Change can be a bumpy and complex road, whether it is personal and individual, or organizational. Are you a leader in a time of change? Most likely, you are, because organizational change is constant and complex and simultaneously involves people who are dealing with it as individuals, as well as small teams and large groups.

Change leaders – rather than “dealing” with change by mandating new behaviors and functions from the top down – are responsible for guiding the journey. This journey of change contains key phases and components that, if applied and nurtured properly throughout the organization, can lead employees to learn, accept, and commit to change.

Whether an upcoming transformation involves altering the vision or entire course of an organization, restructuring it, overhauling major processes that impact employees and customers across the board, or changing the culture, it will not happen successfully without effective and strategic leadership.

In the half-day ICMA University Workshop: Leading Change/HPO, held at the ICMA Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas, participants will map this journey and all its critical considerations for leaders. Participants will discuss how to introduce change and navigate the fear, anger, and resistance that naturally accompanies it (even your own!), which are natural responses and can be positive contributors to change if managed thoughtfully and thoroughly. Explore the complex nature of peoples’ perceptions of change, as well as their responses to change. The individual and group discussions will help change leaders develop a deeper understanding of the causes of changes, the resistance to it, and the opportunities that can flow from it. Workshop exercises will equip participants to identify why people respond to change the way they do and how to help others – and ourselves – through it.

This workshop will not only address the psychology of change. In addition to examining and discussing peoples’ thoughts, fears and development during the change process, participants will generate and learn specific strategies and management practices to address the myriad of hurdles to change and how to leverage the strengths and opportunities of your work groups and individual employees to move the journey forward.

Finally, the workshop offers active discussions on how to stabilize and sustain change in your organization with an eye toward individual and collective growth, continuous improvement that builds on change, and perhaps most significant, individual resilience in yourself and your employees. This resilience will be critical, when yes – it’s time for the change journey again!

Register for the workshop today.