A Girl Guiders' Trainers Blog: Change Management at Anglia Commissioners Conference

Sunday, 12 March 2017

Change Management at Anglia Commissioners Conference

Wonderful to be back in Anglia Region at the Kents Hill Park Training & conference Centre. At short notice I travelled to Milton Keynes to run 2 x 1h 15 min sessions on Change Management. The remit was to focus on the Kubler Ross Change curve and to look at some techniques to support emotions in relation to the change agenda. The venue and food were very good (some commissioners fitted in an early swim on the Saturday morning) as the venue also contained a spa. The were over 130+ commissioners and Anglia were really well organised.

My first session the commissioners got hung up on IT skills and no matter how many scenarios I presented to steer them in the right direction they kept focussing on the negative - hope they saw the irony of where they got themselves. The session needed to be longer as 75 mins wasn't long enough. For the 2nd session I said at the beginning we were leaving negativity at the door and were assuming a perfect world where everyone had the IT skills and tools they needed to fulfil their role. That did the trick and the session went much more to plan. The powerpoint slide representing all of the known change over the next 18 months did the job, and shocked them so they could experience the 1st stage of the change curve. There were some wonderful examples of "Bright Spots" being reported on the way out of the change curve e.g stars of the gang show were all bought the new Guide top which they then wore in their units with great success. An ongoing bright spot because the SS leader has called a parents meeting to discuss the new proposed names for Rangers and how they can feed back their feelings. I really enjoyed the 2nd session and didn't deliver all of the plan because they got so involved with the group work.