Two employees had already left the company — both women. Morale and sales were lagging. Nine months later, the team’s level of trust and communication are higher, turnover has halted, and their sales ranking and happiness factor has climbed on their team.

How did they do it? What are the secrets to effective departmental and organizational change, and why do some teams succeed in turning around while others flounder and fail?

Here are some of the secrets of change that are happening inside some of the most effective organizations in the world. For the past 30 years, through a method called Inner Circle Coaching, I have been helping teams open up the lines of communication, recognize “blind spots” in their behavior, and ultimately increase their bottom lines.

How to retain employees, resolve conflict and improve your bottom line

Q: What are the signs, symptoms, or typical catalysts for change within an organization? How does a leader know when change is necessary?

A: They’re having too much pain. Eighty percent of my business happens when I get a call and there is too much pain. At that point it’s almost too late. The leader says, “There’s a problem with this team, the team is not responding, the leader has shut down, the doors are closed, the communication is bad, they’re number 38 out of 40 in sales, we just had 2 people leave,” and they go on and on about all the symptoms of the pain.

Today, for instance, I met with an organization where the pain is dealing with a very high level engineer who has been with the company for over 10 years. She is not effective in her communication with her boss and the team does not want to work with her because she is often in a bad mood, complains about her boss and working conditions and because of her attitude has decided not to train the newer engineer who is very motivated to learn. So the company’s going to get itself in a headlock because if she doesn’t train people to do what she does, they’re never going to be able to replace her and she knows this. She’s putting herself in a position of “they can’t fire me,” and the motivated engineer who is dying to excel and learn is going to eventually leave for a better job because he’s not being put in a growth position.

I was brought in to work with another top executive for 9 months because two key people had left his organization, both women, and there was some slight hint of discrimination. He was just not listening to the women and his language and leadership behaviors were poor. The organization didn’t want to lose any more people. When conducting interviews with his employees and boss I was  hearing , “Here’s a guy that’s arrogant, his office door is closed, he’s demanding, directive and people are scared of him. When they come to work a couple of minutes late they’d get yelled at,” so he was exhibiting many poor and unacceptable behaviors.

If I had to categorize my coaching, I would say it’s helping leaders understand the impact their behaviors are having on the outcomes of the company’s success. If we can change behaviors we can get a return on investment. If the human skills or soft skills get better, it can lead to the hard data and a return on investment.

I worked with his team for almost a year and at the end of the engagement I interviewed each of his team members. I was hearing words like ‘caring,’ ‘listening,’ ‘family,’ ‘fun,’ ‘I like coming to work,’ ‘relaxed,’ ‘team environment,’ ‘no tension.’

When you talk to a company like that and you ask, “How did those behavioral changes impact your bottom line,” they were proud to tell me that their sales results were 106% of budget, leaving them number 2 out of 40 in sales performance. If you’re talking bottom line, nobody left the company during our time together. It is has been shown that when a company loses a top leader the cost to replace that leader is estimated to be 3 times their annual salary.

So, we’re changing behavior and we’re getting return on investment. When people see those numbers, they get excited to know that behavioral changes at the top lead to lower expenses and higher returns.

People get excited to see that behavioral changes at the top lead to lower expenses and higher returns.

Q: Once a need for organizational change has been identified, what next? How and where does organizational change begin?

A: Change has got to start at the top. If you as the leader of the team or organization want to make significant change in your culture it has to start with you. Once other leaders in the organization experience your changes you have a new “lever” with which to use to ask for changes throughout the entire organization… but it starts with you first.

What leaders need in order for change to occur is to see themselves through their own eyes and through the eyes of their direct reports, peers, or board members. I spend much of my time during the first 3 months of executive coaching walking them through their individual Talent Reports while also speaking with those employees who they work most closely with, so I can get a really good picture of them.

So I think the trick is to get them to change their mindset about things that they might not see as their own “blind spots” – information about their behavior that’s known to others who know them, but that they don’t know about themselves. It’s called the “blind spot.” My job is to help them close that window so they can see the blind spots that they may have that we – friends, family, colleagues, workers, and me as an unbiased coach – can see quite easily, but that they don’t see.

By helping them shift their mindset, eventually what I’m helping them to do is to commit to new behaviors. As you think about why people are hired it is usually for their skills. And if you think about why people are fired or why they left the job it has to do with behaviors. People are hired for skills and fired for behavior. If you think about times that you either wanted to leave or did leave a job, it was probably either your behavior or someone else’s behavior that started that process, not that you weren’t skilled enough to do it. So if I can help people understand the impact that behavior has on others, they can then have the information they need to make significant change.

Q: How does one effectively engage and motivate employees to “jump on board” with organizational change and to row in the same direction?

A: If I could give one tip to leaders it would be this: Engage people by asking questions more often than giving information about yourself. Find out about your team and make them feel important. Tell them what they’re doing right more than what they’re doing wrong and they’ll do more of what they’re doing right.

Tell them what they’re doing right more than what they’re doing wrong and they’ll do more of what they’re doing right.
If you’re a good leader, you’ll want to craft some insightful open-ended questions that get people speaking about themselves and their purpose and what they do well and what they’re passionate about in their life. Take them out for a cup of coffee, ask engaging questions. Learn about their family, learn about their work, learn about what they like to do when they aren’t working, learn about what matters most to them. If the leader comes in and starts telling everyone what to do, they’ve stopped listening!

When you engage other people and you become interested in others and you listen well, people will stay engaged with you. The minute you start interrupting and talking about yourself and what your plans are, you’re going to shut people down and they will stop listening to you.

Q: It’s one thing to enact change within an organization, but how does one ensure that this change persists, especially in the face of old and ingrained habits of “the way things have always been done”?

A: If you think about any changes you’ve made in your life that have stuck, usually you have some other person or system that is helping you with that change – something repetitive that comes back again and again. So in my work, the Inner Circle Coaching, I engage 5-6 other people around the leader I am working with. And every 30 days I’m going to ask them– and others on the team are going to ask them – specifically how they are doing with their desired behavioral change.

They’re conscious that they’ve got support and encouragement from the people around them. They’re working diligently at change and they’re committed to themselves and to this change process.

In any kind of change process I believe strongly that you need to have others involved and engaged to help support you while at the same time you can support them in their change efforts. That’s the beauty of the Inner Circle Coaching process. Not only are people supporting the leader, but the leader is also asking, “What are you changing, what is the impact of that change and how can I support you?” It’s a two-way street. Everybody is helping everybody else out. Trust and respect become reality, stress and tension lessens and at the end of the day happiness is the reward for all of the hard work.