4 steps to garnering buy-in from your team

Summary: When introducing changes, effective leaders gain buy-in by allowing team input beforehand, clearly communicating the reasoning behind decisions, setting explicit role expectations for success, and celebrating achieved milestones together. This makes people feel heard, aware of motivations and impacts, and appreciated for their contributions.

We hear a lot of leaders say that they feel frustrated trying to get their people on board with their decisions and upcoming changes. Garnering buy-in for changes and initiatives doesn’t have to feel like an uphill battle. You can use a few strategic approaches to get people not only aligned to decisions and changes, but also excited about them.

First, create an opportunity for your team members to share their insights, ideas, and feelings ahead of making a decision or change. People want to feel heard and need to work through their feelings. Plus, you never know what kind of amazing ideas and thoughts will come your way to help make the change better. Being a great leader doesn’t mean decisions have to be consensus-based, but it does mean creating space for new ideas and divergent thinking and hearing your people’s feedback.

Next, communicate the change clearly, giving your team the full why behind the decision. Adults need a why. They need to understand the reasoning behind decisions and changes. Even if they don’t like the change, they’re more likely to get behind it if you share the why.

Then, be explicit with how their roles will be impacted and what the expectations for success are. People need clarity of expectations to be successful in their roles especially with changes to their position.

Finally, when you reach the finish line, make sure to celebrate the victory with your team. Give praise to those who participated and to your team for their patience and openness. Feeling like you recognize their work, are thankful, and have included them in the process will encourage them to want to support you when you inevitably implement another change in the future.