Leading Change and the Peacemaker Role in Leadership

Two key roles of leaders are to lead change and to serve as peacemakers. Both these traits make managers more effective in their role to support both workers and management.

To lead change a leader must be able to communicate. Communications skills are crucial for a leader to convey the changes to be implemented. If this communication is in written or oral form, to be effective the message or idea must be presented clearly and concisely. Conveying the idea clearly sends a message to the employees and helps them embrace this change. Change concerns everyone and when employees are not informed, they may not buy into it, so the idea may be more difficult to implement. Communication before, during and after the process is critical to making sure that it causes as little disruption as possible.

A leader must be persuasive to lead change. Being persuasive and getting the buy in for change requires confidence in the idea being implemented and get buy in to support the idea. If you only support the idea half way you will not convince the workers and/or management to implement the change. Whether change is initiated by management or the workers you, as a manager must persuade both sides to fully embrace the ideas being implemented.

Confidence is also a must for a leader to lead change. You must have the self-confidence to achieve the assigned task as well as the confidence in your staff to implement the change. Another piece of this puzzle requires you to have confidence in the leaders above you to support your decision fully. You must be able to stand up to both workers and management to provide both the good and bad to the new idea being implemented.

To serve as a peacemaker you must have the ability to manage conflict, listen and to build trust. To manage conflict a leader must recognize the human nature towards selfish ambitions of the people under them. By recognizing this and managing conflict in a non-conflicting manner will help workers recognize these shortfalls and eventually help bring resolution to the solution. When a person recognizes these self-ambitions it can help them understand and clarify why change is needed.

Being heard is one of the greatest concerns of workers and to listen to them requires a lot of tact and diplomacy. Listening is probably the greatest thing a manager or leader can do for their organization. Great leaders listen, understand and take action on what they've heard. Focusing on the problem is part of this skill and when the topic changes, you must be able to guide the person back to the problem at hand, all while still listening to them. To never achieve piece with your workers is to not listen.

Trust is the foundation to building peace. It takes a lifetime to build trust but a minute to take it away. Violation of trust that you have built can take just one action and may take