are saying "We’ve got to change, we are going to change but we don’t yet know what that change will entail."
3. Get resistance out into the open and work like crazy to find real answers to the resistance….get the people who actually do the work to help, don’t plan in isolation, people often have the solutions that the leader can’t see.
4. Have a look at the topic "Communicating Change" at http://www.peoplealchemy.co.uk, you can get a free trial and I’m sure that you’ll find some useful stuff here.
5. Remember to reinforce the fact that people often revert after change to the old ways…a little exercise to demonstrate this is as follows; pair off the delegates, ask them to stand facing each other and look closely at their partner to observe and note their appearance; which hand is their watch on, are they wearing rings, how are they dressed, how is their hair styled etc. Then get them to turn away from each other and make a couple of changes to their appearance. Get them to face each other again and to spot the differences………..did they get them all? Were they significant? Why did they make these changes?
Thank them and carry on…then later ask someone what changes their partner had made….get a list then ask the partner if they have maintained the changes or reverted to their previous state……99% of the time people go back to the way they were, Why? a) they didn’t have a rationale to keep the change permanent, b) it was imposed on them, not their choice, c) it was uncomfortable so they didn’t persist and so on
I hope this helps
Rus