Employee Buy In vs Bulldozing

“In its most basic sense, lead­er­ship is about mobi­liz­ing a group of peo­ple to jump into a bet­ter future.” — John P. Kot­ter, author and Kono­suke Mat­sushi­ta, Pro­fes­sor of Lead­er­ship, Emer­i­tus, Har­vard Busi­ness School

A CEO and I recent­ly talked about how chal­leng­ing it is, some­times, to get peo­ple to buy in to change or a new idea.

As he described how hard he need­ed to work, I had a visu­al in my head of a group of peo­ple who couldn’t see the val­ue in new ideas, and the leader fir­ing up a bull­doz­er to push them out of the way to get to the goal.

As we talked about this metaphor, he said, ​“Yeah, that’s exact­ly what it feels like!”

Now, one way to do it is a bull­doz­er. You don’t have to be smart or sophis­ti­cat­ed, it doesn’t take a lot of have lead­er­ship skill, and if you have fear­ful, com­pli­ant peo­ple, it can work real­ly well.

But if you build team of strong, intel­li­gent peo­ple you can only use a bull­doz­er so many times before they get frus­trat­ed and quit — or frus­trat­ed but dis­en­gaged and stay.

The art of get­ting employ­ee buy in – a lot harder.

We see, we feel, we change

One of my favourite books is about get­ting buy-in is Our Ice­berg is Melt­ing, Chang­ing and Suc­ceed­ing Under Any Con­di­tions by John Kot­ter and Hol­ger Rathge­ber — about what it tru­ly takes to cre­ate suc­cess­ful change. He has a saying:

“We see, we feel, we change.”

The root of the learn­ing behind Kotter’s work is that peo­ple need to see a need to change (which is log­ic) and to feel a need to change (which is emo­tion), and the degree to which we see it and feel it equals the like­li­hood that change can occur.

For exam­ple, if we see a need to change at a .50 lev­el, and feel it at .50 lev­el, we have a 25% chance of achiev­ing change.

But if we see at a .90 lev­el and feel at a .90 lev­el – we have an 81% chance of succeeding.

In his book, Kot­ter has an amaz­ing 8‑Step Process for Lead­ing Change:

“Good com­mu­ni­ca­tion is not just data trans­fer. You need to show peo­ple some­thing that address­es their anx­i­eties, that accepts their anger, that is cred­i­ble in a very gut-lev­el sense, and that evokes faith in the vision.” John P. Kot­ter, author and Kono­suke Mat­sushi­ta, Pro­fes­sor of Lead­er­ship, Emer­i­tus, Har­vard Busi­ness School

I’ve observed, in many com­pa­nies, that we for­get about this thing called emo­tion — humans are emo­tion­al beings — and then won­der why, when we use a log­i­cal approach to an emo­tion­al sit­u­a­tion, it doesn’t work!

We blame peo­ple for not buy­ing in, fire up the bull­doz­er and over­pow­er them. We make them feel under­val­ued, or under-intel­li­gent and make them strive to find every­thing that’s wrong with what we are try­ing to implement.

As lead­ers, our job is to under­stand their con­cerns, anx­i­eties and legit­i­mate issues and then incor­po­rate them in our solutions.

With employ­ee buy-in, we can then step ahead togeth­er to imple­ment a great change.

If you are using a bull­doz­er, you need to learn how to get buy in. It’s tru­ly a skill most lead­ers don’t learn on their own because they for­get the emo­tion­al aspect of leadership.

The Chal­lenge

• How good are you at tru­ly get­ting men­tal and emo­tion­al employ­ee buy-in on big changes?
• How can you address people’s fears and con­cerns about some­thing you’re try­ing to get buy-in on right now?