Leading people through LGR
Culture, resistance and communication in council mergers.
A half day on leading people through reorganisation: building culture in mergers, trust and psychological safety, resistance as information, communicating change, leading through adversity and adaptability.
- Level
- Explore
- Learning time
- 4 hours
- Where
- Serving the public
- Price
- £129
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Managers and team leaders in councils and public bodies going through reorganisation or merger
Overview
Structures can change overnight, but people need time. This half day completes Building the new council and starts with how culture is built and changed through Schein's embedding mechanisms, contrasting Gerstner's turnaround at IBM with the HP and Compaq clash. It then explores trust and psychological safety with Edmondson, Coyle and the bystander effect. Resistance is treated as information through Piderit's ambivalence, Rock's SCARF model and Kegan and Lahey's immunity to change, with the NHS National Programme for IT as a warning. Weick's sensemaking and Balogun and Johnson's middle managers follow, and it closes with Heifetz's holding environment and Hamel and Valikangas on continuous renewal.
Aims
The aim is to develop managers who can hold their teams steady while reorganisation unfolds: reading resistance rather than fighting it, communicating change consistently, shaping culture deliberately through a merger, and creating the conditions in which people can adapt and recover.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Apply a culture due diligence checklist to a merger or service combination, choosing deliberate blending over default dominance.
- Use the immunity to change method and Rock's SCARF model to hear what resistance is telling you before it hardens.
- Plan change communication and recovery for your team using the sensemaking loop, springboard stories and Heifetz's holding environment.
What you'll develop
Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:
- Identify Schein's embedding mechanisms, both day to day and through systems, and explain why they shape culture more than formal statements.
- Explain what psychological safety is and is not, and how it combines with high standards to create a learning zone.
- Explain how resistance can carry accurate information and how leaders' own actions contribute to it.
- Explain how people make sense of change sideways, and why middle managers act as translators rather than relay stations.
- Explain Edmondson's definition of psychological safety and describe how a leader's response to the first piece of bad news builds or destroys it.
- Distinguish adaptability from resilience and explain why neither can substitute for the other.
- Plan a culture change that builds on existing strength and avoids the four common reasons culture change fails.
- Apply Edmondson's three moves and Coyle's three skills to build safety and belonging in your own team.
Built from 6 modules.
4 hours of learning.
- 01Building and Changing Culture, and Culture in MergersCulture in Organisations44 min
- 02Trust, Safety and Strong CulturesCulture in Organisations41 min
- 03The Human Side: Resistance, Ambivalence and LossLeading through Change and Conflict39 min
- 04Communicating Change: Sensemaking, Narrative and the MiddleLeading through Change and Conflict38 min
- 05Leading Others Through AdversityResilience, Wellbeing and Adaptability40 min
- 06Readiness and AdaptabilityResilience, Wellbeing and Adaptability40 min