Last week, I attended the Chick-Fil-A Leadercast, a day-long event with speakers such as John Maxwell, Coach K, Jack Welch, Condoleeza Rice and others. The event was held live in Atlanta and broadcast to 120,000 viewers gathered at hundreds of locations in North America. The location I attended had a photo booth with the Chick-Fil-A cows.

It had been a while since I had immersed myself in an event solely focused on leadership (and not organizational change). Leadership used to be a big deal to me. In fact, before anyone had heard of Enclaria, my fledgling company was called Enclaria Leadership. But I dropped the “Leadership” early on, and now I remember why.

As far as I can tell, leadership does not exist outside of change. Leading necessarily means you are going somewhere different from where you are now. Without the context of change, leadership as a concept becomes a set of abstract ideals that no one can live up to.

On the flip side of the same coin, leadership alone is not enough to change an organization either. Yes, it is absolutely necessary. But it is not sufficient.

Don’t get me wrong – the Leadercast was inspirational, and the speakers shared some great takeaways that would help any manager do a better job leading his or her business or department.

But sitting in the Leadercast on Friday, I suspected that many attendees had other people in mind that needed to apply the learning. Perhaps it brought to mind leaders in their organizations who were grossly violating the principles, or others whose leadership was needed to properly drive change.

You can apply the leadership learning on yourself all you want. But if you are trying to implement change, you still have the pesky issue of getting others to lead it in their part of the organization.

So then, how do you get other people to effectively lead change?

Leadership, specifically harnessing the leadership of others, is one of the main focus areas of the Irresistible Change Guide, so I highly recommend you start there.

But for now, here are four tips.

1. Live it yourself. Of course, to the extent they are relevant, you should incorporate the leadership principles you’ve learned into your own work. This gives the benefits of modeling the behaviors for others and also not being a hypocrite when you expect others to do them.
2. Give it context. Leadership can be boiled down to the behaviors that create environments that enable and engage people to change. And the specifics of those behaviors will depend on what you are trying to change.
3. Engage leaders in the conversation. Leaders are more likely to lead if they understand their part and if they have a role in defining what leadership means in the context of change in their area. You’ll gain their commitment more if it’s their idea than if you try to tell them what they need to do.
4. Provide feedback. None of us is fully aware of the impact we have on others. Set up your relationships with leaders so that feedback is expected. That way, if they fall off the leadership wagon you can help them climb back on.

Next year’s theme for the Chick-Fil-A Leadercast is “Beyond You.” I hope that means they will cover the topic of spreading leadership beyond the individual attendees, so they can get others to lead in their organizations.

This month on The Change Agent’s Dilemma, guest Tim Kuppler and I discuss building a remarkable culture. Tim is former President of Denison Consulting and founder of The Culture Advantage.

In this episode, you’ll hear the hallmarks of a remarkable culture and learn the steps you can take to build a remarkable culture in your organization. Listen in to hear how to measure culture and what it means to build “culture muscle.” You can download his free e-book at www.The-Culture-Advantage.com.

Listen to the show here (30 minutes):

Be sure to visit the radio show page to listen to past episodes and subscribe to the show.

Much energy is generated at the beginning of a change initiative to draw attention to the need for change, generate excitement about the vision, and coordinate activities. After the change initiative has been launched and some progress has been made, it is easy for the organization to fall into complacency. Thinking the initiative can coast without additional effort, managers and others drop the energy level. As a result, the organization starts treading water mid-stream, or worse, settles back into the old way of doing things.

If your initiative has started to lose its luster, try the following activities to muster the energy to continue making progress.

Celebrate Incremental Progress

At the beginning of a project, when there are many low-hanging fruits to work on, it is easy to see progress. Early achievements stand out in stark contrast to the way we’ve always done things, so they are natural to celebrate. After a while, though, progress can become harder to notice. Recognizing continual achievements can seem superfluous. Yet without acknowledgment it can seem as though nothing is happening at all, leading to frustration. Bolster progress by seeking out, recognizing and celebrating small achievements even after they become less obvious or seem redundant.

Renew the Sense of Urgency

The discomfort that initially drove the need for change may seem distant once some progress has been made. Without the proverbial fire lit under them, people forget what they were trying to get away from. There are three ways to renew the sense of urgency for change. 1) Even if things are better now, we still have more to go. 2) Even though we no longer run from the past, we are in danger of slipping backwards if we rest on our laurels. 3) As a result of the changes so far, we uncovered new problems we need to fix. Make the message clear: we can’t stop now.

Revitalize the Vision

The future you embarked upon at the beginning of the initiative may be different than the one that is possible now that progress has been made. The vision that may have been inspiring then may not generate as much energy now. Verify that the original vision is still where the organization wants to go. If so, recommit to achieving it. If progress so far has enabled a new future, then define a new vision that will build renewed energy for change.

Keep It Fresh

After a while, posters, slogans, and other souvenirs of change can become invisible and lose their impact. While being consistent enough to avoid flavor-of-the-month syndrome, keep the message fresh. Though the connections between their activities and the initiative may seem obvious, to employees they may not be so clear. Keep making new connections and talk about it so people know the initiative hasn’t gone away.

After the excitement of the initial launch, your change initiative may hit a lull. Take action to muster a renewed energy for change, so you can avoid sliding backwards or treading water without fully achieving your initiative’s goals.

Last week, Google announced that as of July 1, 2013, it was sunsetting its Reader application, which millions of people use to subscribe to and read blogs. Forty percent of my blog subscribers use Google Reader, so there’s a good chance you are one of them.

As a Google Reader user, I was surprised at first that they would get rid of such a useful product. Next, I felt nervous that I would have to resubscribe to all the blogs I follow. When I visited the Google Reader site, a window popped up with a link that showed how to download your subscriptions so you could upload to another blog reader app. So then I felt just slightly inconvenienced. After the announcement made it around social media, news came out that the app I use to access Google Reader on the go, Feedly, would offer a seamless transition later in the year. So then I stopped worrying about it at all.

Until…

I realized that I was not just a primary user of Google Reader. The primary impact of the change was on people who use Google Reader to read blogs.

But what about the secondary users? What about the people and organizations who rely on Google Reader to deliver their blog’s content to the primary users? I am one of those affected by the secondary impact of the change. Forty percent of my blog subscribers use Google Reader. Certainly it would impact my readership if suddenly all those readers were lost. And more importantly, it would impact my readers to not have access to the insights on leading change without authority that they use to make a difference at work.

But Google was only addressing the primary impact – the readers – and not the secondary impact – those whose readers use Google Reader to access their stuff. Seems like a giant oversight, right?

Yet it’s possible you have the same blind spot in your own change. We tend to think of the primary users of a system or process as the ones who need to change and thus are most impacted by the change. It may not be as obvious that there are people who are secondarily impacted. Are there others who depend on people to use the system or process? Are there others who rely on the results or the output?

Best not to leave them in the lurch, having to fend for themselves. Or worse, working to stop your change from happening.

Now…

If you subscribe to this blog through Google Reader, here’s what you can do to avoid losing your feed after July 1:

Subscribe to my monthly newsletter. Not only do I include links to all the blog posts in the newsletter, but you also get special offers and a free chapter of the Irresistible Change Guide when you subscribe. And you can do it right here:

(Funny enough, if you are reading this in Google Reader, you will have to click on the post in order to see and use the subscription form.)

Or…

Find a replacement for Google Reader. Here’s one list of possible replacements. The one I use is Feedly. Once you’ve selected a replacement, you will need to download you subscriptions from Google Reader and then import them into the new application.

I’d hate to see you disappear when Google flips the switch July 1. Please write a comment if you have any questions.

Thank you for reading!