Seeing All Change as People Change

The traditional wisdom is that to change people or social institutions we must change the structure of human relationships or of common work practices. Past change models presuppose that altering the work-community structure or instituting new work processes and systems will automatically change members to conform. This method is used in all sectors of society—business, government, and politics. People assume that introduction of new programs, new people in charge, automation, new hardware, or other innovations will effect a change in the quality of life and the standard of living of a society and the productivity or satisfaction of the workers in a given work community. So leaders impose this kind of external physical change and then manage, control, and direct followers to do what the new, altered system requires of them.

The facts of work-community change suggest something quite the opposite. Thoughtful analysis of the major changes in individual, work community, and social life highlights the fact that another, more effective change strategy is, in fact, in play in almost all change situations. To change the work culture, leaders must first change the individual workers. When workers change, the change brings about alteration in the collective circumstances of the work community.

The work environment changes most usefully as people change their values, their beliefs, their assumptions, and their expectations. It is not laws, rules, electronic equipment, or even leadership expertise that changes society. It is the result of many individual workers who voluntarily choose to accept a new value, a new behavior (Bjerke, 1999), or a new attitude that changes work environments. The only authentic, lasting change occurs when individuals independently change themselves. As workers change, their formal structures and institutions will follow.

The challenge for inner leaders is to foster this change and to direct it through articulation and maintenance of common core values acceptable to and internalized by work-community members who are helped to produce desired results. Inner leaders know that the fastest, most effective, and longest-lasting way to get institutional change is to deal frontally with the people to get them to accept new community values and expectations. Of course, changing the circumstances can eventually change people's minds and hearts. But this is a secondary strategy that ignores values and attitudes in favor of the artifacts of the work culture, not its essence.

Prioritizing Innovation

Fixed production practices without adaptation to new circumstances lead to a reverence for form without regard to content. Given the modern work community, the need is for innovative solutions to both continuing and new programs and services. Innovation is intrinsically different from creativity. It defines the actions of putting known ideas to work in new ways. Innovation has two aspects: (1) newness in the sense that something has never been done before by this group or work community, and (2) newness in that something has never been done before by anyone.

Creativity on the other hand, is a new idea-formulation out of known facts. A creative achievement arises when a person attempts to resolve a tension between intuition and discipline—between impulse and caution. Creativity comes from an internal negotiation between what intuitively seems to be correct and what the constraining forces of technique, tradition, and materials may require. Of course, creative ideas and insights are important, but there are many fine ideas that are easier to find and equally valuable to the inner leader and the work community in helping people and programs improve.

Encouraging Change

Inner leaders keep their relationships with followers free of judgment and evaluation. This characteristic permits workers to recognize that the locus of responsibility lies within themselves, not outside, in the work community, with other people, or with an indeterminate "them." Only then can followers be really free to independently change to make more full use of their inner capacities. Leading change is essentially a task of helping individuals change themselves. Inner leaders initiate helping contacts, the goal of which is for the leader to help each follower modify behaviors that both see and recognize as needing change.

This kind of transformation in people happens when leaders understand that the purpose of change is to help followers to become more whole— complete. It results when leaders understand that, by and large, followers want to use that personal wholeness to aid themselves in their work. Most followers are motivated not by outward trappings, bonuses, or challenges to greatness as a company. Rather, they—all people—make personal change as they see in that changed behavior the chance of making meaningful contribution to others through their work and in the process grow themselves.

Teaching Followers

A prime focus of this transformational leadership technique is teaching others. The objective of the teaching is to produce leaders from followers who are capable of governing themselves in terms of mutually agreed-upon vision-directed activities. Some teaching behavior is done as the leader models desired follower behavior in his relationships with them. Other behavior, such as coaching, inspiration, and setting high-quality service priorities, employs more traditional teaching and training methods. The most evident characteristic of this follower-changing leadership technique is that inner leaders serve as almost private instructors for their followers. A second powerful implication of these techniques is that leaders also build a learning culture that encourages desired performance in stakeholders. This learning culture is also a teaching tool. It facilitates realization of the leader's values-based ideas and methods and excludes, as far as is possible, other possible follower actions.

Helping followers grow and change places a prime responsibility on the leader for ensuring that followers are successful. The leader's goal becomes changing them in their core selves. Helping followers change places emphasis on the role of the leader, not as goal-setter or controller but as a guide to followers to help them make their most useful contribution to work-community success. Inner leaders teach new values and skills followers need to use on the job and alternative priorities followers need to honor to attain the work-community's vision. This leadership teaching role imbues all that the leader does and all relationships entered into. Simply put, this model asks the leader to learn to be a teacher.

Leading Change

Inner leaders who do not keep up to date about the change going on in their work community will find themselves in the backwater of corporate life and estranged from their coworkers, for by definition they are key participants in any work-community change process. They are both agents of change and authority figures. Successful inner leaders are fully involved in the change process, sometimes as direct participants and other times as change catalysts facilitating growth in members and change in the work community. They have legitimate roles to play in every change event. The leader authenticates what the work community does and how it does it. As others in the work community desire to accomplish changes, they look to the inner leader they volunteer to follow to ratify their plans, or they see a need to persuade the leader to accept their ideas. The inner leader's concurrence is implicitly understood to be necessary before a change can be implemented.

Changing Followers' Spiritual Selves

The purpose of personal change and transformation techniques is to help followers change their inner, spiritual selves so they can behave toward others in more authentically helpful ways. Leaders can do much to create a situation where concern for followers' freedom of action is a recognized part of any work-situation values system. Inner leaders provide opportunities for service to those with whom they work—opportunities as personally fulfilling to their followers as the responsibility to seek growth-producing opportunities for themselves. As followers come to understand the lessons of followership and determine for themselves in what actions and which situations they grow most, their leaders also mature. This kind of reciprocal atmosphere of personal concern can exist in every interpersonal contact. Some specific things leaders can do to make the results of their service more satisfying for the follower include the following:

1. Inner leaders learn something of the needs for personal and spiritual development of individual followers. They can then assign followers to tasks and duties that will bring out their latent qualities and talents.

2. Inner leaders are alert to the problems resulting from too-frequent changes in follower assignments. Followers need time to learn their duties fully and feel a sense of accomplishment before moving on to other tasks.

3. Inner leaders discuss openly those aspects of a follower's personal development potential that may result from the work assigned. This can be a regular part of the agenda for individual performance evaluation interviews with followers or be the subject of special group or individual meetings.

4. Inner leaders recognize that many of the interpersonal contacts followers have with stakeholders are, or can become, training experiences helping them relate better to their own work. As leaders give their followers tasks that let them practice behaviors and skills that need development as part of their work-community assignment, the followers gain valuable experience that will aid them in their developing job competence. In doing this, as the inner leader considers followers' core needs in assigning tasks to them, followers can gain needed experience, satisfaction, and confidence in their own maturing capacity.

5. Inner leaders assign followers to work with others—other work-community members, customers, or clients—based on similar or complementary interests. Matching personality types will increase the learning potential of both individuals.