Leadership challenges in change intervention and navigation

The reality today is that organizations and leaders are faced with unrelenting demands for change. Globalisation, competitiveness and ever changing business environments have forced organisations to constantly consider innovative changes. The challenge today is for leaders to be able to reduce the resistance to change, thus allowing for successful change navigation. It is therefore necessary to be mindful of the various approaches to change to ensure that successful change can be successfully implemented. This article will outline some of these approaches. In-depth interviews were conducted with five senior executives in the case company, and questionnaires were distributed to 301 employees at different levels within a single division in the same organisation. By following the mixed method approach in two separate phases namely the qualitative and quantitative it was possible to gather the requisite data. Key words: Change, organisational change, navigating change, leading change, approaches to change, resistance to change, perceiving change and change management.