When Leaders Change Their Minds

Source: https://esternicholson.wordpress.com

Successful business leaders change their minds at times. They do not simply stick to a plan even if it is failing. They do not throw good money after bad. As Art Markman writes in Fast Company, "In a dynamic world, though, opinions, beliefs, and plans should change as new information becomes available."  Yet, leaders are often criticized harshly and branded as "flip-floppers" when they shift their positions on an issue.  

In a 2017 study, Tamara Kreps and her co-authors conducted a series of experiments focused on how we perceive leaders who change their opinions.  They compared people who based their initial position on pragmatic rationale vs. a moral one.  They concluded, "We find that audiences believe moral commitments should not be broken, and thus that they deride as hypocritical leaders who claim a moral commitment and later change their views. Moreover, they view them as less effective and less worthy of support. Although participants found a moral mind changer especially hypocritical when they disagreed with the new view, the effect persisted even among participants who fully endorsed the new view."

How should you handle a shift in positions so as to maintain your credibility as a leader?  Markman argues that leaders need to be ready for criticism, but prepared to explain both their original rationale as well as the reasons why they changed their minds.  Many leaders try to do that, of course, yet they still face skepticism and doubts.  I would argue that leaders need to do three things when announcing a change to a previous decisions:

1. They must be extremely clear about the assumptions that were made at the time of the original decision.  Then, leaders should talk about why some of those assumptions may have been proven invalid.  

2. Leaders should talk about the information that was used to make the original decision, and then they should explain how specific updated information caused them to change their positions and beliefs.  

3. Leaders should identify changes in the external environment that shifted the context considerably. Then, they should explain how the original plan no longer fit the environmental conditions.