Transforming Kaiser Permanente to meet today's challenges means a lot is being asked of our teams and co-leads. But change can be difficult for some people, prompting a variety of responses from apprehension or confusion to fatigue and a fear of failure. To support the transformation of our workplace, our health care leaders must: 

• Foster a non-threatening environment that does not penalize mistakes, but encourages continuous learning; 
• Listen to concerns, reward team members for raising issues and help them find solutions;  
• Get people involved in how change is made; 
• Reinforce the change by making it easy to do the new thing and hard to do the old. 

At the same time, a team leader must build his or her own capacity to lead increased performance, and build the team's capacity as well. He or she must participate in joint decision making and engage every member of the team in the day-to-day decisions about improving performance.

The first step in the process of leading change is to model transformative behaviors. You can:

• Coach; 
• Know when to facilitate instead of direct; 
• Ask for feedback so you improve your own performance; 
• Give feedback to help your team members know what they are doing well and where they can be more effective. 

One of a leader's critical roles is to serve as a coach for team members, facilitating their ability to work together as a team for process improvement. Coaching focuses on the present, and requires the coach to be highly self-aware. The goals of coaching are to:

• Help a team member become more self-aware; 
• Increase a team member's belief in his or her own skills and ability to manage his or her own behaviors; 
• Increase a team member's ability to develop skills in others.