Steer your team through the rollercoaster of change with wisdom from Neal Travis, Support & Admissions Manager at the Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR) and host of the Growth Support podcast. Neal is a seasoned leader in customer support, who joins me, Charlotte Ward, in unpacking the secrets of adaptive leadership. Discover how to not only navigate but also communicate the often turbulent waters of change, ensuring your team remains unified and forward-moving. Neal's expertise shines as we explore the different needs of team members and the importance of learning from each twist and turn. Uncover the delicate art of timing in information sharing and how transparency can transform uncertainty into a powerful team-building tool.
As we dissect the journey towards embracing paradigms like Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS), we shed light on the essential role of evolving together. This conversation is a trove of insights for any leader aiming to guide their team to new heights of achievement amidst the ever-changing landscape of team management. Tune in for a thought-provoking dialogue that promises not only to enlighten but also to prepare you for future goal-setting and the consequences of standing still. Join Neal and I as we lay down the roadmap for leading with clarity and adaptability in an era where change is the only constant
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Transcription
Charlotte Ward: 0:13
Hello and welcome to episode 259 of the Customer Support Leaders podcast. I’m Charlotte Ward. Today. Welcome Neal Travis to talk about managing change. I’d like to welcome to the podcast today Neal Travis. Neal, it’s lovely to have you join me. A fellow podcaster, no less. Would you like to introduce yourself, or everyone listening?
Neal Travis: 0:44
Sure, of course, as you mentioned, fellow podcasters, a bit of the side gig on the day today. I started in support officially, I would say in the very professional version of support about five years ago, early 2019, before that I come from retail, telecom, sales, training and things, so very different background Since then. Since 2019, I joined AIHR Academy to Innovate HR, which is my current company, when there were eight people and now we’re going to 85 plus, which is a lot. I’m excited about what we’re talking about today, leading a mid change, because it goes quite rapidly when you’re growing that quickly.
Charlotte Ward: 1:28
It really does. It really does. Wow, that’s awesome. So the podcast is growth support, isn’t it? That’s the thing that you do aside outside of your day job, which is a term that we’ve bandied around in the last couple of little chats we’ve had.
Neal Travis: 1:44
Yeah, indeed.
Charlotte Ward: 1:45
How long has that?
Neal Travis: 1:45
been running. I started in September 2023, so just a little under a year ago. The idea behind it is that I was having so many conversations within the community and the support colleagues and friends across the world that I figured is probably very useful for other people to also know as well. So I just started recording those conversations and here we are.
Charlotte Ward: 2:10
Yeah, it’s great. I love the podcast. Welcome to mine. I started it for many of the same reasons, I think. So, yeah, lovely to have you here. So we’re talking about, as you mentioned there, leading a mid change, and you’ve been through a lot of changes. You just said particularly, growth needs change, doesn’t it? It’s a requisite component of growth, I think, and rapid change and probably, I would say, multiple changes of direction and some going forward, doubling back left and right. There’s a lot to deal with, isn’t there? So, given that that’s an environment that you’re leading in, it’s certainly an environment I’m leading in as well. Where do we begin? In ourselves? What is the thing? I don’t feel like I’m qualified to talk about it, but I guess what is the thing that qualifies us as two leaders in these changing environments, these day jobs that are rapidly changing, rapidly growing, that qualifies us to sit here and talk about this.
Neal Travis: 3:22
Definitely, I think, going through it in the first place, and one of the things that really hits me is like there are certain lessons that you won’t learn until you hit them. Oh, that’s so true. And being able to go through those changes and through a lot of these experiences. You learn a lot of lessons from them and I think bringing those learnings into the next time that you need to handle it really takes you into. We’ve gone through this, you know how to handle the next one and each time you go through it, you get better and better. I think maybe the next change I’ll learn something new as well.
Charlotte Ward: 3:57
Yeah, I think that’s a fair point. I think, even if you’re adept at handling change and have been through it 100 times, whatever is the change of the day, you will always learn something the next time you go through it. And so I think that there is a bit of me that thinks you can listen to all of the podcasts about change that you want, but you’re absolutely right until you live it. You’re not equipped to deal with everything, and every change is new, as you said, but it’s very nature, so you learn something. So what are the biggest qualities or approaches that you have found have helped you navigate a changing environment as a leader? What is it that you can look back and say I did that well, and the last 10 times I’ve done this. That’s the thing that’s got us through.
Neal Travis: 4:56
I think for me, understanding what your team needs is and why the change is important. Having those two things in place are very important because one, if you know why the change is important and why it’s happening, you can better communicate and allow for that kind of streamline of information to go to the teams and make it valuable for them. But at the same time, every single person in your team or your team as a collective operates differently, and one of the exercises that I’ve done in the past that I found has really helped me, or at least in the longer term of things, is not necessarily an active exercise to do all the time, but being able to understand, like does my team need very explicit, clear and rigid information. They need to know exactly the definite things that are happening. Are they adaptable and can move with change very quickly? And understanding where your team is on that spectrum helps you communicate? with them for what they need.
Charlotte Ward: 5:54
It’s a really interesting point actually that I think that a team can be in itself quite adaptable and ready to change, or a team can be a team that is, as you said, kind of responds better to structure and guidelines and everything else. But I would also say that I think a team doesn’t sit in either of those spaces the whole time and I think actually there are certain changes where your team might respond better, even if they’re generally one or the other. They might respond better depending on the nature of the change, because there are certain things, particularly in a fast moving environment, where fluidity is required, right. And I think also there are other types of changing, how other types of change, however fast moving the environment, the arm, or structured more rigid they have to be. Maybe there are this trust and safety or legal or commercial things like guardrails you have to operate in and you can’t just kind of go in there and get stuck in, right. So I think you have to recognize which side in both cases?
Neal Travis: 7:00
What?
Charlotte Ward: 7:00
type of change.
Neal Travis: 7:01
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean it kind of reminds me of the first org structure that we went through. We kind of had a general plan and path of this is the way that our organization is going to be structured. One of our departments we kind of invalidated a little bit a year into its existence and so we are going to separate those teams as part of that change. The leader of one department left the organization. The leader of the org that was getting dispersed left the organization. I came in from a peer to a leader and at the same time we hadn’t hired another one. So there was all of these huge moving parts that are like it’s an org restructure, so it was very large, or a lot of people that needs to be informed and a lot of change management that needs to happen. And there I was trying to navigate. Hey, like I’m a peer, I’m coming in as a leader. I’m not going to be your leader in the future, but I’m here to help you through this uncertainty. How can I help you do that? Obviously, not a lot of that decision making is going to come to me, but when it comes to that fluidity of information, how can I support you making the most of it and being able to help you there, versus now, if I think about doing an org restructure, there’s a very different standardized process. These are the documentation. This is when change needs to happen. This is when communication needs to happen. It’s a very different process than it was before. And now, when we go through that, it’s a much more structured environment for the teams than it was then, so they’re not sitting in the same place that they were before.
Charlotte Ward: 8:34
As you said right at the top, you learn something every time, and maybe the fluidity was necessary the first time, but now you have something that’s more repeatable. You said something interesting there, which is about a team being kind of invalidated, and I think that whether we’re talking in the sense you are there, that structural invalidation ie that function no longer exists or is being absorbed or split, whatever’s happening to it there is that structure, but I think that’s also a danger with almost any change of personal invalidation, isn’t there?
Neal Travis: 9:14
Definitely, I think, especially if, as a organizational level, you’re making a strategic move to change, maybe, the mindset around what your product looks like. For example, if you have one team that’s really focused on building content and all of this and that’s what the core of your product is, and then you have other USBs that are offered on the side, that have generally in the past been separate, and you’re reframing that to be hey, our product is not just this one thing, it’s all of these things. Trying to bring that in. It’s a big change because then people think like, okay, so is my, what I own not important to the organization, is it? like is it changing in terms of strategy or my responsibilities? No, it’s not, but it can lead to people feeling like they’re maybe pushed off to the side because they’re not a part of the decision making process. Because, you know, maybe they’re a frontline person and this is coming from a more strategic level. I think that’s why the framework needs to be you need to understand why and importance, not only for the change, but also what it means to that person in your team and we can also relay hey, this is what it means for you. This is the information that we know. This is what I can tell you now, but I think, as a leader, you also need to keep in mind not knowing is also an answer. I think that people sometimes think that they need to know everything. Hey, I want to give you answers, I’m going to give you this answer, but no answer or telling them I don’t know yet, we’re going to find that out together gets you in that same boat, and forcing that answer for no reason doesn’t necessarily help anybody in that situation, rather than saying, hey, I don’t know and that’s okay, we’re going to figure it out.
Charlotte Ward: 11:04
Yeah, and I think actually that you know, on a personal level, I think, particularly when strategies change or teams move around in an organization, it can actually create a disconnect, can’t it, between the work that somebody’s doing, say on the front line, as you said, and their contribution, the value of their contribution, which you alluded to as well. But actually, like being able to draw a direct line, is something that is our responsibility eventually, and, to your point, it’s not evident all the time, even as someone who’s part of the decision making process with that change, it’s not always evident how you’re going to redraw those lines, which I think is kind of a part of what you were saying. You don’t know everything and I think certainly in the more fluid changes it’s okay not to know everything, and particularly when they’re big, you know. I think for me a fairly recent example was my support in my day job moved from a customer office into engineering. That’s a significant change of focus for the team, for the kind of things that would be more naturally joined up with and therefore the effect and our place in the organization. That doesn’t mean we don’t have that, it just means that we’ve redrawn it and I would say we’ve redrawn it very successfully and that the team are. We barely broke stride, you know, because it was okay to say we’ll figure it out. Actually, this isn’t doors closing, it’s doors opening. You know and I think that that’s a really healthy way to look at it that we don’t know what’s behind all of those doors over the start, but they will open as part of this change.
Neal Travis: 12:52
Yeah, and if you look at it not from like, we’re talking about org restructures and all of these things. But even on much smaller changes, we recently rolled out KCS and adopted the KCS methodology for knowledge management. And there we went from hey, we’re doing tickets this way to completely restructuring the way that we’re doing tickets. And one of the big questions that came up was okay, we have now, what’s going to happen with all of our metrics? Like, obviously they’re completely different. And I said, what are the new metrics supposed to look like? And I was like we’re going to find out. It’s going to be a big change. It is a completely new mindset of the way that we go about doing our work. So we’re going to find out what that new norm looks like for us and we’ll see and then we’ll go from there.
Charlotte Ward: 13:39
I don’t know.
Neal Travis: 13:40
But at the same time, we’re not going to break stride, we’re going to continue. We’re going to address all the questions as they come up and we’ll go through it together. I think that’s the biggest thing. If you get your team and you understand the importance of it and you’re in it together through that change, then it’s much easier to go through those kinds of changes, no matter how big or small, versus somebody not understanding. And from a leadership perspective, you have a lot more information and you have a lot more of the reasoning behind it, but they don’t always have that full picture.
Charlotte Ward: 14:13
And you can’t always give it right. I think actually that’s really important to recognize, and I think that’s something that, until you step into leadership, you really aren’t aware of. Actually, even as a super transparent leader, you can’t say everything.
Neal Travis: 14:28
Oh, I well, my uh, I recently, uh, went through a coaching exercise and one of the things that came up in the coaching exercise was are you communicating it because you’re excited about it, or are you communicating it because it’s going to bring value to the current situation and it has meaning in that process?
Charlotte Ward: 14:49
Because I’m a very transparent person.
Neal Travis: 14:50
I love to communicate things as they happen, but at the same time if you communicate too early some things and people are like oh, I mean, I was expecting this, but that’s not actually happening anymore and you really have to pull yourself back. And I think that’s an important question to answer, especially when you’re going through change. Am I communicating this now because it has importance to the process, or am I communicating it just to communicate it? And defining those lines, I think, is really, really important.
Charlotte Ward: 15:16
Yeah, that’s, that’s something I’m definitely guilty of. I think who wouldn’t be like? Particularly when it’s good change, like I got? You know this is amazing, just wait. But but you do, you have to know, you know, you have to know. I think you know there. I think some of that depends who you’re talking to Like. There are certainly going to be, I think you know times when you want to tell everyone everything or and should. But but times when that kind of ratcheted approach of what you can and when you can and who you can say certain things to, as a point of, like you say, adding value, enabling people to carry, particularly when you’re a leader that has team leads reporting into you, helping your team leads to prepare, even before the, the folks on the front line, I think. I think you learn that over time the more you do this right. This is important. This is significant for my team leads, but not right now for the front line. We need to have a conversation about this. But but it doesn’t mean it flows all the way, or it’s, or it’s all the same message is given all the way. Yeah.
Neal Travis: 16:21
And and if you think about it in terms of a larger teams and structure, like we’re talking about orgery structure, this kind of change, If someone from another department that you might be taking on soon doesn’t know, yet, but you’re communicating with another leader very transparently what happens when that person from the other department. Ears it from them and not directly from you, that narrative changes the context changes, more questions and confusion might arise, if they’re hearing it. Hey I heard by the grapevine, like this is happening. But this is happening, but it hasn’t been communicated with me yet and the changes about me. So I think that’s where that really comes into play, of understanding who and why and when communication.
Charlotte Ward: 17:02
I think transparency and just this is slightly getting away from the orc changes, because I feel like we’ve sat in because they’re the big ones, aren’t they?
Neal Travis: 17:08
They’re the stressful ones, the meaty ones, the big changes, yeah, the big changes.
Charlotte Ward: 17:14
You know inside a team you mentioned KCS, for instance doesn’t have a great deal of impact, say, on your product team or your engineering teams or your sales team. Inside a team, when you have more agency over the changes you’re making, the things you’re driving towards, the tools, the processes, you know how you mix things up and how frequently you mix things up and why you mix things up. There are still I think there are obviously individual challenges. There are obviously individual challenges. People come to change at different rates and with different let’s say, different degrees of open arms. How do you manage? Because I buy into the we don’t know yet and it’s okay, kind of philosophy too. That doesn’t work for everyone, does it? There are people who will definitely say well, if you don’t know, I’m not doing it. Or if you don’t know, then I’m scared. Or if you don’t know, I’m worried. Or even I’m stressed, or I’m angry. There’s a range of responses. Or I’m defiant. Even I’m going to go and tell someone else that you don’t know what you’re doing. You can get extremes, can’t you? Even if it’s inside your own wheelhouse.
Neal Travis: 18:42
So how do you deal with the?
Charlotte Ward: 18:43
extremes?
Neal Travis: 18:45
Well, one, I think it comes from the very, very core of culture, when you’re building your teams in the first place and you’re building that culture. I think it’s important to bring that into every conversation that you have. I mean every day that you’re with your team. You’re building that level of trust as a team member. I hope that you have that trust in me as a leader that we’ve built over the weeks, years time that we’ve worked together, where you know that we will know that we will navigate this together. Secondly, I mean, even if you’re having a group conversation with the entire team about some changes that are coming up, maybe some of your team won’t voice that in a group setting. And it’s important to check in with your team individually and say, hey, we talked about this as a group. I just want to check in with you individually and see you know, what are you thinking about? Is there any things that I can address specifically for you that you might have any concerns about or anything? So I think that’s really where coaching comes into play trust, transparency and that coaching aspect of you know what is it that’s bothering you. Is that something that you can address now? Is it something that maybe you just don’t have enough information that you need to make that change in your mind, or is it something that now you have too much information that you’re overwhelmed about? Maybe I can help you sort through that. Maybe we can break it down a little bit. So I think really coaching, checking in with your team in and outside of group settings and building trust is super important.
Charlotte Ward: 20:12
It really is. I think I would add one more, and that is that, particularly in a fast-moving environment, where some of these changes are very experimental, frankly I think it’s okay to say this might not be, for either, you know, I think this change it’s an it may officially be an experiment or it’s the first step onto something better. But we have to negotiate this thing in order to know and I know that over the course of my career, I could probably cite tens of examples where we’ve decided something and then we’ve either gone backwards or we’ve pushed through it, you know, or we’ve gone sideways, because doing the first step of a change in forms you doesn’t it? And I think, as long as you’re kind of willing to say, look, this is what we’re doing now, we’re going to use this as a point of information to decide what our next step might be, whatever direction that is. I think that’s something I think particularly. I mean, rolling out KCS is quite a big thing to do. That’s a huge work in practice change. But there are other things where it’s like we’ll try this tool for six months or something you know, and it’s okay. Like if it’s not as good as the last one, we’ll go back, or if it’s, you know, we may go on and find something else, and there are. I think it’s important to build a culture where that is not seen as wasted effort, actually, yeah.
Neal Travis: 21:46
I will say just the point about it’s our second kickoff of KCS, because the first one we did look at it. We were like maybe we’re going to put a pause on this, we’re going to try it a little bit, we’re going to do some skill building in between and we’ll go from there. So when you talk about it could be something that we roll back on, that one was definitely a hey, we’re going to do this kickoff, we’re going to learn, and then we kind of fell flat a little bit and now we’re bringing it back. So that’s good.
Charlotte Ward: 22:17
Yeah.
Neal Travis: 22:18
I think, when it comes to big change and having addressing people’s fear through the change or something it’s really important to kind of I always look at it. I think it’s important to be aware of the fact that it’s not as big or as scary as you thought it was when you do get started, keep the ball rolling and once you do see that it’s maybe not as big or as scary or as daunting as you thought it was, go big or go home like commit, yes, yeah, because, if you like, there’s this thing in change where, like, if you’re half in, half out, most likely it’s not going to work. Yeah, because you’re not decided, you’re being very, very cautious and if you don’t fully commit, it doesn’t work most of the time. And I think understanding the risks of not doing that and understanding the risks of leaning all into early or something like that is important. Doing some sort of risk evaluation through these changes is a good step.
Charlotte Ward: 23:13
And finally that was just a super important thing the risk of not doing it. I think that’s a message we should all be taking to our teams one way or another in all of the guardrails we just talked about, about the level of transparency, the value add to this conversation, but, you know, the risk of not doing it is an important part of those conversations.
Neal Travis: 23:35
Yeah, if we’re trying to hit a goal or we’re trying to reach something and nothing changes, is it going to happen? Is it going to work? You know what happens if we don’t change this. What happens in a year from now?
Charlotte Ward: 23:47
What does that future look like?
Neal Travis: 23:49
Sometimes a good exercise to go through with the team or even just by yourself, and look, you know what happens if we do it, what happens if we don’t do it.
Charlotte Ward: 23:58
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Neal. This has been a fascinating conversation. I hope you’ll come back and have another conversation with me another time, will you?
Neal Travis: 24:08
Yeah, of course, super excited for that. It’s been a pleasure.
Charlotte Ward: 24:11
Awesome. Thank you so much too. Thank you so much.
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