If you do not give people the “why?” then they will make it up, and it won’t be right.
You are growing your business and improvements mean changes. You love it because its what you’ve planned and wanted to do. But how do you keep your team onside?
Sometimes it’s really easy as the boss to skip over some preliminary discussions and just get straight to the point - “this is what we’re doing and we’ll do it this way...”
Larger changes, that have impacts on people’s responsibilities, work conditions or location, reporting lines or the tools they use require a more in depth discussion. When things change people lose their sense of control and this causes stress.
You need to get your team to “buy in” quickly and effectively so you and your team can act fast.
I love this super simple model for reminding me the steps people go through when they are adjusting to a major change. Have well thought out answers ready when you need to brief your team on the change.
Nail the first 2 questions to maximise your chances of getting buy in;
1) Why?
2) Why me?
Once people get satisfactory explanations to these questions they can step over the "threshold of conviction" and they will ask;
3) What next?
4) Where to?
5) How?
Having answers to these mean you’re a leader worth following.