Why Your Change Marker Is Struggling and What You Should Have Done Differently
You hired them to be a disruptor, a change maker. You chose them because they have the exact traits you need for them to drive innovation in your company. They're passionate and direct, with the ability to see success and go after it. They're also impatient, not willing to wait around for their vision to arrive when they could instead proactively make it happen. These are the traits that make them exceptional at driving innovation but they also make them a challenging employee to manage when the environment is not set up to embrace that.
A change maker cannot make change if they're constantly butting heads and when things start to go awry they are perfectly positioned to become an unintentional scapegoat. They end up labelled as difficult and the initiative gets canned when the reality was that they were set up to fail from the start.
By the way, the traits that make a disruptor valuable also commonly overlap with those of neurodivergence and as a leadership coach for people who are neurodivergent, I have had the frustrating experience of being consulted far too late in the process on more than one occasion. So let's talk about why your disruptor gets disrupted and how you can provide the environment that fosters innovation instead of endless frustration.
You can’t expect someone to drive change if you’re not willing to change how you support them through it.
The Challenge Of The Disruptor
You've hired a change maker with the intention to support them. You've funded the role itself, maybe even a team to support them. Senior leadership are saying all the right things in the communications and you've had the kick off meeting to introduce them to your department heads. You can get everything right in the onboarding and can have the best laid plans for getting things underway, but like with all best laid plans, if they're not adjusted for reality, they're likely to go awry.
Your new employee has entered with energy, drive and excitement, encouraged as part of the role, but their first roadblock is often when they start trying to put things into place. The reality of human nature is that we're often more likely to be resistant to chance than to embrace it. The modern workplace is fast-paced and individuals are often juggling busy workloads. So naturally, when something new comes along that requires them to jump on board with new work and different ways of doing things, it's not surprising that it gets met with resistance. The team already has a lot of work. They don't have capacity for more.
Even when the change is communicated down with excitement, that doesn't necessarily mean the enthusiasm propagates down the ranks. There will inevitably be, at all levels, those who see this as something imposed on them, rather than something they're willing to embrace, and if this is not addressed carefully this can be exactly where the initiative begins to unravel.
When the disruptor comes across such an individual, the relationship is not getting off to a neutral start. The disruptor is the threat of change to someone who is strongly opposed and a personification of the unwanted new initiative. That immediately lowers the level of psychological safety. Combine that with the change maker being direct, passionate and a little bit impatient and what might look like them naturally pushing as part of their job can quickly spiral into a relationship that turns fraught.
I’ve broken down how the asset that is directness can turn into a liability when the relationship starts to unravel, and how the very traits that make someone into a great change maker can make a difficult relationship spiral out of control in previous blog posts, but needless to say, the innovator is perfectly positioned to stumble into these relationship pitfalls.
A direct email that can be read as efficient communication to some can be read with unintended subtext by others depending on the context of the surrounding relationship.
The reason this is particularly challenging for a disruptor is that by the nature of their very role, this is happening with more than one person at the same time. There will always be multiple individuals resistant to change and the disruptor has to navigate through several of these challenging relationships.
With the right support for both the change maker and the leaders they are working with can make all the difference at this point. The resistors likely have valid concerns that need to be addressed and with the right avenues to have their voices heard and opportunities to work with the change maker instead of having it thrust upon them, things can move forward in a productive way.
The problems happen when that support isn’t available, especially when there is high pressure on the disruptor to drive results in a short amount of time. The more pressure, the less time they have to build up the relationships needed to make change happen, and the more likely things are to go wrong.
Ultimately, the disruptor is the one that suffers in this situation. When they become the common denominator in multiple challenging relationships, resulting in their initiatives stalling out, it’s easy to see how they get labelled the problem and either performance managed out or leave of their own volition before this can happen.
This is usually the stage I have the most visibility to. I’m often consulted to work with this person when it’s already too late, can see the exact steps that have led to reaching this tipping point but by the time I enter the conversation, the writing is already on the wall and I’ve had many potential working relationships fail to materialise because things have boiled over before I’ve even had chance to intervene.
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This is Particular Common For Neurodivergent Workers
I mentioned at the start of this blog post that I particularly see this in neurodivergent leaders. It’s a role that particularly suits neurodivergent leaders due to their often out of the box thinking. The corporate world is gradually becoming more aware of neurodivergence, both through more diverse hiring practises and the realisation that there are individuals on their leadership team already who are neurodivergent who had possibly been unaware of their own difference in processing until their child got diagnosed or they stumbled across it in some other way.
Neurodivergent leaders are a huge boon to any organisation but only when they have sufficient support. It is, unfortunately, too often the case that a neurodivergent leader is presented with a new role or way of doing things and told to ask for what support they need, placing the onus on the individual to spot what isn’t working and find their own solutions to the challenges themselves. It can also be challenging to even ask for the support when they’re new and want to prove that they’re contributing and not looking like they’re asking for special privileges.
This has the unfortunate effect that when things do go wrong, it’s often realised too late and the individual is performance managed out before they ever got the chance to demonstrate their true value. It can lead to a company genuinely trying to be inclusive inadvertently having the opposite effect which is not the outcome anyone wanted.
So with that in mind, let’s talk about how to set your disruptors up for success so that innovation is embraced instead of a struggle.
The very same traits that help an individual who is neurodivergent to stand out in the workplace in a positive way, can also have negative effects if utilised in the wrong environment.
How To Support Your Change Makers
The biggest single difference you can make is to be proactive, not just about bringing the individual in with the right supporting staff, but in how you prepare those they will be working with to receive them.
In a culture where people are listened to and feel like their opinions are being taken into account, individuals are much more willing to collaborate and work with the new initiative without feeling threatened by the disruptor coming in. This involves making sure that there are sufficient channels for support that don’t only go through the newcomer to give a voice to people who are concerned without putting the disruptor in the middle.
The disruptor themself also needs support, whether that’s guidance for navigating the organisation, a senior leader who is willing to invest time in managing concerns or external support from a leadership coach like myself who can help them identify the roadblocks along their way and put in strategies to address them.
Support can include working with mentors but it also needs to include support from leadership directly to show their investment in the success of the initiative.
The traits the disruptor possesses are valuable. Innovation is born from people who are driven, direct and impatient, but like with any strengths, it’s when they become overplayed that they start to work against them. Support the individual to channel their strengths, but also work to redirect them when they begin to work against them. The traits that contribute to relationships falling apart in the wrong environment are the same ones that drive new initiatives in the right environment. You hired them for those traits. Don’t paint them as a problem.
Finally, your company is building a relationship with the individual. That means coming with them on their journey and helping develop them into a role that is mutually beneficial.
That’s exactly how I work with my clients, tackling the real world challenges that come up in their career across the months we work together. Leadership learned in theory is not always directly translatable to the real world, and so as a leadership coach working with talented individuals to navigate complex workplace situations, I join them on their journey to help address their blind spots, advocate for the support they need and channel the traits they have into positive impact within their roles.
One of my biggest frustrations as a leadership coach is being brought into the process far too late. And while I have worked with individuals on performance improvement plans who have gone on to be fast tracked for the next stage in their career, I’d much rather intervene before the situation reaches that point. You’re hiring brilliant people, make sure you’re setting them up for success.
You can find out more about my one-on-one leadership coaching, read case studies of organisational success or get in contact to discuss how I can help your organisation drive innovation successfully.
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