Leading Change and Transformation

In this episode:

In this episode of Learning In Action, host Bryan Benjamin sits down with Dr. Gerard Seijts, Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Ivey Business School, to tackle one of the biggest leadership challenges: managing organizational change and overcoming resistance.

They explore how to navigate uncertainty, build trust, and break down the barriers that often stand in the way of successful change initiatives. Gerard highlights why introspection, renewal, and humility are essential for leaders, underscoring how self-awareness and emotional intelligence can drive real, lasting impact. He shares practical strategies for overcoming resistance, stressing the power of clear communication and a deep understanding of what truly motivates people within an organization. 

Listeners will gain actionable insights into the dynamics of leading teams through transformational change, including the foundational role of leadership character, and the significance of celebrating small wins to support continuous forward momentum.

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What is Learning in Action?

Hosted by the Ivey Academy at Ivey Business School, Learning in Action explores current topics in leadership and organizations. In this podcasting series, we invite our world-class faculty and a variety of industry experts to deliver insights from the latest research in leadership, examine areas of disruption and growth, and discuss how leaders can shape their organizations for success.

The Ivey Leadership Certificate Podcast Mini-Series

Learning In Action presents a special six-part series: the Ivey Leadership Certificate Podcast—designed to equip emerging leaders with strategic insights, practical frameworks, and the mindset to thrive at the executive level. In each episode of this mini-series, Bryan Benjamin sits in conversation with a professor from Ivey Executive Education to discuss timely challenges affecting leaders today.

Episode Transcript:

[THEME MUSIC] 

BRYAN BENJAMIN: Hello and welcome to the Ivey Leadership Certificate Podcast, a six-part series designed to explore critical dimensions of modern leadership in today's rapidly evolving business landscape. I'm your host, Bryan Benjamin, and in each episode, we will be diving into key leadership topics that empower you with the skills and insights needed to navigate strategic change, lead people effectively, and drive transformational outcomes in your organization. 

Today's episode, leading change and transformation is the first in this series. As business leaders, we all know how important it is to lead effectively through times of change and uncertainty. When the pace of technological advancements, market shifts, and global disruptions continuously increasing the ability to lead change is one of the most crucial skills for success. 

Today's guest is Dr. Gerard Seijts professor of organizational behavior at the Ivey Business School and a leading expert in leadership development. His research focuses on leadership in areas such as change management, crisis leadership, and the development of leadership character. Gerard has co-authored several books, including Good Leaders Learn, Developing Leadership Character, and Leadership in Practice. 

He has worked with global organizations to build leadership capabilities for navigating transformation. Today, Gerard will share insights on how leaders can successfully design and implement change management plans, overcome resistance, and build a culture of continuous improvement. Whether you're facing transformation in your own organization or looking to sharpen your leadership skills, this conversation will provide valuable takeaways. 

[MUSIC PLAYING] 

So let's start by discussing why leading change is such a critical skill for leaders today. With the pace of change in the business world increasing on a daily, hourly and minute by minute basis, particularly in the dynamic markets such as Hong Kong, how do you see leaders evolving to meet these challenges? 

GERARD SEIJTS: Oh boy, that's a really important question, Bryan. The notion of change and disruption, of course, is a really important topic for discussion in the Ivey classroom. I think it's not unreasonable to argue that organizations have always confronted significant societal and economic change. 

But what is different today, I feel and again, this is not especially my particular wisdom, but having listened to a great many leaders in the public, private, not for profit sector is that disruption today is broader, deeper and arriving faster than leaders have previously experienced. And so I think you can make the case that without reflection and subsequent action based on that reflection, leaders may simply be overwhelmed. Or, to put it more bluntly, not as prepared to face current and future challenges the way they should. 

Now, the question is how can leaders evolve? A very good friend of mine, Rashid Wasti he is the Executive Vice President and Chief Talent Officer at the Western Group of Companies here in Canada. And he has a really nice way of phrasing it. And he always talks about the importance of introspection and renewal. And the case he makes is the following. Of course, a great many organizations employ incredibly talented, ambitious and hard working individuals. 

That's important, but it is certainly not enough because the world around us is changing and we have no option but to evolve with that changing environment, whether it is societal, economic, technological, et cetera. So we are always talking about these two keywords introspection and renewal. Introspection simply means to-- for us, for individuals, for leaders to reflect that deep excavation, considering the leadership, what they did well, what went wrong, what can you do even better? 

Really is about seeking and hearing feedback and not becoming very defensive about it. And that renewal is, I believe, the key to your question, Bryan because out of that reflection should come a series of realizations for us to set behavioral goals in response to whatever is happening in our environment. So what's your personal plan for development? What are the commitments you're willing to make in terms of things that you should acquire, in terms of things that you should drop? 

So to answer your question around, what are the implications, how do you see leaders evolving to meet these challenges, I would say perhaps more than ever before, to be very open-minded and humble, to have the courage to realize that there is gaps or limitations that need to transform, and the absolute drive in that striving towards perfection to be better tomorrow than they are today. 

BRYAN BENJAMIN: Yeah. I really like that word humble. It is so important. And leaders are driving fast and pausing and reflecting and recognizing maybe where they may be struggling. You actually hit on a couple of topics that I want to dive into a little bit further. I want to talk about barriers. And you identified, pace of change and not necessarily always being prepared. The context in which, uncertainty is that overarching umbrella. 

So two or three of the most common barriers you see leaders facing when they're trying to implement change and navigating these challenges that are just hitting us in every which direction. 

GERARD SEIJTS: When you think about leading change, driving change. I assume many of the listeners are familiar with the work of John Kotter, who was at the Harvard Business School. He's retired for more than a few years, but his work around leading change, driving change is still very influential. And I'm working on the assumption that most of the listeners would be very familiar or somewhat familiar with his framework, these eight common mistakes, or the eight steps in leading deep and comprehensive change. 

I'll list them quickly. Establish the urgency for change, creating the guiding coalition, the importance to develop a vision and strategy, to communicate the vision, to empower broad-based action, generating short-term wins. Consolidating gains and not letting up. And of course, and eventually anchoring the new approaches in the DNA, the culture of the organization. So three key themes. 

The first one, I would say is communication or the lack thereof. If you think about establishing the urgency for change or communicate the division, one of the things I've seen is that not always the leaders do a great job in terms of inspiring to motivate or create an engagement to those newly desired behaviors. So why we need to change in the first place? And without that understanding, without that motivation, leading change becomes very challenging. 

So that's why I believe communication is such a key component of good, strong, effective leadership. Number 1-- number 2, I refer to that this motivation or inspiration and the inability for leaders, agents of change to really think about what success looks like, what are the milestones? What is the forward momentum? People care about forward momentum. There is nothing as motivating as forward momentum. 

I'll tell you a little story I used in my classes all the time. I actually think it is a very good example. John Naber, a former swimmer from the United States. The story goes as follows. He's watching TV and sees Mark Spitz winning seven gold medals in Munich at the Olympics in 1972. How amazing, he thought John Naber, a swimmer himself, but a big problem because his best time on the 100 meters backstroke was close to 60 seconds. 

And he's doing some thinking and extrapolating. He thinks that in order to win gold or come close anyway in the 1976 Olympics, probably needs to swim four seconds faster. That's an insane gap, so to speak. Four seconds in a pool is a lot. But here's what he started doing. He broke that ultimate objective four seconds. He broke it into four years. Each year that means it's about a second. Well, that seems better. More manageable than four seconds. 

And then he was thinking, OK, now realistically, I swim for 10 or 11 months a year. So you divide that second into 10 or 11 months, 1/10 of a second for each month. That doesn't sound insurmountable. Now, of course, each month, each week, about six times. You narrow this down, and the assumption might be, or the belief that this goal actually might be very achievable when you stand on the pool deck. 

To make a long story short, John Naber, gold medalist, 1976, the 100 meter backstroke. Simply thinking about the small wins for momentum, progress, et cetera and then the final piece is that when it comes to change and leading change, it is always about the team. We don't do things all by ourselves. And so issues around teamwork, team dynamics, how to lead a team, how to be an effective team, how to be an effective team member, critically important. 

And Bryan you know this from your own executive education background. Making teams work is incredibly challenging. So I would say that's a third barrier at times that really hampers the implementation of change in a great many organizations. 

BRYAN BENJAMIN: Everyone can relate to breaking something down and the second by second, year by year, it makes it so much more manageable. The team dynamics, it is an ongoing piece and constantly shifting and changing and evolving. Resistance often comes up when we hear about change, overt resistance, and sometimes less overt resistance. How do you help leaders address resistance effectively, both from employees that they may be leading directly or indirectly and within the broader organizational structure? 

GERARD SEIJTS: I think the single most realization, should be people are people. People have different motivations, hopes, dreams, et cetera and people may resist for very different reasons. To assume that people just simply resist because, they don't understand why the change is happening is the wrong approach. I can think of at least five or six reasons why people are resisting. 

At first, they might believe that it's simply not in their best interest to change because we have to change routines, and that's hard work or time consuming. Or it might not entirely be consistent with kind of rewards and how they're being allocated in an organization. So again, when it comes to leadership, I think things like the ability to communicate, to persuade, to negotiate are really important. 

People may simply not believe that the change is necessary or that this is the right change. They think that the change is-- well, let me put it this way, wrongheaded or stupid or ill conceived. Maybe they don't understand what exactly is required to become even more successful. What do you want me to do? How do you want me to do it? So they really need at times direction, a bit of coaching, et cetera. 

Bryan it's funny right? Because you started off the conversation that everything happens so fast these days and people might believe they don't have the time or the resources to change, because you're asking me already so much. At some point, we need to prioritize things or providing the necessary resources to set people up for success. Maybe this is too simplistic, but I always think that when it comes to leadership, and my role as a leader, as a team leader is to set you up for success, to enable you to be at your very best. 

Well, how can I enable people? What are the barriers that I need to take down? What resources would people need in terms of knowledge, their colleagues, timelines, et cetera? Maybe people don't believe they will be able to change. They lack the confidence. Well, that's relatively straightforward. That's why we send people to, educational programs to perhaps build confidence, et cetera, encourage people. 

But the single most challenging reason why people might object or resist to change is because sometimes people feel that it violates their fundamental beliefs or their values, and to change somebody's values is incredibly challenging. And I think that is part-- oftentimes when you see pretty transformational change in an organization, a fairly high percentage of people leaves on their own volition because there's somehow an incompatibility between company values and personal values. And that's challenging. 

BRYAN BENJAMIN: Your comment around deliberate change and choice that leaders need to make really resonates. So let's talk a little bit about how leadership character influences the way that leaders navigate change and build trust. Trust is an important word here within their organizations. 

GERARD SEIJTS: Hopefully most people know what we mean by the word character. Character is not simply, well, show great character and persistence and resilience. It is so much more. And through our research, we have identified 11 what we call dimensions of leader character that things like courage, accountability, drive, judgment, justice, humanity, you name it, 11 of those. 

And that combination actually speaks to who individuals are, how they show up day in and day out, which is different from competencies because competencies refer to skills, things that you and I as leaders should be able to do character slightly different. They're related, but they're different. And so, Bryan I think it's easy to see, relatively easy to see how these dimensions of courage, accountability and drive really support the implementation or the execution of change. 

It takes great courage to put your leadership on the line and lead change. It requires courage on the part of people because, as you alluded to in the previous questions, leading change can be difficult. People might resist. People might not be supporting the change, et cetera. That drive that deep sense of looking for excellence is critically important. As a leader, I think we need to bring that to the role of leadership and leading change. 

But here are the things that we typically don't talk about, but I think is absolutely foundational. I'll give you three. It's the humanity piece, the humility piece, and temperance. All three aspects of leader character. We talked about humility before. This openness, this love of learning to be humble, to understand that today was a great day but tomorrow can be very different. 

And for that reason, antennas up, pick up the signals. Maybe, just maybe, we need to change soon. That's the humility. Love of learning. It's the humanity piece. And maybe I can take that back to this notion of resistance. Humanity it's empathy. It's compassion. It's about understanding individual's motivations as to why they may resist or why they change. That particular point is particularly challenging. 

Leaders need to be people. They need to understand the psyche. Not that we should be Sigmund Freud or some other eminent psychologist, but humanity critically important. And finally, the temperance. One of the things I had to learn is that every decision, has a clock. What's the clock? If the clock is 15 seconds, we need to respond with an outrageous sense of urgency. 

But sometimes we need to give ourselves time and be patient with people. Because if I am intemperate, if I have no self-control, I just upset people. I may invite resistance. So the notion around temperance, what's the timing for all of these initiatives? I think it's critically important. So I can easily see how character is-- well, it is a foundational part of good, strong, effective leadership, but especially when it comes to leading change, some of these dimensions at different stages of the change process are critically important. 

[MUSIC PLAYING] 

BRYAN BENJAMIN: We're excited to have just launched a new IV leadership certificate out of our Hong Kong campus, and you've spent a lot of time in that market. So we're very excited that you're going to be teaching a module on leading change as part of this new certificate. Quick preview. What can participants expect? 

GERARD SEIJTS: Let me whet people's appetite and give you three examples. One of the really exciting pieces I think of this module is that we kick things off on opening day, talking about the leadership of Nelson Mandela and a movie, Invictus. It is such a great story about Mandela, democratically elected in 1994. I won't go into details, but what an unbelievable leadership movie this is. 

And a great articulation of both the competencies and the skills a leader needs to possess when she or he leads transformational change. And Mandela was tasked with leading transformational change to actually bring South Africa together. That's the country was on the brink of a civil war after his election. Great movie, great change movie, great leadership movie, and a great movie to illustrate competencies, commitment to the role of leadership and character. 

Another great case, a great topic of conversation is the case is actually Barry Wehmiller. It's a fascinating case because we see that the leader of that organization, Bob Chapman, actually has this epiphany. Organization is pretty successful. But in his mind, there's these realizations that maybe as a leader, he has been good, but it wasn't particularly great. So we see this personal leadership transformation. But at the same time, he's trying to transform the organization. 

And so it's both change at the individual level and at the organizational level. And I must say, Bryan this was not an easy transition because you ask questions about leadership prior. That certainly was a bit of resistance. So important lessons around leadership, how to lead this, but also how to address resistance to change. And then in all of this because this is a leadership certificate. 

So we talk a lot about leader effectiveness in particular in change but also how to effectively manage your own personal leadership career in times of radical change. There was a very opening question. So how do leaders learn to lead? How do leaders learn to become even better leaders? When or how can they take ownership over their own personal leadership career? 

And as much as we talk about situational awareness scanning the environment, it is also developing this self-awareness. This goes back to introspection, retrospection, and to really take steps to set oneself up for success. And I think if we can do or deliver on those three ideas in the course, just small building blocks, then I think we'll have a great module. 

BRYAN BENJAMIN: Fantastic and thanks for framing. I know it's incredibly hard to frame a module that's so packed with great insights and activities into three takeaways. So we're wrapping up. Is there one piece of advice? So if you could boil it down to a single piece of advice that you would offer leaders looking to embark on successful change initiatives, what would it be? 

GERARD SEIJTS: I mean, the area of organizational behavior and leadership, deep personal leadership. I consider myself a behavioral scientist. I love to talk about the behaviors that lead to organizational effectiveness, that help make people become leaders, even better leaders. And again, sometimes you meet people and they have a real impact on you. 

And again, that person is Rashid Wasti, I mentioned, I invoked his name earlier. And when he talks about transformations in organization, he talks about moments that matter and forward progress. There's four things he talks about. If you try to facilitate change in an organization, of course it's about processes. It's about tools, it's about training, et cetera. Of course it is about goals and metrics to get things done. 

But that is just table stakes, because it is really at times about the mindset that as leaders, we bring to the table when we step into a leadership role. I talked about awareness. I talked about the importance of empathy, because ultimately it is all about the decisions and the choices that we make on a daily basis. This is about judgment. To win the key moments and to get the moments that matter, we need to get moments-- we need to get those moments right. 

If you get those moments right, you create that forward momentum. You'll be all right, because ultimately it's all about your behavior. And earlier you talked about organizations and organizational barriers. I firmly believe it is the people that make the place. Bryan you and I can talk about processes and systems and policies, but they are the outcome of individual choices and issues. 

Ultimately, it is about the judgment that we bring to the role of leadership. It's about mindset to win the key moments and to get the moments that matter right. If you reflect on that philosophy, then I think we want 75% of the battle. 

BRYAN BENJAMIN: Moments that matter. That's going to stick with me as a way of keeping forward momentum. Gerard, thank you for sharing such valuable insights with us here today. Leading change and transformation is no easy task, but your perspective on building these effective plans, we talked about overcoming resistance and fostering a culture of continuous improvement has provided us with a lot to think about. 

Me especially I think about the organizations that we work with and support and the leaders that ultimately turn to Ivey Academy. So your insights are invaluable. I know that there'll be many, many takeaways here. For everyone tuning in, I hope you found the conversation as insightful as I did. If you're interested in learning more, Gerard module on leading change and transformation is part of our new Ivey leadership certificate program. 

We're going to dive even deeper. We'll go beyond the three that I restricted Gerard to a couple of times, and we'll get some real practical, hands on learning around these crucial leadership skills. Thank you for joining us today. If you enjoyed the conversation, don't forget to subscribe, share and stay connected for more leadership insights. Until next time. 

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About The Ivey Academy at Ivey Business School

The Ivey Academy at Ivey Business School is the home for executive Learning and Development (L&D) in Canada. It is Canada’s only full-service L&D house, blending Financial Times top-ranked university-based executive education with talent assessment, instructional design and strategy, and behaviour change sustainment. 

Rooted in Ivey Business School’s real-world leadership approach, The Ivey Academy is a place where professionals come to get better, to break old habits and establish new ones, to practice, to change, to obtain coaching and support, and to join a powerful peer network. Follow the Ivey Academy on LinkedIn.