The famous phrase, “be the change you want to see in the world” originated with Gandhi, a legendary man who was the master of social change. Gandhi created a world he wanted to be living in through years of sacrifice and modelling his ideas and there is a lot to be learned from this in the current world of management and leadership.

Crucial to driving change among those around you is not only to advocate your ideas, but to actually demonstrate them too. Without demonstrating our ideas, how are you supposed to develop others to also change? How could Gandhi have encouraged resistance to be peaceful unless he demonstrated with only non-violent protests?

This can easily be translated into the workplace and is something we come across often. Managers and leaders come to us with changes they would like to see in their organisational culture and cannot understand why the change is not taking place. They might have had a company-wide meeting, sent out memos and emails and provided KPI targets – but people still don’t seem to be changing. Why?!

Well perhaps management need to take a long look in the mirror and realise that they need to change first before they even begin advocating their values. Leaders need to demonstrate the desired behaviour before their employees can truly buy-in. Only once they demonstrate their change, can they start to see it in others.

“We want to create an open, transparent culture!”

says one leader, who gets defensive when team members provide constructive criticism about the way things are managed. Only once they become accepting and open to any kind of criticism can employees feel as though they can be open and transparent with them.

“I want my employees to feel as though they can freely leave to go home at 5pm”

says another leader, despite sending emails to employees gone 7pm each evening. If management continue to send emails out-of-hours, employees may feel as though switching off at 5pm demonstrates a lack of commitment to the job.

“My employees don’t follow health and safety protocols at all times like they should”

says a warehouse manager who is not wearing his helmet and goggles as he should be. Only once he starts to follow health and safety protocols himself can employees feel as though he takes them seriously enough to adhere to them.

If we are looking to instil change in our employees, we have to be the change we want to see. This means taking responsibility for our own actions and understanding their impact on our company culture. We have to advocate and then demonstrate before we can develop. We have to role model the type of behaviour we want to see – otherwise how can we expect people to want to perform that way?

Does this sound a little familiar? Richard at Brighstone has been working with organisations for many years helping them to improve company performance, providing ROI which would not be possible without making some level of organisational change. In the UK, staff engagement is in decline and it is estimated that only half of employees have faith in their senior leaders. We want to change that and can be there to help you solve this problem. Just get in touch with Richard at Brightstone for an initial chat to get the ball rolling.