Leading Your Team Through Workplace Change with ADKAR Course

Leading Your Team Through Workplace Change with ADKAR is a 1-week course for managers and supervisors whose staff must adopt a new system, process or structure. You learn to read where each person stands on Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement, act on the gap, and leave with an ADKAR Adoption Plan for a live rollout. Mercury Training Center delivers this ADKAR course for people managers.

About This Course

New systems and processes stall when staff hear about them late, see no reason to switch, or get training without practice. You should already supervise people and have a rollout coming or under way. You practice with role plays, staff profiles and rollout cases from hospitals, banks, factories and public services.

Who It Is For

• Supervising staff who must adopt a new system, procedure or reporting line.
• Carrying a rollout message from senior sponsors to front-line staff and back.
• Coaching individuals through new tasks until they perform them unaided.
• Handling pushback, rumors and drops in output during a transition.
• Supporting line managers through restructures from an HR or project office role.

This course is not for specialists who design whole-enterprise transformation plans, who are better served by a practitioner course on structured change methods, or for new supervisors still learning to run a shift, who need a basic supervisory skills course.

Competencies You Will Build

• ADKAR Diagnosis: spotting which of the five elements is holding each person back.
• Rollout Communication: explaining the why, the what and the timing in your own words.
• Sponsor Liaison: passing staff concerns up and sponsor decisions down without distortion.
• Resistance Handling: running one-to-one conversations that surface and address objections.
• Coaching for Ability: arranging practice with feedback until new tasks are done unaided.
• Sustaining Adoption: using feedback, recognition and corrective action to stop slipping back.

What You Will Be Able to Do

By the end of the course you will be able to:

• Given a rollout announcement, write a briefing that answers the questions your staff will ask first.
• From short staff profiles, place each person on the ADKAR scale and name the barrier point.
• Using a resistance log, choose a targeted response for each objection and plan the conversation.
• From a new procedure, design a practice and feedback routine that moves staff from knowing to doing.
• Given early adoption data, set reinforcement actions and decide where to step in.

Course Content

Day 1: How Individuals Move Through Transition

• The Prosci ADKAR Model: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement
• Why Rollouts Stall at the Individual Level in Busy Workplaces
• Barrier Point Diagnosis Using Short Staff Assessments
• Your Own Response to Past Workplace Shifts as a Reference Case
• Mapping a Current Rollout and the People It Affects

Day 2: Communicator and Liaison Roles

• Building Awareness: Briefings That Explain the Business Reason
• Answering What It Means for Me Questions in Staff Meetings
• Upward Liaison: Feeding Staff Concerns to Sponsors and Project Teams
• Advocate Role: Showing Visible Support for Decisions You Did Not Make
• Rumor Control and Message Consistency Across Shifts and Sites

Day 3: Building Desire and Managing Resistance

• Root Causes of Resistance and Early Warning Signs
• One-to-One Conversations That Surface Real Objections
• Involving Skeptics Early as Input-Givers on Rollout Details
• Personal and Work Motivators That Shift Desire
• Resistance Log and Response Planning for Individual Staff

Day 4: Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement

• Training Needs for the Knowledge Element Matched to Each Role
• Coached Practice and Same-Day Feedback to Build Ability
• Coach Role: Short Check-Ins During the First Weeks of Go-Live
• Reinforcement Through Recognition, Feedback and Corrective Action
• Adoption Measures and When to Step In

Day 5: Practice on a Live Rollout

• Role-Play Exercise: Briefing a Skeptical Shift on a New System
• Barrier Point Exercise on Five Staff Profiles
• Resistance Conversation Exercise with Observer Feedback
• Reinforcement Planning Exercise for the First Month After Go-Live
• Completing Your ADKAR Adoption Plan

Case Studies and Exercises

The items below are suggested activities.

• Case study: a hospital ward moves to electronic patient records; you diagnose which nurses are stuck at Desire and which at Ability and plan support.
• Case study: a bank merges two branch teams under one supervisor; you write the first briefing and the one-to-one plan.
• Exercise: a factory introduces a new shift pattern; you build a resistance log and responses.
• Exercise: a public service office moves forms online; you design practice sessions and reinforcement for counter staff.

What You Take Back

The ADKAR Adoption Plan covers one rollout your staff face now. In your first month back you use it to brief your people, hold the one-to-one conversations it lists, schedule coached practice and report adoption progress to your sponsor.

• A staff ADKAR assessment with barrier points.
• A briefing and question-and-answer sheet.
• A resistance log with planned responses.
• A coaching and reinforcement calendar.

Quick Answers (FAQ)

What should I know before an ADKAR course for managers?

You should already supervise people and have a real rollout you can work on. No prior study of change models is needed; the ADKAR model is introduced from the start and applied to your case.

How does leading your team through change with ADKAR differ from a general leadership course?

It stays on one task: getting your staff to adopt a specific new system, process or structure. A general leadership course covers style, influence and direction setting more broadly, without a model for individual adoption.

What are the five elements of the ADKAR model?

They are Awareness of the need, Desire to take part, Knowledge of how, Ability to do it and Reinforcement to sustain it. Each builds on the one before, so a manager finds the first missing element and works there.

What do I take back from leading your team through change with ADKAR?

You take back an ADKAR Adoption Plan for a current rollout: a staff assessment with barrier points, a briefing sheet, a resistance log and a coaching and reinforcement calendar.

For Your Manager

After the course, the team member will be able to brief staff on a rollout, diagnose where each person is stuck, hold resistance conversations and coach people to working ability. They return with an ADKAR Adoption Plan, first used on the rollout their staff are facing now and in progress reports to the sponsor.