Last session

I think this change management exercise of the last session was different from the other change situations we discussed previously. For Rowntree management change meant something definitevely negative, it meant loosing their job.

In the previous discussions change meant in most of the cases meant something positive, a new start, new challanges, in this exercise it was the end of something. Thus it was a different approach, and for sure something everyone experiences in his / her life.

IV session

The common thought all the speakers had was that you need to have a goal in order to start a change process. This is a very obvious claim however I think people tend to forget about this easily and start change processes without having a clear goal.
I think this is a great advise not only for the our professional lifes but for our personal life as well. If you don't have a goal making progress or achieving anything will be very hard and instead of making steps ahead you will be staying in the same place or even making steps backwards.

The second thing I found interesting is how to handle people who resist to change. Ernő had a very clear idea, he said this people have to be fired. I agree with this, however I think that this might be quite a dangerous strategy. There are often people in an organization who always like to challenge and question things. These people can be sometimes very annoying - as every time they have to be convinced that the decisons taken are right - but at the same time are an asset for the company as well. They are able to see things from a different perspective and make people aware of hidden risks. So how do you distinguish between resistans (who are definitively not assets for a company) and challenging people, who seem to resist as well. Sometimes the distinction is not that easy.

If a leader fires all the resistants sooner or later he/she will have subordinates who follow his vision without questioning anything and will act as robots. Thus I think Ernő's advice is very valid but shall be used with caution.

II. Session

To be honest I've found the the second session much better than the oen with the executive coach (sorry, I can't remember his name).

I like the idea that we have all these different aspects/personalities in ourselves and can use them accordingly. We use them unconsciously, without paying much attention. Thus we follow parallel communication channels. It was very interesting to see how an inaspected reaction could change the whole conversation and somehow the balance of power.

I think this method is really simple, maybe too simple for real life. In a conflictual situation most of the times I react automatically, without thinking too much. After the discussion - when I calmed down - all the good answers, which I could have said come to my mind.

Generally I think that leaders are sometimes overmystified. According to the leadership theories goods leaders should be almost perfect, and honestly I don't think many leaders can meet all these expectations.

I found the first session very interesting, especially the example about active listening. I have several doubts and questions concerning this method but I believe (hope) it works. I think it is worth at least paying attention to the basic rules, like trying not to judge the other person and not to come up with solutions when the other person is talking to us.

My major concern with this method is that I don't think this always works. Sometimes just listening is not enough and you have to tell your opinion especially if a person is underperforming. By always listening you support your subordinate instead of giving critical feedback.

However I realized that I try to listen to the people I manage as individuals but not as a team. Every Monday we have a team meeting which is more of an operational meeting as we discuss current jobs and workload. Next time I want to try to ask the team's opinion about issues going on in the office (like how to motivate people more, how to increase efficiency). I realized that it was a big mistake not doing this before. I will let you know how it went :-)