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Category: Change

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Pivot!

The first year we lived in China, one of the veterans of overseas living said to me, “to be successful living in Asia, you have to be willing to live with ambiguity.” He was right. I learned that the more of my western expectations I was able to let go, the more I enjoyed the experience of living there and the more I learned. Ambiguity means, “the quality of being open to more than one interpretation, inexactness.”

For example, one day soon after arriving in Kunming, my wife and two youngest children were walking outside near our home. My son, who was 9 at the time, overheard a woman talking on the phone. She repeated a mandarin phrase “na ge” (when pronounced it sounds like there is an “r” at the end of “ge”). He asked my wife, “Are these people racist?” My son is black and he thought she was saying the “N” word. It turns out that is a phrase that simply means “that one” and is used by some as a filler like our “um.” We had a good laugh about that misunderstanding when we learned the truth.

Footwork

Fast forward a few years and my youngest daughter (twin to the boy in the previous story) is a high school basketball player. She is over 5-10 so she played in the middle a lot. One thing her coach worked on hard with the girls was their footwork. Footwork is fundamental to every basketball skill and one of the fundamental footwork moves is the pivot. When you want to move and not dribble, you have to establish a “pivot foot” and can only move the other one while that one stays planted. So you essentially swivel on that fixed pivot point.

Players pivot to protect the ball, to get open for a shot, or to get clear to pass the ball. Janessa was a great rebounder. She had a knack for pulling the ball down, pivoting to find her open teammate, and getting the ball to her quickly to move up the court. It was fun to watch.

Life

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Life happens?” I’ve learned that my friend’s quote from the beginning of this post is true of living anywhere, not just in Asia. The more you are able to live with ambiguity, the more flexible you are, the more you are able to pivot, the more successful you will be. The opposite of that is to be brittle, and brittle often gets broken.

Probably the biggest of many pivots we’ve made in life was when we moved overseas. I had been laid off during the economic downturn of 2008/2009 and as a result, we lost our home. No one was hiring at the time so we had to pivot. Through an unexpected set of circumstances, we wound up in China. As you can probably tell by how often I reference it in my posts, that 2-year experience was wonderfully transformative for our family. We would never have had that opportunity if life hadn’t happened as it did.

Just like in basketball, we may pivot to protect something. We may pivot so we can take our shot, or we may pivot to give someone else a shot by passing off to them. Those are all potentially great moves in the game of life.

I know we all prefer autonomy. We want to direct our own lives and be in control. But, when everyone wants that, life happens. Sometimes your best autonomous move is to pivot.

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Believe!

I like to say, “You only truly believe that which activates you.” In other words, you can say you believe it’s going to rain, but if you leave the house without your umbrella, do you really believe it? Belief leads to action (by the way inaction is an action for our purposes just like not making a decision is a decision). Since results come from actions there is a direct connection between what you believe and the results you’re getting. W. Edwards Deming said, “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” You could say something similar about our lives.

We get the results we get in life largely because of our B.S. Funny, what first comes to mind when we see those initials often describes our Belief Systems, which is what I mean by B.S. Many people are held back in life because of faulty or limiting beliefs. Beliefs like, “I could never do that,” or, “Nothing good could come from this,” or, “I have to be certain of the outcome before I do that,” will lead you to act (or not act) in certain ways. Voila! You have your results.

Actions Not So Much

In business we want results. If we don’t like the results we’re getting, we work to change people’s actions. It seems to make sense because you can draw a straight line from actions to results. The problem is that if you make people act outside of their beliefs, they may change for a short time, but they will usually snap back to their previous actions that align with their beliefs pretty quickly. It isn’t enough, by the way, to get them to “believe” that if they don’t do this or that, they will get a beating!

We can use “carrots” and “sticks” to “motivate” people into certain actions. But real change will come from addressing their beliefs. For example, let’s say I’m a hospital housekeeper. I’m in my area, doing my thing but I never see my supervisor. They never come to my area to see how I’m doing, to see if I need anything, to see if I’m doing my job right or not. What will I believe about the importance of my work or about whether or not quality matters?

On the other hand, if my supervisor comes two or three times a day and provides support and constructive feedback, what will I believe about the importance of my work and about whether or not quality matters? Can you feel the difference? So can our people.

I Believe What I Believe

True. But where do those beliefs come from? In my example above, I believe what I believe about my work based on my experience with my supervisor. Our experiences inform if not shape our beliefs.

A good friend of mine grew up with a father who was critical and demoralizing. There was one particular event in his early life that crippled his belief system about himself. Later, as an adult, he was talking to a counselor who had him revisit that crippling memory.  “This time,” he said, “Imagine it like this …” and he gave my friend a new way to imagine the event that turned it into a positive. This new way of “experiencing” that event led to a new belief system that truly helped my friend.

Athletes use something called “visualization” to help them prepare for their events. It’s a form of mental practice and is based on the reality that the mind doesn’t make a huge distinction between real and imagined activity. An athlete can imagine performing a certain way over and over until that imagined experience boosts their confidence (belief system) and alters their performance (actions and results). If athletes can do it, so can we.

On April 25, 2014, I heard an interview with musical artist Jewel talking about her song, “Hands.” She said, “I was homeless at the time and I was shoplifting . . . I realized I couldn’t get track of my thoughts, but I could watch what my hands were doing, and your hands are the servants of your thoughts. And I thought if I could see what my hands are doing and change what my hands are doing maybe I can change my life. Which was really learning to control my thoughts because its the only power I had. That’s how my life turned around.”

What Now?

If you want to know what you believe, look at what you’re doing. If you don’t like the results you’re getting, ask yourself what B.S. is driving those actions. Then ask yourself where that B.S. came from. Then, like my friend, like Jewel, like athletes, imagine a different experience that will support a better belief system. It may just turn your life around.

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Encourage!

I had an unplanned meeting with three assistant managers the other day. Those unplanned meetings where you all just happen to be in the same place and start talking are often the best. One of them started to share a little of her personal story. She has overcome a lot in her life and is now working with some volunteer organizations to help others. Her story is inspiring, but what really caught my attention was how she talked about the people she leads. As an assistant manager in this setting, she oversees a team of about 28 people. What she talked about was their stories, how they tend to open up and share their stories with her, and how many of them had similar backgrounds of overcoming.

Have you ever heard the terms Human Resources, FTEs, Headcount, Staff? I don’t have a gripe against any of those terms per se, I use them myself. But, they are pretty impersonal ways of referring to the people we lead. I like data and numbers and trends, they all tell a story. But, so do our people. We lead teams, but teams are people. Our organizations are made up of people. They all have lives outside of work. They have hopes and dreams, plans and fears, significance and potential. Do you know what they are?

Leighton Ford said, “In our postmodern world, people have been treated as numbers, as replaceable parts, as something on someone’s agenda, a program, a screen name. They long to be noticed, to be valued, to have someone pay attention!”

ENCOURAGE

A few weeks ago, I wrote on Courage! Today I’m writing on “Encourage.” Here goes a little word nerd action. Interesting thing about the prefix “en-,” when it’s added to nouns and adjectives it forms a verb expressing conversion into the specified state as in “encrust” or “ennoble.” So, when added to courage, it means to convert someone into the state of courage, to give them courage.

In my post on courage, I wrote about different categories of courage, Physical courage, Moral courage, Social courage, and Intellectual courage. I defined courage in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, who said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”

The Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Christians in Thessalonica, wrote ” Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. Acknowledge those who work hard among you.”

HOW TO ENCOURAGE

People often hold back in their work and in their life because of fear.  They even make mistakes because of fear. To Encourage someone, you must help them decide that something else is more important than their fear.

The first step in doing that is to Acknowledge them. People need to be recognized for who they are and what they do. You can take it a step further when you acknowledge them and their work as significant. The next level of acknowledgment is to recognize that person’s potential. Start talking to someone about their potential in a positive way and watch them lean into the conversation.

The next step in encouraging someone is to Know them. You can’t help a person overcome a fear and be courageous if you don’t know what their dreams and fears are.  Connection increases courage. I recently asked a couple of training leads for feedback on a new trainer. One of them said, “She really connects with the new hires.” I asked her to describe that for me. She told me that most of the new hire classes start out shy and reserved. But, as the trainer gets to know them and builds up their skills, they come out of their shells, and by the end of the training week, they’re high-fiving each other, laughing, and learning.

Part of knowing your people is understanding their goals and dreams. That leads to the final step in encouraging them, Help them. Like the trainer who built up new skills for new hires, or a coach who helps a person develop natural talent and/or acquired skills, you show the person what needs to be done and what barriers are in the way. Help remove any barriers you can. Above all, encouraging someone is helping them decide to take action, to be bold, to shoot for what’s more important than their fear.

Think of one person you could encourage today and take action.

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Attract!

Imagine you’re in a great mood and you walk into a room where there is someone in a terrible mood and someone else in a great mood. Who will you more likely want to spend time with?  Most likely the other person in a great mood. Right? What about the opposite? What if you walk into the same room but you’re in a terrible mood. Now, who will you spend time with? Misery loves company, right?

Now put yourself in the room with someone else walking in. If you’re in a great mood and so are they, they will more likely gravitate to you. The same is true if you’re in a terrible mood and so are they. Someone in a great mood doesn’t want to be brought down by a person who’s in a terrible mood. And a person in a terrible mood will just be irritated by someone in a great mood.

Now, replace “mood” with something more enduring like attitude or energy or vision. Run the same scenarios. People of like attitude, energy level, and/or vision will tend to gravitate to each other.

In his book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John Maxwell says law number 9 is “The Law of Magnetism: Who you Are is Who you Attract”  We tend to attract people who are like us. Look at your group of friends. If you’re a leader who has selected your own team, check out the “personality” of your team. Can you see it? Hopefully, you have complementary skill sets but there is a commonality isn’t there?

How It Works

Our behavior, how we act, is the outward expression of our attitudes and beliefs. Remember the Results Pyramid from my last post? Our beliefs about ourselves and the nature of our surroundings and about other people come out, intentionally or not, in how we behave. That behavior is observable by others. Sometimes the behavior is as simple as a facial expression or body language. When people observe your behavior, they decide, again, consciously or unconsciously, whether or not it’s “attractive.” Are they drawn to it or repelled by it? Like the person entering the room, they will be drawn to what most closely matches them.

Now, I have a question for you. How do you feel about your current life situation? Are you satisfied and happy? Great! I hope that continues and increases for you. If you’re not, the question is, What needs to change? Based upon the “Law of Magnetism” the answer is, you need to change. In business, we say, “Your system is perfectly designed to generate the results you’re getting.” And, most of us have heard the popular definition of insanity, “doing the same thing and expecting different results.” In this case, you are the system. You’re getting the results you’re designed to get … sort of.

I Am Who I Am … ?

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. A leopard doesn’t change its spots. We have grains of character that do not change. Ever heard those sayings?  Have you ever heard of a butterfly? A Frog? Metamorphosis? It means “a change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one.” A change in the nature of a person if you condense it for our discussion. You can learn new tricks, change your spots, even the grains of your character.

How? Remember when we talked about hope? I said hope is our prescriptive imagination for less tangible things, including character. Our behavior creates results including attracting people and circumstances. Our behaviors (the collection of which comprise our character) come from beliefs which we have as a result of our experiences according to the “Results Pyramid.” I would take it a step further and say that our beliefs come from how we think about our experiences both bad and good whether real or imagined.

How we think, what we think about are important. The good news is that you can choose what you think about. You can choose what to imagine. Do you want to attract a different kind of people? Do you want to attract different kinds of circumstances? Start by imagining yourself as the kind of person to whom those people and circumstances would be drawn. Dwell on that image of yourself long enough and intentionally enough and in enough detail and it will begin to affect your beliefs which will alter your behavior and, in turn, your results.

Changing how you imagine yourself is the beginning of changing who you are and ultimately who and what you attract.

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Hope!

Does the world seem a bit strange these days? There is a lot going on that many people my age and older say seems unusual even for politics and world events. Depending on your political, religious, or cultural leaning, you may be excited or discouraged by what you see happening around you. Now zoom in. Look at your more immediate circumstances. How are things going there? How do you feel about the direction your circumstances are headed? I’m asking because of something I know about our imaginations.

Last week I talked about Imagine and imagination. It’s that amazing ability to visit places and create things in your mind. Creativity, I said, is born out of prescriptive imagination. Creativity is how you take a new thing you’ve imagined from your mind and make it real. That works most easily for concrete things like bridges, and buildings, artwork, and cakes. But what about less tangible things like character and relationships, career path, and health?

The Results Pyramid

No. This is not a mystical Egyptian religion. It comes from two books called The Oz Principle and Change the Culture, Change the Game. The idea is that results (at the top of the pyramid) come from Actions  (the next section on the pyramid just below results). That’s a “captain obvious” statement. You have to take action to get results. But the next idea is that Actions come from Beliefs. For example, if you believe your boss doesn’t care about the quality of your work, you will act a certain way. On the other hand, if you believe your boss is very demanding about quality, you’ll act differently.

The base of the pyramid is Experiences. Experiences are how we form our Beliefs. If your boss never checks your work and never comments on it then you will believe s/he doesn’t care about the quality. On the other hand, if they frequently check your work and provide feedback you will form a different belief.

So, the “Results Pyramid” says that Experiences lead to Beliefs which lead to Actions which lead to Results. If we try to change results by just changing our actions, we often fail because we haven’t addressed the underlying beliefs.

Imagination Again

Now try a little experiment with me. Replace the “Experiences” in the Results Pyramid with “Imagination.” Imagined experiences can be as powerful in affecting our beliefs as real experiences depending on how strongly imagined they are. Now, here’s what I know about our imaginations when it comes to unknown future outcomes and expectations. For a lot of reasons, we tend to default to imagine the worst possible outcome. Another word for that is worry, or, as I like to call it, faith in the worst possible outcome.

Now follow the results pyramid and you can see how a negative imagination can lead to a belief in the worst outcome (worry). That worry will play into the actions you take. When that happens the results are often a self-fulfilling prophecy of what you imagined.

Another Kind of Imagination

Hope! Hope is positive imagination. It is prescriptive imagination for things that are not as concrete. Here’s how the Apostle Paul described it in the New Testament book of Romans, “… hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?  But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” The way Paul talks about hope in this passage it has almost the same definition as imagination.

Hope is not just wishful thinking. Hope is when we intentionally form a positive outcome in our imagination and focus on it like it’s an experience. Belief, then, takes on the role of creativity by dictating the actions that are more likely to bring about the outcome we had hoped for. Leaders, for example, may call this vision.

Negative, worry-filled, hopeless people tend to spiral in that direction. Positive, hopeful people tend to produce much better results. It’s up to you how you use your imagination. Choose Hope!

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The Smartest Kid In the Class

If you’re the smartest kid in the class, you’re in the wrong class. That is if you want to grow. I’m not sure who first made the comment about surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you but they sure were smart. The easiest way to grow as a person and as a leader is to surround yourself with people who know more than you do. In his famous book about the richest men in the world called Think And Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill wrote about Henry Ford, “Any man is educated who knows where to get knowledge when he needs it, and how to organize that knowledge into definite plans of action.” He was talking about the fact that Henry Ford had smart people around him.

David Ogilvy, widely revered as a founding father of modern advertising (and founder of one of its most famous agencies), is reputed to have once presented each of his board directors with a set of Russian dolls. When they opened the dolls, the smallest had a piece of folded paper inside on which Ogilvy had written: ”If you always hire people who are smaller than you, we shall become a company of dwarfs. If, on the other hand, you always hire people who are bigger than you, we shall become a company of giants.”

One Example

Several years ago I sat in on a meeting of the division presidents of a large national company with their CEO. The CEO was also the founder of the company.  He had started two other companies and had sold them both making many of his team millionaires. His reputation preceded him but this company was in an industry that was new to him. What I observed was interesting. Whenever the CEO said something or made a point all the division presidents nodded their heads like a group of bobblehead dolls, except one. That guy spoke his mind and if he disagreed with the CEO, he said so. “That won’t work,” he blurted out in one case. He went on to explain why. “That’s not what this customer is looking for,” he said another time.

The outspoken division president had spent years in the industry that was new to the CEO. He knew the business. The CEO recognized the value of that president’s expertise and soon after that meeting elevated him to a position of leadership nearer the CEO so he could more readily benefit from it.

The Point

I’ve been writing about personal growth over the last several weeks. If you have a fragile ego or something to prove to someone then this post isn’t for you. This post is for people who realize that they don’t know everything and can’t do everything but still want to be successful or even significant. Those are the people who want to grow, who want to increase their influence.

If you’re one of those people then it should make sense to you to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you and better than you.  That’s a growth environment. A growth environment like that will do at least three things for you.

  1. It will keep you challenged – challenges keep us engaged and, like in any physical training, we gain strength by doing a little more each time.
  2. It will keep you focused forward – you can’t drive a car looking in the rearview mirror or you’ll crash. A growth environment will keep you driving with your eyes on the road ahead.
  3. It will keep you out of your comfort zone – I recently heard John Maxwell speak on personal growth. He said, “Everything you want or need is outside your comfort zone.”

When I interview candidates for certain jobs I like to ask this question, “Could you tell me about a time when you were asked to do something you didn’t know how to do?” I’ve heard answers like, “I didn’t do it,” or “I don’t do anything I’m not trained to do.” I didn’t hire those people. I’m looking for people with the drive and ingenuity to find solutions. When they say, “I found someone who knows how to do it and asked them,” or “I found the procedure manual or I googled it until I knew what I was doing,” that’s when I believe I have someone who is in a growth mindset.  Those are the people I want to hire.

Take a look around you, at your colleagues and friends. Are they ahead of you, next to you, or behind you? If they’re all next to you and behind you, you need to find some new colleagues and friends. Put yourself in a growth environment.

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Where Are You Growing?

I’ve quoted Daniel Pink a few times in my writings. He’s the one who wrote Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. He identifies three intrinsic motivators, three things that motivate us from the inside because they are their own reward. One of those is something he calls “mastery,” the desire to get better at stuff.  He points out that people will buy equipment, take lessons, and practice golf or a musical instrument even though they will never earn a dime doing it. The motivation is simply to get better at it.

Both of those examples, golf and a musical instrument, as well as the word motivation signal the point of this post. Growth, personal development, getting better at stuff, doesn’t happen automatically. We get older automatically but we don’t get better automatically. We have to grow on purpose. Think about this, if experience were the best teacher, if time on the job meant someone gets better, then everyone who is older would be better than anyone who is younger. Is that reality? Or, do we all know people with far less “experience” who excel at what they do even over some who’ve been doing it longer? Sure we do. So getting better isn’t automatic. Growth has to be on purpose.

What Part of Your Life?

One way of understanding the question in my title, “Where Are You Growing,” is in what part of your life are you intentionally growing?

Three years ago I took some time to reflect on what I came to call “connecting points” in my life. A connecting point is where my life connects to the world in some way. I identified these:

  • Follower – My connection to Jesus
  • Husband – My connection to Suzi
  • Father – My connection to My Children and Children-in-law
  • Son – My connection to Dad and Mom
  • Brother – My connection to My Siblings and Siblings-in-Law
  • Friend – My connection to (List)
  • Steward – My connection to Wealth
  • Colleague – My connection to Workmates
  • Neighbor – My connection to Community (larger or smaller)

Each point of connection also has a description of what I want the nature of that connection to be. For example, one part of the nature of my connection to wealth is “as a conduit” with a brief description of what that looks like.  I then went on In this exercise to list several actions I want to take to be intentional about growing in each point. One example is “initiate contact.” That one showed up under several of my connection points. Most of my friends and all of my extended family live more than a day’s drive away. I think about them all quite often. But I’m really bad at picking up the phone and giving one of them a call to catch up and let them know I’m thinking about them.

This is just an example from my life. As I look at it, I’ve still got work to do! What areas of your life could use some intentional attention?

In What Direction?

If I were to ask you, “Where are you going,” you would answer with a destination or at least a direction. That’s another way of looking at my question, “Where are you growing?” What direction is your growth taking you, to what destination?

We’re talking about intentionality. Let’s switch the metaphor for a minute. Have you ever planted a garden? What happens if you leave it alone for any length of time? You get weeds. Weeds will grow and crowd out your plants, take their nutrients from the soil, block the sun, and consume the water intended for your plants. That’s what happens when you do nothing intentional about your garden. Stuff is always growing but it’s not always the stuff you want.

If you’re an athlete and your technique is wrong on a certain skill, you will continue to reinforce the wrong technique unless you do something intentional to change it and develop the muscle memory in the right direction. So, in a sense, you’re growing in the wrong direction if you do nothing. The same is true of personal growth in any area. If we do nothing, we’re growing in the wrong direction.

Set The Course

So, let’s get intentional about growing in the right direction. Pick an area where you want to see yourself get better. Find a way to measure it. If you can’t measure it you won’t know if you’re getting any better. Determine your destination. When will you arrive at “improved?” What’s the goal? Then decide what steps you’ll take to improve. Finally, begin. That’s the most important step!

Next week I’ll give a few examples.

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Leading Change – Part 4

Over the last few posts I’ve written about what causes people to fear change and how to address those fears in a way that helps them buy into you as a leader. Now the question is how do you make change happen? When you recognize the need for change and are aware of the fears that cause people to resist change, what steps can you take to implement the change?

For this I’m borrowing an outline from a very helpful book called, How Did That Happen?: Holding People Accountable for Results in the Positive, Principled Way, by Roger Connors and Tom Smith. Here are the steps:

F.O.R.M. The Change

The letters in this acrostic represent four questions. Is the change, first, Frameable? Does it fit within the Vision, Mission, and Values of the organization? How can you formulate and focus the change in a way that makes organizational sense? Why is this change happening?

The “O” asks,  “Is this change Obtainable with the current resources?” That’s not necessarily a Go-No Go question. It’s simply necessary to understand what steps may be needed to obtain additional human or other resources to implement the change.

The “R” asks if the change is Repeatable.  In other words, is it stated simply enough to be easily communicated among the people involved. A 1,500-page dissertation may provide a detailed plan to implement a change, but no one will be talking about that over lunch. A short, easy-to-remember statement, like “Four new products by Q4” can easily spread among people.

Finally, is the change Measurable? What ratios will change, or what will you count, to see how the change is progressing? How will you know if the change has been effective?

Communicate the Change

Poor communication is one of the most common complaints in organizations. If communication is important during normal operations, how much more important is it during change? The single most important thing people need to understand in order to get behind a change is, “Why?” When people really understand why a change is happening and buy into it, the rest is downhill. When you combine “why” with the empathy I wrote about last week it becomes a powerful motivator.

You also need to make the “what” clear. Your slogan needs to be understood before it will be repeatable. You don’t have to read the entire dissertation to everyone, but make sure everyone knows enough detail to make sense of what’s happening. Include the “how” and any clarifications around “who” and “where”, be sure to cover all that in your communication. Finally, “By When.” Setting a deadline makes the change more concrete and sets a tone for urgency.

Another important thing to communicate during change is the resources available to people to help them manage the change both professionally and personally. You may have teams of experts, either internal or consultants, available to help people professionally. You may also have an Employee Assistance Program available to help them manage stress. Be sure to communicate this as well as the Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why.

Align The Change

Check in with people to see how well aligned they are with the change. Alignment is different from “complyment.” When people comply, they may be doing it because you said so or because there is no alternative. When people align, they get behind the change with a positive attitude about the future.

Ask your people to rate their level of alignment on a scale of 1 – 10. If they say they’re less than 10, take some time to explore what’s keeping them from aligning. Is it a fear you can help them face, or do they need more clarification about the why? This is the opportunity to demonstrate your empathy with them and build their buy-in to you.

Inspect the Change

Build into your change management plan scheduled inspection points along the way. These are opportunities for you to check progress to see if things are on track. If they are, you have an opportunity to celebrate and congratulate. That’s always fun and motivating.

On the other hand, course correction is par for the course in most situations. Did you know that an airplane with a well-laid flight plan is off course over 90% of the time? Weather conditions, turbulence, and other factors cause it to get off track. However, the pilot receives continuous feedback and makes adjustments to get the plane back on the flight plan. Course correction provides learning opportunities and can build resilience among your team.

I wrote last week that creating positive change is the ultimate test of leadership according to leadership coach and author, John Maxwell, in his book Developing the Leader Within You 2.0.  If you seek to understand the fears and other factors that cause people to resist change, work to help gain buy-in, FORM, Communicate, Align, and Inspect your change, you will be far more successful at passing the test by creating that positive change.

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Leading Change – Part 3

Creating positive change is the ultimate test of leadership according to leadership coach and author, John Maxwell, in his book Developing the Leader Within You 2.0. To create change you need buy-in.  “Buy-in” is a phrase that comes from the stock market. It means to purchase shares of a company by which you are not employed. So, you are willing to invest your hard-earned money to bet on the success of a company over which you have no control. You must certainly believe in the prospects of that company if you’re willing to do that. That’s how the phrase came to mean “agreement to support a decision or direction.” Creating change requires that key people buy-in to what you’re proposing with your change idea.

Here’s another interesting point from John Maxwell, “People buy into the leader, then the vision.” That’s what he calls “The Law of Buy-In” from his book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.  If people believe in you, they are more likely to believe in the change you’re trying to create.

How do you get people to buy into you? One way is to demonstrate that you understand their fears associated with change. In my last two posts, I described four fears associated with change.

1. Fear of Awkwardness
2. Fear of Leaving Comfort Behind
3. Fear of Ridicule
4. Fear of Isolation

What are some things a leader can do to demonstrate sensitivity to these fears when introducing change?

Have a Good Reason

People want to understand the “Why?” We can see that from the title of Simon Sinek’s book Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action.  Why are you considering this change? Change for change’s sake is not a good idea unless everyone is already bought into the idea and there is usually a creativity reason behind that.

The reason may be as urgent as a “burning platform,” which means the consequences of maintaining the status quo are so dire that change must be embraced. Or, the reason may be far less urgent but equally as important, like a huge opportunity that will bring growth and expansion to your organization.  In either case, people are much more likely to embrace the change when they understand why you are proposing it.

Review the Past

My family has moved several times. We’ve lived in 9 states and one foreign country (so far). Our youngest daughter, Janessa, builds strong friendships with a few people and has had a hard time leaving them when we’ve moved.

Each time we face a new neighborhood and school, she is afraid of not having any friends. We have encouraged her by asking her about the friends she just left behind. “Do you remember when we moved there,” we ask, “do you remember when you first met that friend? You didn’t even know they existed before that day, and now they’re such a good friend.” That will happen again. You will meet new friends and they will become close, too.

Reviewing the past can help face the future. Whether your team or organization has had a history of success to point to, or there has been failure,  the experience of the past can embolden people to face change. Pointing to the past tells people they can do it again. They can experience success or survive failure and be stronger for it, again.

Acknowledge the Pain

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck studied mindset in education. She has found there is a difference between the outcomes of students who have a “fixed mindset” and those who have a “growth mindset.” A fixed mindset believes that things like talent and intelligence are fixed and unchangeable. A growth mindset, on the other hand, believes that through dedication and work, these abilities can be developed and strengthened.

One key is to focus not on how “smart” a child is, but on the effort they put into a certain project. Effort more than outcome encourages growth. “Smart” is fixed, effort can be endless.  That’s why Dweck encourages focusing on effort, to encourage a growth mindset.

The point for our purpose is that when encouraging a growth mindset, we acknowledge that things will be difficult, but we never forecast failure. We say,  “this is going to be a challenge, but I know you/we can do it.” Acknowledging the pain demonstrates your credibility which gives people reason to believe in you. It also lets them know you believe in them.

These three things; having a good reason, reviewing the past, and acknowledging the pain will help alleviate the fears associated with change and set you up well for taking the next steps which we’ll talk about next week.

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Leading Change – Part 2

Last week we left off in the middle of talking about four things people fear about change.  The first was that change makes people feel awkward and uncertain. The second was they tend to focus on what they will have to let go instead of what good the change may bring. That brings us to the other two fears that cause people to resist change.

Ridicule

On March 2, 1962, basketball great Wilt Chamberlain did something no one else had ever done. He scored 100 points in a single game. That night Chamberlain scored 28 of those points at the free-throw line (he made 28 out of 30). What’s significant about that is Chamberlain’s lifetime free throw average was 51 percent. What was different that night? He experimented that night with the “granny shot.” Instead of shooting his free throws from overhead like most people, he tried something that had made another NBA star, Rick Barry, very successful. He shot underhanded, swinging his shot up from between his knees. It worked.

Despite the success he experienced with this different way of shooting, Wilt Chamberlain gave up the “granny shot.” He went back to his old, much less successful shooting style. Why? In his own words from his autobiography, “I felt silly, like a sissy, shooting underhanded. I know I was wrong. I know some of the best foul shooters in history shot that way. Even now, the best one in the NBA, Rick Barry, shoots underhanded. I just couldn’t do it.” As I read about this story I didn’t see evidence that he was actually ridiculed. Nevertheless, his fear of ridicule drove him to make a very bad decision not to change.

Isolation

During this year of pandemic, we’ve often heard the phrase, “We’re all in this together,” haven’t we? The lifestyle we’ve adopted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been a huge, uncomfortable change. It was forced upon us by factors outside our control. Change like that tends to make people feel isolated, like they’re going through it alone. We human beings are programmed for community and interaction and isolation feels scary. During the pandemic, people have not only felt isolated by the change, many times we have been physically isolated. That’s why we keep hearing the reminder that we’re all in this together. It’s an attempt to calm the fear of isolation.

It doesn’t have to be a pandemic that may actually isolate us to make us feel isolated. When we are faced with a need to change, one that we didn’t initiate out of a desire to grow, we tend to internalize it and feel like we’re going through it alone. Even if the entire organization is going through the same thing, I can feel like nobody understands how this change is affecting my life. I can feel isolated and alone which is another reason people resist change.

Conclusion

Awkwardness and uncertainty, Letting go of something comfortable, fear of ridicule, fear of isolation. These are all real reactions to changes that come from outside us. If we want to lead change successfully, we would do well to acknowledge these feelings. We’ve felt them ourselves, after all, haven’t we? Understanding where resistance comes from will help us better introduce and navigate through change as leaders.

Next week, we’ll talk about how understanding these fears in our people can help us lead change more effectively.