Change is inevitable, and too often we rush roll outs and are met with crossed arms and angry questions we weren’t prepared to answer. There is a better way, and it involves giving faculty the same luxury we had in the beginning. Build trust and momentum towards your objectives.
The dark secret behind pervasive institutional change is that even change leaders won’t get on board unless we have a personal stake, we are confident in our skills, and we are certain of the impact. Where we often fail as change leaders is when we assume that our support will inspire everyone else’s - at least eventually, according to the Rogers Innovation Adoption Curve.
While change leaders have bought in to the ideas and goals of our initiatives through the process of committee work, faculty members haven’t had that luxury. Change leaders rush to roll out big visions, impacts, tag lines and logos without addressing faculty concerns.
That’s when the pushback begins.
Grumbling follows, and political undermining is not far behind that.
And the result is a long, painful journey toward an uncomfortable initiative wrap up meeting.
There’s a better way to build faculty trust, develop their confidence and create momentum toward achieving the initiative’s objectives.
It starts with addressing the personal questions faculty have about how the change will impact them in their day-to-day operations. After the personal concerns are fully addressed, the next step is to build confidence by developing skills to fulfil the imitative. Only after that is it time to help faculty create the bigger impact that the initiative is designed to yield.
But how do you do that?
We plan to briefly present one element of the Concerns-Based Adoption Model, a well-researched approach for creating educational change that harnesses the power of individual conversations within a framework known as the Stages of Concern, which identifies the true source of faculty change resistance.
When change leaders identify and respond to the true source of faculty change resistance, pushback dissolves, grumbling quiets and political undermining has no chance to take root.
Using a discussion and coaching approach, participants will practice engaging different Stages of Concern while receiving coaching from session leaders to identify and respond to the true source of faculty change resistance, so they can return to their institutions with the conversation skills they need to create trust, confidence and momentum among their faculty.
As change leaders, we had the chance to build trust, confidence and momentum through our daily work. Helping faculty members build that same level of trust, confidence and momentum toward your initiative’s objectives is possible if faculty concerns are fully and sequentially addressed using this framework.