5 People You Need to Train to Reach Organizational Change Competency

Training is an integral part of the journey to organizational competency, and for every person that you need to train, Prosci has the change management training courses to help you. But how effective will these trainings be if they fall on deaf ears?

Before building knowledge, it is essential that there is an awareness of the need to change, and the desire to change. The good news is that once these milestones have been achieved, building individual change management competencies through training is easy. Of course a well-rounded change management strategy does not stop at training—it continues on to build ability and offer reinforcement. For this reason, many organizations internalize their change training capability by attending Prosci’s Train-the-Trainer program.

Key Roles to Train for Successful Change

To make the most of your education efforts, this article explores the five roles you need to train and how you can walk them through every step of the ADKAR Model, including suitable trainings for building role-specific knowledge.

1. Senior executives 

Start building awareness and desire with senior leaders by engaging them in one-on-one meetings and short, quick presentations that focus on the ROI of change management. Plant the seed for change management early with conversations focused on research, project ROI and the impact of the people side of these initiatives. In doing so you prime your sponsors to be great advocates of organizational change competency!

Once you’ve gained your executives’ buy-in and whetted their appetite, you can move on to building knowledge with Prosci’s half-day Change Management Sponsor Briefing where executives:

• Learn the value of change management and how it will position their projects and organization for success
• See best practices research on what their role is in sponsoring their own and other strategic initiatives
• Assess their own level of competency in sponsoring and leading changes
• Learn tactics for becoming a more active and visible sponsor
• Understand how to ensure adequate resourcing for change management at the initiative and project level

Executives will achieve ability with the help of the Sponsor Roadmap (part of the Prosci 3-Phase Process). The reinforcement of an executive's sponsor competency will depend on your level of access to that executive, but it will usually involve some reiteration of the key messages from the Sponsor Briefing, and coaching from the change managers who attended Train-the-Trainer.

2. People managers

The process of walking people managers through the ADKAR Model is similar to that of the executives, but the content is now different. Appeal to people managers by focusing on how change competency will make them better at their job, more personally successful and able to bring success to their team. Managers may be too busy to read a whole ADKAR Model book, so consider quick presentations or tutorials to start building awareness and desire.

For building knowledge, Prosci has a high-impact one-day program specifically for people managers, where participants learn:

• how to apply a practical framework for processing the many changes that impact them
• how to use the Prosci ADKAR Model for identifying the reasons that employees exhibit resistant behaviors during change
• how to create action plans for moving their employees successfully past their barrier points and to the future state

After the program, remember to continue through the ADKAR milestones building ability and reinforcement.

With so much going on, managers are unlikely to retain everything they learned in their Prosci Change Management Program for Managers. Reinforcement for this group could include six weekly sessions following the program, or a monthly brown bag lunch to review the key modules and discuss current difficulties managers are facing.

3. Employees

Awareness and desire building with employees usually begins by acknowledging that employees are being impacted by a lot of change, and are probably experiencing some frustration or anxiety. If an employee is not aware that any changes are needed, they are likely to resist. However, if for example someone takes the time to explain to our employee that the new software is necessary to meet the needs of the customers and improve efficiency, their reaction (based on this is awareness) will likely be very different. Now let’s imagine that the employee has awareness, but no desire to participate in or support the change, what then? To help our resistant employee, the best response is to actively engage them in the change, so they can see for themselves the benefits. Visible sponsorship would be key here. Once awareness and desire are achieved, we can move on to knowledge.

For building knowledge and ability, Prosci offers Change Management Employee Orientation, a one-day program where employees:

• Learn how to use the Prosci ADKAR Model to identify their points of resistance
• Create proactive strategies for overcoming their barrier points
• Become confident and empowered in the change process rather than victimized by it
• Discover how to communicate about a change in a way that is productive and proactive

For frontline employees, ability could be ongoing coaching from their manager who has been through the Change Management Program for Managers, and reinforcement for this group could be a monthly check-in.

4. Change managers and project managers

Senior executives, managers and frontline employees - those are the three core roles you need to address to reach organizational competency. All three roles have their own one-day or half-day program that you can learn to teach through Prosci’s Train-the-Trainer Program. But there are other people you need to train as well: change managers and project managers.

Train-the-Trainer also enables you to teach the 3 -Day Prosci Change Management Certification Program. This is the program you would want to give to anybody with change management responsibilities, where participants: 

• Learn how to assess and scale a change management strategy for any type of change
• Build targeted change management plans
• Ensure that individual ADKAR milestones are met so that projects achieve their desired outcomes

While the 3-Day Prosci Change Management Certification Program is ideal for change management and project managers, Prosci also has other resources available for these roles. Talk with a Prosci analyst to discuss what would work best for your company. 

5. Directors

In many organizations, directors play a blended role that is part manager, part sponsor. Take a look at your organization’s structure and the roles that directors play, and decide which change management training programs are most appropriate for them, whether its the Sponsor Briefing or Leading Your Teams Through Change Workshop. With Prosci’s flexible license options, you can also create a blended program that meets the exact needs of this audience, depending on the roles and responsibilities they have in your organizational structure. 

Train the Right People in Change Management

Whatever you do, remember that although building knowledge (training) is an integral part of the change capability build, you can not start with it - you must begin with awareness and desire. By walking sponsors, managers, frontline employees and everyone in between through the Prosci ADKAR Model, you help everyone to catch the vision for their own change competency. Then, when each role is ready and keen to gain knowledge, we will be here to support you.