LDR 3450 Module 2 Written Assignment: What Kind of Change Agent Am I? Example

Telling Is Not Leading: Rethinking My Style as a Change Agent

Student Name

Bachelor of Science in Organizational Leadership, Thomas Edison State University

LDR-3450: Leading Organizational Change

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Telling Is Not Leading: Rethinking My Style as a Change Agent

How I Led the Rollout

When the owners approved the field service app, I announced it at a Monday meeting, handed out tablets and scheduled training. I explained the benefits to billing and told technicians the paper forms would end in two months. When technicians complained, I repeated the deadline. Looking back, I acted as if the change would succeed because I had decided it should. I did hold one question session, but I spent most of it explaining features rather than listening, and technicians left with their concerns unanswered. Two crew leads later told me they had decided at that meeting that the app was "the office's project," not theirs. I had also chosen the launch date to fit the office's billing cycle rather than our slow season, so the first weeks of the change landed in the middle of the spring tune-up rush, when technicians were busiest and least patient with anything new.

Leadership Styles in Change

Cameron and Green (2024) describe several roles a leader can take in change, from directing the change from the top to engaging people in shaping it, and argue that the style should fit the change and the people. Higgs and Rowland (2005) studied change leadership in organizations and identified three broad leader behaviors: shaping behavior, in which the leader is the center of the change and tells people what to do; framing change, in which the leader sets the direction and helps people understand why; and creating capacity, in which the leader builds others' ability to change. They found that shaping behavior was negatively related to change success, while framing and building capacity were positively related.

My rollout was almost pure shaping. I was at the center, I set the deadline and I treated questions as resistance.

Vision and Commitment

I also lacked a vision technicians could share. "Faster billing" is a goal for the office, not for a technician on a roof in August. Herold et al. (2008) found that leaders' change-specific behaviors, such as communicating why a change matters and involving employees, were related to employees' commitment to a change, especially when the change affected them personally and deeply. For technicians, the app changes how they spend every hour of the day; it is exactly the kind of change where engaging leadership matters most. A better vision would have answered the technician's question, "What is in it for me and my customers?", before asking for anything. The three benefits technicians care about most, fewer return trips for missing parts, fewer billing disputes with customers and proof of good work, were all available in the app; I simply never said so.

What Kind of Change Agent I Want to Be

The module's self-assessment placed me toward the directive end of the range. That style has a place: when a refrigerant leak threatens a hospital's cooling, someone has to give clear orders. But for a change in how people work every day, I need to frame and build capacity. I will start by rewriting the vision in technicians' terms: "Fewer trips back to the shop, fewer callbacks and a record of your work that customers and the company can see." I will ask each crew lead to test the app on one improvement they care about, such as checking parts availability before driving to a job. And I will make myself less central: Priya and Dana, who adopted the app early, will run the next training sessions. I will also change how I run meetings about the app: instead of presenting updates, I will open each one by asking crews what slowed them down that week and close by saying what I will fix before the next meeting.

Possible Pitfalls

Engaging styles take time, and the owners want the paper forms gone by summer. I will negotiate a month's extension in exchange for weekly adoption reports, so the owners can see progress. I also risk overcorrecting into vagueness; the deadline will remain, but it will be explained. I will also ask a crew lead I trust to tell me when I slip back into telling, since habits under pressure are hard to see from the inside.

Conclusion

I led the rollout as a director, and the research suggests that is the style least likely to work for a change that touches people's daily work. Moving toward framing and building capacity, with a vision in technicians' own terms, gives the change a better chance and gives me a style I can use in future changes.

References

Cameron, E., & Green, M. (2024). Making sense of change management (6th ed.). Kogan Page.

Herold, D. M., Fedor, D. B., Caldwell, S., & Liu, Y. (2008). The effects of transformational and change leadership on employees' commitment to a change: A multilevel study. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(2), 346-357. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.2.346

Higgs, M., & Rowland, D. (2005). All changes great and small: Exploring approaches to change and its leadership. Journal of Change Management, 5(2), 121-151. https://doi.org/10.1080/14697010500082902