Gabe,

What a great question and thank you for discussing this topic. It is significantly harder to bring change to an organization than most people recognize. As a company commander I have found that subordinates do not want to change when/if they do not understand why they need to change.

As a leader, it is your responsibility to establish clear guidance on why you are initiating change. Effective communication is the only way you can achieve buy-in from your subordinates. Soldiers who are complaining almost always suffer from a lack of understanding.

The real question is how do we achieve buy-in and understanding from our subordinates? This answer might sound simple, but you need to COUNSEL them. In your counseling make sure you outline what are the problems you want your subordinate to address as a leader and as an individual. Through your counseling’s, your subordinate will understand why we as a unit need to change. You can counsel in a myriad of ways and each way is beneficial as long as it identifies the problems and creates a plan (the change you are trying to implement) to fix the problem.

With that being said, change for change sake is not good and it takes some real self reflection from you and your subordinates to identify the changes to make. Change is also not an individual event, it only works through team effort.

Remember, change can only come about through clear communication and team effort.

Joe