Navigating change in a business setting is a significant challenge, and skillfully leading staff through a transition is key to a business’s success. Think of how many companies had to pivot during the pandemic, such as restaurants shifting to take-out models and offices adopting entire remote work policies. These businesses underwent tremendous transformations, but they survived — and even thrived through those transformations.
The ability to navigate such transformation is due to effective change management leadership. It takes strong, talented leaders to support businesses through times of transition. Whether you want to prepare to lead an organization through an expansion, a major pivot, or another shift, change management training can prepare you to do so skillfully.
What Is Change Management Training and Why Is It Important?
Through change management training, you will learn how and develop the skills needed to successfully guide your business through a transition period. This type of education can include identifying barriers to change, establishing the necessary steps, monitoring change implementation, and best-supporting employees during this time. You can apply that training to nearly any business, and it helps navigate both small and large changes.
Change management training is essential for businesses and organizations. According to McKinsey & Company, only one in three transformational change efforts succeed, highlighting the importance of effective change management.
Talented management can help to increase the rate of successful change in the workplace. With the skills you’ve learned through change management education, you can help employees understand the need for change, embrace the difference, and feel valued and invested. You can also promote engagement among employees, such as by encouraging employees to ask for suggestions and make comments, resulting in a better change process and a stronger business.
Types of Change Management Strategies
There are various types of change management strategies, and each is ideal for navigating different types of change.
Transitional change
When a company undergoes transitional change, its processes change, but the rest of the company’s operations stay the same. A transitional change might involve purchasing and implementing new manufacturing equipment or changing the operating system of workplace computers. In both cases, employees will need to learn these new processes, but other factors, like the business’ overall structure and size, stay consistent.
Transformational change
Transformational change refers to a major process or strategy alterations. These changes truly transform the way that a company operates. One example would be a company that went from having employees in the office daily to being entirely remotely work-based, dissolving that office space.
Another example would be a company that shifted from selling products directly to consumers to adopting a wholesale model.
Developmental change
A company undergoing developmental change is reshaping its strategy or redesigning its processes. An example would be a company that is overhauling its customer service processes or changing its marketing strategy. In these instances, team members would need to adjust to these changes but likely wouldn’t need extensive training to perform the new processes.
Change Management Skills Acquired by Attending a Training Program
When you attend a training program, you will develop essential change management skills that are highly valuable in the workplace.
Analytical skills
Analytical skills are crucial when managing change in a workplace. Not only are these skills essential in evaluating the business’ current processes and determining appropriate changes to implement, but they are also important in monitoring and evaluating the success of the changes once they’re implemented. Using analytical skills, you can make well-informed and strategic decisions to benefit the business.
Leadership talents
Strong leadership is one of the most important talents that contribute to navigating change. During your training program, you will learn leadership best practices to build trust in your team and foster employee engagement and investment.
Communication and persuasion skills
Any leader needs strong communication and persuasion skills, and your training program will focus on communication best practices and methods that you’ll use when navigating change. You will learn about the elements of persuasion, including how to present change in a positive way to increase employee understanding and acceptance of the need for the change.
During a training program, you will develop strategies to use when communicating with different audiences, including supervisors, employees, and stakeholders. You will also learn how to effectively present consistent and clear messaging and listen and respond to questions and pushback.
Emotional intelligence
Change can lead to intense and unsettled feelings for your employees. As a leader, you need emotional intelligence to recognize and respond to your employees’ needs. Your training program will focus on emotional intelligence development, including handling employee frustration and feelings of doubt.
Team-building capabilities
As you implement change in a business, you may need to restructure teams or simply rebuild the connections that your teams had previously established. Team-building talents are essential in both scenarios.
During a training program, you will learn strategies to foster strong team connections and develop employee collaboration.
Creativity and flexibility
Sometimes, despite the most detailed and well-intended plans, business changes have unexpected results. A change simply might not work or lead to unanticipated challenges.
A quality change management training program will help you develop creativity and flexibility, which can help you deal with these situations. You will develop the resourcefulness needed to think outside the box, identify solutions to lead the business through those challenges, and ultimately make the change implementation successful.
Get Certified Through a Change Management Training Program
As businesses grow, they are bound to go through periods of change. Those changes may be small, such as the introduction of new processes, or they can be overarching changes that affect the entire structure and size of a company. In any scenario, how that change is introduced, implemented, and managed plays a crucial role in its success and the workplace’s ability to navigate that transition period. A change management training program gives you the skills and knowledge necessary to guide a business through these changes.
Wharton Online’s Removing Barriers to Change in Organizations program introduces you to the common barriers of change and prepares you to position your organization for success. During this management course, you will learn how to improve your persuasion skills, demonstrate the value of change to help ease uncertainty, and more. You can enroll in the course online, or if you have any questions, you can submit an inquiry online.
