Ugh.  It’s election season in the United States and the rhetoric is flying in every direction. Since I live in the “swing state” of Florida, it’s nearly impossible to watch television for five minutes without being told who’s going to raise my taxes or destroy my future. Regular readers of this blog know that I [...]

So far in this series, I’ve focused on how Change Agents can be more effective by learning and applying the art of facilitation to their routine work. We’ve talked about different ways that people think and how good facilitators pay attention to this variance as they guide group discussions and decisions. Over the next few [...]

In my last post, I described what often happens when Change Agents and Sponsors of Change fail to communicate with their stakeholders. I suggested that people could interpret a lack of communication in one of several negative ways. They might think you’re telling them: 1. “This change is simply not a priority.” – After all, [...]

Tip #36: Consider How Your Change May Impact Existing Relationships Today’s post is a picture that tells a story of two ways one can view the impact of change on existing relationships. For clarity, it can help to think of your change as bringing about the end of something and the beginning of something new. [...]

There’s a time to fall in love and a time to fall in line. Sorry to put it so bluntly, but while some changes are perceived as being a good deal for everyone involved, sometimes change is needed for less-then-positive reasons. In the world of implementing change, the chances are good that you’ll see both [...]

Change Agent Tip #32 Over the past couple posts I’ve introduced several things Change Agents can do to take control of their individual email inboxes and increase their effectiveness with this critical communication tool. Another angle worth exploring to improve communication effectiveness is your team’s use of email. Today I’ll propose a set of ten [...]

Change Agent Tip #29 Resistance is a very real force that works against your chances of successful change. Change Agents must not only recognize it – but actively address it or they may risk lukewarm adoption, or – in the worst case – total rejection of the change. In the first two posts of this [...]

Change Agent Tip #28 Open expressions of resistance can make a Change Agent’s work nearly impossible. But before diving right into confronting resistance, I recommend Change Agents take a closer look at the potential motivations behind it. In my last post, I discussed how the changing price of raw cocoa on the world market may [...]

Change Agent Tip #27: Look Under the Wrapper The Easter holiday season has just wrapped up. Last week was one of the peak periods of the year for chocolate sales. Store aisles and end caps were stacked high with bunnies, bars, baskets and all sizes and shapes of chocolate delights. Anyone who stuffed an Easter [...]

Change Agent Tip #26 A wise man once told me that one reason people struggle with change is that it often means we’re going to lose something. It’s Personal: Consider the last time you were impacted by a significant change at work (or in life). You may have been asked to give up something in [...]

 Change Agent Tip #25 One of my favorite parts of helping people deal with change is the chance I get to work with some incredibly talented leaders at all levels of my client organizations. One such leader had a great way of boiling complex behavioral expectations down to simple phrases that I like to call [...]

Most of us have heard the old adage “Change is Good“. As regular readers of this blog know, I don’t completely agree with that cliche.  After guiding changes for dozens of clients and tens of thousands of stakeholders, my version of the cliche reads more like this: “Good change is good and bad change is [...]

Every domain of expertise has it’s buzzwords. I have heard buzzword horror stories from Change Agents working in fields as wide-ranging as medicine, agriculture and technology.  They each described communication problems that arose from people assuming others understood what what was being said when they used what seemed like common terms. Here are a few [...]

This is Wendy Appel. She’s one of the world’s foremost experts on a tool called the Enneagram which sheds light on people’s underlying core beliefs and motivations. Even more importantly, it can help people use this understanding to be more effective in nearly any setting that requires humans to interact. So What’s an Enneagram? The [...]