Change Makers: A Closer Look at the Savills Change Management Team with Bailey Graves

A team is like a mosaic. Each piece is different but brings an essential addition to the whole picture. The Savills Change Management team is a group of individuals with unique experience and credentials. Together, they bring their clients a well-rounded perspective on navigating and implementing change. Learn more about our team and the Savills approach to change management in our series, Change Makers.

Bailey Graves: Optimizing Dialogue and Process to Guide Change

Associate Director Bailey Graves considers herself a utility player on a team with diverse skill sets and specialist backgrounds. Since joining Savills, she has engaged in many aspects of client service, from project management to management consulting. As a result, Bailey’s breadth of experience has proven valuable to her colleagues and clients in various significant projects. Yet, her versatility is rooted in the one discipline that launched her career at Savills: change management.

Helping companies realize their goals through change is a natural extension of some of Bailey’s core strengths and her innate interest in serving people. Her master's degree in international peace and conflict resolution gives her an in-depth understanding of facilitating dialogue, and she embodies meticulous attention to process and execution.

“From my early jobs as a teenager and then growing into my professional life, a lot of the work I did was focused on people,” said Bailey. “It helped me understand the fundamentals of what it means to care for a client, such as how to be available, open, and empathetic while understanding the give and take in the relationship.”

By prioritizing people alongside process, Bailey has successfully worked with organizations to unite stakeholders and move toward change thoughtfully and systematically. Her approach is grounded in her training and the important lessons she has learned from working with various companies and cultures.

Building consensus through dialogue

While Bailey’s graduate studies were international in scope, she has been able to apply her expertise to the corporate world and change management practice.

As a trained dialogue facilitator, she employs specific techniques and theories to create positive momentum and a unified direction with all stakeholders at the table.

“It’s all about understanding perspectives and motivations,” Bailey said. “Dialogue gives you an opportunity to evaluate the root of where each person is coming from in any given interaction.”

She cites the value of a common method within Bohmian dialogue practice called Suspension. This concept asks individuals to reflect on their motivations and biases as they converse with people rather than make snap judgments of the statements others make. As people seek to understand their reactions, they can also find more empathy for where others are coming from.

“The default scenario in dialogue practice—and many times in the corporate world—is you often have two parties with diametrically opposed experiences sitting down together and trying to understand each other’s reality,” Bailey said. “In that setting, working through and past judgment is critical for people to be able to break out of their silos and take those first steps toward common ground in a change process.”

A process based on curiosity and consistency

Bailey’s approach to all consultancy projects balances managing the nuances of communication and negotiation with the rigor and discipline of implementing a process. First, getting to execution mode requires a sustained period of exploration of the client’s objectives and challenges.

“It’s important to bring a natural curiosity to every project,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like consultants want to bring all the answers right at the beginning. For me, it takes a little bit longer to get to the plan. I’m much more flexible in what the execution of that plan will look like because I’m continuously evaluating all the inputs, feedback, and changes happening along the way.”

Starting with the right questions and continuing to ask them throughout the project's duration ensures that the process evolves as sentiment and circumstances change. However, through many engagements with clients, Bailey has learned that one core part of the process must remain constant.

“In a world where you have to make a sweeping change that impacts many people, the key things you need are clarity and consistency in communication and the accessibility of those communications,” Bailey said. “People need to understand how and where to get information and provide feedback.”

Letting go of predictability

Even with a process-oriented mindset, Bailey acknowledges that change managers must embrace the messier parts of change—namely, the unpredictability of the individual response to a transition.

“Each individual comes to a moment of change with their own experiences, character, and preferences,” Bailey said. “There will never be a unified reaction to a change, only individuals experiencing it for themselves.”

Understanding the variable impact of change can remind us that transitions are not simply about shifting behavior or expectations at a group level. Part of the challenge in successfully implementing a new business initiative is bringing sensitivity to the human experience of that change.

“Change is not uniform or logical. It’s emotional and experienced differently by different people. People have different comfort levels,” she said. “That’s the crux of why change has to be managed.”

Bailey Graves is an Associate Director at Savills, where she holds nearly a decade of experience in program and change management services across a variety of industries and applications. Bailey helps clients define, pursue, and achieve their goals through a collaborative approach to program implementation as a subject matter expert in Strategic Advisory and PMO services. Her programmatic approach to managing her clients’ toughest problems equips them for continued long-term success. Beyond client work, Bailey is an active leader in DEI and mentorship and serves as co-chair of Savills Pride+ Employee Resource Group.

Get in touch with Bailey here: bgraves@savills.us