JS Tip 592: Leading Through Change, Part III

We’ve been talking about leading through change. (Pandemic. Economic upheaval. Social turmoil.) 

We introduced the acronym ADKAR (awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement) as a leadership tool. 

We promised to explore each of the principles. Today: desire. 

The leader’s task is to create a desire in those that follow to support and participate in the change. To be part of it. To be active in it. To say, “This is mine. I believe in this.” 

But how? 

Creating desire is persuading. Motivating. Aligning the change objective with the personal goals: 

• You can make your life better.

• You can make the lives of those you love better.

• You can be part of something great.

• You can be proud of what you’ve done.

There’s danger here. The persuasion—the offering—has to be honest and realistic. Otherwise, it’s empty and manipulative. Be careful. 

Consider the words of Robert Kennedy: “Some see things as they are and ask ‘Why?’ I dream of things that never were, and ask, ‘Why not?’”

Consider the last lines of Lerner and Lowe’s Camelot: “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.”

The hope for something better. The fight for something better. It comes from desire.  

We love this stuff. 

Hollie, thank you.