For organizations awash in change, transition is no longer a periodic event. It's the only event.

Economic, political, technological, cultural, and societal upheavals all contribute to the pace and complexity of change. The change may come from within, such as a downsizing, expansion, or merger. But more likely it will be driven by external factors, such as holding the lead in a market or struggling to gain one.

The challenge of leading organizations through change goes beyond setting strategy, making plans, and implementing the structures and processes of change. Often, the real struggle lies in weathering wave upon wave of recovery, revitalization, and recommitment—an emotional typhoon for teams.

Those steering the ship must focus simultaneously on keeping the business on course and on effective leadership of the crew. When the people side of that equation loses out, the issue often comes down to one factor: loss of trust.

Trust is never something to take for granted, but circumstances of change and upheaval pose some of the most serious threats to building and maintaining trust. This chapter focuses on how to respond to the human toll of rapid change and keep trust intact.

Ignoring this dynamic poses two risks. First, it may undermine the organization's structural and strategic goals because there is lack of buy-in and commitment from employees. Second, it can destabilize the organization's culture, eroding values that engender dedication in the first place. Loyalty and trust give way to insecurity and fear, while productivity and enthusiasm are displaced by withdrawal and skepticism.

Trust and authenticity are leadership qualities that go hand-in-hand and little is possible without them. Building authenticity into your leadership requires that you see both yourself and others as complex, whole people—emotions included. This perspective takes into account that, during times of change, you and everyone else in the organization are collectively steering a course through the events that surround you, but each of you is navigating separately in the context of your own life, and no one has the same set of circumstances.

As a leader, your ability to appreciate and bear that complexity in mind is important for you to be effective in extraordinary times. Leading with authenticity flows from self-knowledge: awareness of your own emotions, expectations, struggles, motivations, preferences, frustrations, contradictions. How do we achieve that self-awareness? Experience, action, feedback, reflection.

People look for leaders who can appreciate their vulnerability and inspire them, understand them, support them, and guide them through the looming chaos. Leaders meet those needs by being genuine and vulnerable, traits that are themselves powerful learning tools.

Leading with authenticity during transition isn't a checklist or a series of buzzwords. It's about

• LOOKING INWARD
• SEEING HOW YOUR PERSONALITY, BEHAVIOR, AND EMOTIONS PLAY OUT AS YOU TAKE A LEADERSHIP ROLE
• UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF CHANGE AND TRANSITION
• DISCOVERING OPENNESS AND VULNERABILITY
• VALUING AND BUILDING TRUST

These are big concepts. We will examine specific behaviors that help leaders make them real. Before we continue, consider the ten behaviors listed below that typify a leader who builds and maintains trust; identify the three that you feel you are currently strongest in and the corresponding three that you feel are most in need of development.

STRENGTH	NEED
	Understands the role of trust in leading change and transition.
	Makes efforts to create trust rooted in authentic behaviors.
	Uses a diverse set of behaviors to build trust.
	Emphasizes the right behaviors at the right time to reinforce trust.
	Balances catalyzing change with coping with transition.
	Balances sense of urgency with realistic patience.
	Balances toughness with empathy.
	Balances optimism with realism and openness.
	Balances self-reliance with trusting others.
	Balances capitalizing on strengths with going against the grain.

Take a moment to reflect on how your perceived strengths and corresponding development needs in this area have played out in the past and currently. As you progress through this chapter, keep in mind how you might augment or leverage these approaches.

Change and transition are separate but related. Change is the event; transition represents the psychological and emotional adaptation to it. At work, as well as in our personal lives, adaptation is how we let go of the old and accept the new.

Wise leaders recognize that when change is not going well, it is likely because people are stuck in some part of the transition and are not ready to let go. After all, change is risky. There is a drop in competency and comfort at first, which is the steep end of the learning curve.

Leaders who attack the problem only on the structural side—reiterating the plans and rationale, pushing the data or measurements—fail to resolve the problem of transition. An additional part of your leadership task is to connect to the personal and the emotional fallout of change, which is the hard work of letting go, learning, and rebuilding.

To help you remain authentic in extraordinary times and build trust against a backdrop of continuous change, we've identified three initial steps.

EXAMINE YOUR MENTAL MODELS

We all have habitual patterns of thinking, perceiving, and behaving. When you are aware of these patterns, you can make conscious choices about how to operate as a leader. Assumptions left unexamined cause you to repeat patterns that may not serve you well during challenging times.

UNDERSTAND THAT CHANGE DOES NOT EQUAL TRANSITION

Leaders need to realize that transition is a process often fraught with self-doubt and uncertainty. People may be reluctant to accept the reality that something is ending. When you or someone in the organization is struggling with change, acknowledge transition by exploring what has been lost and what is impeding adaptation.

IMPROVE YOUR ABILITY TO LEARN

Most of what you need to know about leading through transition you will learn from experience. If you can learn and adapt (and help others to do so), not only will you recover from change and loss but you will in fact thrive. By becoming a more versatile learner, you increase your capacity to cope, adapt, and move on to what's next.

We often use the image of a bicycle wheel to describe the leadership competencies that are important during times of transition. On a bicycle wheel, each spoke needs to be tightened or loosened to the right tension. Otherwise, there will be strain on the other spokes, pulling the wheel out of alignment and making the bike much more difficult to ride. Avid cyclists keep their bikes rolling at top performance by “truing” their wheels—adjusting the tension of the spokes—as part of their routine bicycle maintenance.

Imagine, now, a wheel that has trust as its hub. Radiating out from that hub are the spokes, which represent twelve competencies that support authentic, effective leadership in times of transition. Six spokes represent structural competencies; the other six represent people-related (or transition) competencies. Any of the twelve competencies can be overdone, underdone, or held in a positive, dynamic balance (as the spokes on a bicycle wheel are set in a balanced tension). If a leader neglects or devotes an overabundance of energy to any one element, he or she runs the risk of skewing the opposite, pushing the wheel out of true, and creating undue strain on the trust needed to lead effectively during extraordinary times.

SETTING THINGS ARIGHT

It's easy to slide off kilter—in both cycling and leadership. But while a cyclist can stop riding to fix a wheel, leaders have no choice but to keep moving forward even as changes swirl around them. Adding to their difficulty is the fact that experience and its lessons are coupled with personal preferences to exaggerate or downplay various leadership practices. This often pushes leaders toward emphasizing a select number of leadership competencies—usually the ones that they have been schooled in, the ones organizations reinforce and reward.

Those competencies often fall on the structural side of change management. When leaders pay less attention to the people side of change, the tension between the two sides of the wheel can slip out of balance and negatively impact their effectiveness, how they are perceived, and the trust they require to guide people through the phases of transition.

Often, people are hypersensitive during times of stress and threat. Using our metaphor of the bicycle wheel, people won't likely say, “You have a few spokes that need tuning,” when they experience a ride on your bicycle. They are more likely to generalize and say, “Your bike is broken.” In the same way, people can make sweeping judgments about authenticity and genuineness based on small cues and data.

To lead with authenticity, effective managers develop new behaviors and find appropriate ways to work with the structural and the people sides of change. They don't swing wildly from one end to the other. By learning about the twelve change-related leadership competencies and how they relate to each other, managers and executives can tease out adjustments to maintain or improve their level of trust and effectiveness as situations change.

Here are the twelve competencies that comprise the spokes in the wheel:

• Catalyzing change is championing an initiative or significant change.
• Coping with transition recognizes the personal and emotional elements of change.
• Sense of urgency involves taking action quickly when necessary to keep things rolling.
• Realistic patience involves knowing when and how to slow the pace to allow people to adapt.
• Being tough is the ability to make difficult decisions with neither hesitation nor second-guessing.
• Being empathetic requires consideration of others' perspectives when making decisions.
• Optimism is the ability to see the positive potential of any challenge.
• Realism and openness denotes a grounded perspective and a willingness to not gloss over problems.
• Self-reliance involves a willingness to take a lead role and do something yourself when necessary.
• Trusting others means being comfortable with allowing others to do their parts of a task or project.
• Capitalizing on strengths entails knowing your strengths and confidently applying them.
• Going against the grain entails a willingness to learn and try new things, even when hard or painful.

TAKE THE WHEEL

Now plot your self-ratings on the accompanying wheel. For each of the twelve competencies, mark a dot along the spoke that best indicates your typical leadership behavior.

The BLACK line represents behavior that is just about right.

The GRAY area is overdoing a competency.

The WHITE area is underdoing it.

This exercise will give you a fairly accurate representation of whether your leadership is balanced. Do you see tension between opposing spokes? Are some of your mental models about leadership conducive to leading in the constant change of contemporary organizational life?

Another useful exercise is to plot your self-ratings in one color and the perceptions you think others have of you in another color. The differences between the two perspectives can be informative. Of course, the real test would be to take these reflections and share them with a trusted colleague.

You can also use the wheel to plot the leadership behaviors valued by your organization. If a leader performed only the behaviors rewarded by the organization, what would that profile look like? Comparing that profile to your self-ratings may help you recognize where your personal values and beliefs correspond or collide with those of your organization.

You may have noticed in completing the wheel that each of these capabilities is important; at the same time there are inherent conflicts between and paradoxes among them. Why is that?

It's complicated. It's simple.

In the face of change and turmoil, people look for leaders who are simultaneously strong and vulnerable, heroic and open, demanding and compassionate. Managing those opposing demands can feel impossible. Finding the right behaviors, tone, and style requires blending characteristics that appear paradoxical but nonetheless coexist and complement one another. The “right” balance varies by situation and point in time.

In times of transition, be alert to signs that your leadership balance is off-center. This is when authentic leaders recalibrate so that none of these twelve competencies are overly exaggerated or overly downplayed and trust can be maintained.

Consider these tips in relation to when you may be likely to experience an imbalance in your approach: