So, How did you find your way into change management?

For a long time, I didn’t know about change management as a career path.

I was a retail sales manager thrown into the deep end of managing change. I had to learn fast how to translate senior management expectations into simple repeatable steps my direct reports could take. I put together a training program that made me curious about Learning & Development. I threw in the proverbial towel on my retail career and went to grad school. That’s where I first heard about change management – a systematic way to use my diverse skillset to help people comfortably and confidently adapt to necessary change, to improve.

What are the most difficult parts of your job?

The most difficult part of my job is dealing with resistance. Organization change can be difficult because it requires us move from a place of comfort to a place of uncertainty. Nobody really likes to do that. Even if the change is positive and will help people work faster, better or safer, many people will resist. Being unable to sway people to believe in the purpose and feel confident in their abilities can mean the life or death of a project. It takes a considerable amount of time and thought to understand the cause of resistance, work to counteract it and to get things done, especially in very hierarchical organizations.  

Do you work within teams a lot?

I’m a coalition builder. I engage with teams and diverse stakeholders in different capacities. For example: I convene the top tier of leadership in people-focused functions – while I’m not an executive, I’m able to guide their discussions, and support their collaboration and decision making. I work with technical teams and subject matter experts to develop layman’s terms communications to help deliver key messages and win support/resources. 

Would you say you get to collaborate a lot?

Yes – very much so. A lot of the work I do is very sensitive and requires many approvals. It allows me to solicit input from different professionals with different perspectives such as legal, labor relations and so on. As I primarily work for large organizations with tens of thousands of diverse professionals with different learning/communication styles, crowdsourcing feedback also proves very helpful. Collaborating as much as I do takes a fair amount of emotional intelligence and relationship management to work effectively.  

Do you have any examples of project charters or trainings that you can share that might give me more insight on how you help on the people side of change?

I would direct you to PROSCI – I’m a certified practitioner, and I’d recommend their methodology. Organizations don’t change – people do. The key is to build a network of change agents to use their roles and leverage their circle of influence to drive change at the individual level. I coordinated the implementation of a Change Management Capability Building program. The training was facilitated by PROSCI. This program provided role-based development for executive sponsors, practitioners, and project managers providing them the framework and tools to effectively lead and support organizational change and deliver on business outcomes.

Khadeidra Le Gendre is a Change Management and Communications consultant who partners with senior leaders to implement sustainable enterprise-wide change, in complex organizations through a focus on strategic communications and stakeholder management. She has built a career helping people comfortably and confidently adapt to necessary change, to improve. Khadeidra is the Communications Chair of the New York chapter of the international Institute of Asset Management-NxtGen. She holds a Bachelors of Business Administration in Marketing & Communications from CUNY Baruch College, and a Masters of Arts in Social-Organizational Psychology from Columbia University in New York.