A Reality Check For Change
Want to know the real truth about change management? If people really believed in the change you are proposing, they would already be doing it!
Change Management
Reduce employee resistance to change with award-winning change management speaker Garrison Wynn, CSP. Garrison is renowned for his dynamic blend of original high-impact humor, customized research driven content and proven solutions for successful change.
Change Management Keynotes
Change Is Mandatory...Stress Is Optional
Change is something we all have to deal with, but the stress that accompanies change is more of choice. In this heavily researched session, Garrison applies his signature humor to a very serious topic. This fun, comprehensive program offers tools and tips for getting through big change with very little stress. More importantly, it creates an emotional shift for attendees as they see how much control they have over how change affects them. This session also shows attendees how stress is more about what we believe than it is about what is actually happening. From embracing big transitions in technology to dealing with growth or downsizing, this presentation helps leaders, employees and customers implement necessary changes with minimal resistance.
Making The Most Of Difficult Situations
Changing Markets, Changing Times
This funny, insightful keynote combines relationship building with no-fluff motivation and change to deliver real solutions in uncertain times. Garrison examines the challenges we face and shows how we can laugh at our problems while using them as catalysts for success. This session covers a lot of ground and provides no-cost, easily implemented, proven solutions that your people can use right away.
- Easily Customized Segments Include
- New people, new products and new approach
- Dealing with new leadership direction
- How to get "buy-in" on change quickly
- Nobody wants to be a "senior beginner"
- Embracing mergers and acquisitions
- Dealing with the resistance to change
- Technology changes and procedural shifts
- Change makes us better?
- Action and adaptability creates opportunity
Available in Motivational, Sales and Management versions.
Communicating Change Management
How Management Can Motivate People To Listen
Resistance to change is the issue. Change happens; and while we can’t control much of the world changing around us, we can control how we respond.
We can choose to anticipate and embrace changes or resist them. When things change, people are afraid they will no longer be experts. They will have to learn the new way, and no one wants to be a continuous senior beginner. Our studies show that to make change work, we have to prove to our key people that the change means getting better (or at least equal) results than the old way, assure them that their experience has value, and then get them to spread that message through the organization.
When you tell someone you know exactly how they feel, you rob them of their uniqueness. Our three-year study of top communicators showed that when someone tells you their core issues and you say, “we had a situation exactly like that last month, and as a matter fact the guy looked just like you, and this is what we did,” you create your own resistance. They will then try to show you how their problems are special and need more of your attention. However, if you acknowledge the difficulty of their problem and then share your experience in similar situations (the key word being similar), they are more likely to use your solutions.
Remotely Awesome Leadership
How to manage faraway teams with near-perfect results
Without the personal power of onsite encounters, weekly or daily meetings, and the ability to visibly connect and track what people are doing, employees can feel uninformed and distracted. Good remote leadership requires a specific insight that creates a culture of commitment and productivity. And while email, phone, IM, voice text, and Zoom help a lot, those are just the tools to get a job done and not the solutions that will achieve your goals. This fun, heavily researched and virtually delivered session provides the actions and insights that allow leaders to be influential regardless of location.
- Communicating what a good job looks like when it's finished — not just the steps to get there
- Creating clarity and developing a culture of timely communication
- Removing homebound worker distractions
- Improving productivity without micromanagement
- Remotely managing activities and goals
- Building and maintaining motivation
- Creating trust that fuels engagement and performance
Creating A Culture of Loyalty
Reducing employee turnover and job dissatisfaction
The majority of anonymous employee surveys show that most workers do not feel valued, heard, or supported in ways that will keep them in their current job long term. In a recent anonymous survey of younger workers (ages 22–35), an unprecedented 70% indicated they would consider leaving their job in 2023! Survey results show a big drop in loyalty that many employers find alarming.
This highly focused, entertaining session shows leaders and influencers at all levels how to consistently create a sustainable culture of loyalty. This is not the view from 30,000 feet; it’s a high-energy, direct connection to the tools and tactics that are dramatically improving employee retention right now.
- Making sure your people feel valued and supported daily
- How to be right without making people wrong
- Forensic listening: Listening to those who have not felt heard in the past
- Eliminating quiet quitting by improving the employee experience
- Making work worth it: Fix the job, not just the worker
- Managing expectations and emotions
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Change management speaker Garrison Wynn's strategies for a smoother transition with less resistance: Challenge, Motivate and Educate
Our natural reaction to change, even in the best circumstances, is to resist. Awareness of the business need to change is a critical ingredient of any change and must come first.
There is no better way to minimize resistance to change than to involve those responsible for implementing it and those affected by it. If there is no involvement early on in the planning, during the implementation and throughout perpetuation, the change effort will fail. When people feel that they are valued participants in planning and implementing the change, they are more likely to be motivated toward successful completion.
Research shows that executive involvement is the greatest contributor to change management success..If people don't know "what" the change is and "why" it's being implemented, then "how" to implement the change is a mute point. Change leaders must show alignment with senior management's business objectives. and back up words with behaviors and actions that support change.
Garrison’s Change Management Keynotes Deliver Proven Solutions To Top Change Issues That Managers And Change Leaders Can Implement Right Away.
- Critical management mistakes during change: learn how to avoid them
- Receiving collecting feedback and creating open communication
- Overcoming employee resistance to change
- Obtaining support from all levels
- Effective ways to approach the change management process
- The greatest contributors to the success of a change management program
- Defining the role of top management
- Discovering the most effective methods of communication
- A good change management team member: what are the most important criteria?
How Are Your Senior Managers, Mid-Level Managers And Frontline Supervisors Equipped To Manage Resistance To Change?
During organizational change, perception equals reality: The level of stress an employee feels during organizational change is proportional to the level of perceived threat. Managers need to anticipate and adjust their communication to minimize the perception of threat during change.
Garrison Wynn’s change management keynote presentations address common problems leaders and change management teams face during mergers, acquisitions and organizational change using high-impact humor, research results from highly successfully managers and organizations, customized content based on interviews and/or change assessments with your key people.
Garrison is consistently chosen as the keynote speaker for events by Fortune 500 corporations, government, nonprofits, secular industry organizations and associations that want to move beyond the limitations of traditional “best-practices” and set breakthrough objectives to achieve maximum success.
- Research on corporate culture has shown that organizations will not be able to sustain excellent performance over the long haul unless they have a corporate philosophy allowing them to adapt to a changing environment.
- A survey of 500 executives concluded that resistance was the main reason why organizational changes fail.
- A recent study found that 60% of the reengineering projects that failed were due to employee resistance.
Tips For Change Managers
Resistance Management (tactics for systematically managing resistance)
The eight most common beliefs and reasons that people resist change
There isn’t any real need for the change
The change is going to make it harder for them to meet their needs
The risks seem to outweigh the benefits
They don’t think they have the ability to make the change
They believe the change will fail
Change process is being handled improperly by management
The change is inconsistent with their values
They believe those responsible for the change can’t be trusted
Managing The Journey: A Formal Communication Plan For Change
It is important for executives to communicate a structured change process showing where the company is going, how they are going to get there and what results they expect at the end.
The Manager as A Change Advocate
When managers and front-line supervisors communicate well with employees, understanding their fears and misgivings, they can find ways to not only help employees through the transition but to involve employees in the process thereby building ownership for the change and increasing accountability
Sending A Clear And United Message
Research shows that executive involvement is the greatest contributor to change management success. If people don’t know “what” the change is and “why” it’s being implemented, then “how” to implement the change is a mute point. Change leaders must show alignment with senior management’s business objectives and back up words with behaviors and actions that support change.
Communicating Change Objectives: For Management
- How to be right without making others wrong
- The truth about team building: myths and motivators
- Creating a plan for success: what the most successful do differently
- The flywheel effect: making change work
- How create consistency without robbing people of their uniqueness
- Listening like a leader: the truth about trust
- How to get people to listen to you
- How top auditors succeed: our customized research
Everything You Wanted To Know About Effective Questioning Techniques But Were Afraid To Ask
- How to create the defined outcomes you want your questions to deliver
- Creating questions that identify needs without bruising egos
- The five best questions in the world
- How to customize the best questions for your audit process
- Open- and closed-ended questions and how to use them
- How to identify issues that are not being discussed
- How to detect the reoccurring patterns of dishonest answers
Face To Face Communications
- Being prepared: when you are on the firing line
- Organized information gathering techniques
- Effective processes: ask, listen, agree, and recommend
- How to avoid an argument
- How get people to agree with you
- How to build rapport quickly: relationship management
- Voice tone and sincerity
- Overcoming objections
Creating An Open Environment For Telling The Truth
- How to help people move through change comfortably
- The three reasons people don’t tell the truth
- Job protection vs. action
- How to avoid blame distribution
- Focusing on what’s important: picking your battles
- How to increase employee accountability and buy-in
Structuring And Delivering Your Solutions
- Using the flywheel effect: proving change works
- Creating awareness
- How to make their ideas part of the solution
- Outlining the benefits of a consistent approach
- How to guide people from resistance to acceptance
- How to clearly explain the value of your solutions
Making Change Work: The Flywheel Effect Doing More With Less While Increasing Productivity
People want to have more organized communication systems and be on the same page with how they are communicating. Managing change requires learning the best form of communication for change related issues. For example: when to use email, when to use voice mail, when to have face-to-face meetings, when upper-level management needs to show up and be heard.
Managing Expectations and Emotions
- Developing the most common objections in advance
- Isolating objections and handling them one at a time
- Understanding the difference between objections and conditions
- Why objections indicate interest
- How to treat objections as a request for more information
- Handling objections without being defensive
Presenting Your Ideas
- Lay the foundation: defining your goal
- How to outline your concepts for maximum impact
- How to create a concise presentation from too much information
- Structure and flow: professional presentation skills
- Speaking with passion and confidence
- How to a create value proposition
Garrison's Articles On Successfully Managing Change
Fix It Till It’s Broke?
The more you keep changing the basic structure of something, the more likely people will stop believing in it.
No Time To Gain
According to Evolve Performance Group, 9 out of 10 engaged employees say that safety is a top priority every day while only two in 10 actively disengaged employees can say the same thing. Modern successful safety cultures are based in facts. People who feel valued, value safety and each other. The takeaway from these numbers cannot be overestimated.
How To Be Right Without Making Other People Wrong
What exactly are we trying to accomplish by proving to others that we’re right?
We might win the argument but ultimately lose the relationship. Perhaps a better, deeper-rooted question is this: Why do we lose sight of success, of our big objective when we feel challenged or intimidated?
Want To Be Successful? You Must Understand This 1 Thing About Yourself
Many argue that the most important trait for a successful Entrepreneur is grit. And what is grit if not that perfect blend of optimism and pessimism?
The Future’s Not Here Yet
Even with all these solutions being applied, can we really move into the future with a generation that was taught that these jobs have no future? It’s time to be honest with ourselves, to admit that we may have made a mistake. In our effort to provide a better opportunity for everyone, we may have created a mindset that ultimately will not help anyone.
I’m Sure You Are Intelligent: I Just Can’t Tell That By Talking To You
The ability to read people’s emotions, understand what they value and make sure they feel valuable does not make you a genius. It does, however, make you the kind of person every company needs and an extremely important member of any team.
Heroes And Cowards Feel The Same Fear: It’s The Action They Take That Separates Them
People don't develop bravery first and then take impressive action. The most successful people simply act while they are afraid; and after doing that for a while, they're not quite so fearful.
Successful Belief Systems: Separating The Data From The Drama
So it’s really what we believe about something that is the issue, not what we are actually experiencing in the moment. And, the more people who validate the belief (agree that this really sucks and is the biggest problem you have), the more likely you are to get stressed and make an overactive decision…with a hammer!
How The Millennial Work Ethic May Permanently Improve The Economy
If you are in your 20s, you are hoping the answer to this question is a big, barefooted “Yes!” If you’re in your 50s, this is a goal you have secretly cherished while professing the opposite to your employees and kids.
Freaking Out Is Not A Lifestyle
It indicates that stress is more about how you feel or think about things and only loosely connected to what’s actually happening. In other words, life is not stressful; it’s what we believe about life that is stressful.
The Mouth Of Change | Employee Resistance To Change
Many of us learned this growing up as we competed in sports, or for the attention of others. In the business world, the resistance is naturally strong when we explain our great reform is based on doing more with less. We tell our coworkers and even our bosses that the future is based on being more productive with fewer resources.
Inclusion + Tolerance = Employee Engagement: Creating a diverse culture that drives performance
Having a culture that includes and supports all people is more than just a moral obligation. It is a critical and commonly overlooked ingredient for success. An alloy is stronger and has more applications than something made of just one material, and research shows the same is true for high-performance teams.
Four Reasons Your New Hires Are Already On Their Way Out
A Relatively New Phenomenon Is Sweeping Through Corporate America (And Some Other Countries As Well): Employees Who Will Leave A Job In A Shorter Time Frame Than It Took To Find One.
Listening Like A Leader
Our studies of the most effective people in corporate America show that the top 1 percent are effective not because they executed best practices well. They did not make the most phone calls or have the best processes.
Being The Best Vs. Being Consistently Chosen
Do you have the best service, product, or skills in your area, yet for some reason you still are not getting the results you know you deserve? Hey! I thought if you were the best, you were supposed to eventually win. Let’s address the reality of why your products, services, or leadership styles–or those of your competitors–are selected.
Getting Great Results: Turning Talent Into Performance
The Definition Of Leadership
Someone following someone because he wants to, not because he has to.
