Change-ability: How to become a master of change

Change-ability: Increasing Personal Change Mastery in a Non-stop World

Introduction

“Not another reorganization!? Come on, we just reorganized six months ago.? I’m still not sure who I report to.? Can’t management get its act together?? If I weren’t close to retirement I would just get out.? But what choice do I really have?? I’ll just keep my head down and hope that I don’t get hit with anything flowing downhill.”?

Sound familiar?? This is a typical reaction to having your world changed without your permission.? People ask me how they can deal with this better…how they can prepare for changes they didn’t anticipate and manage the increased complexity in their lives.?

This article is about enhancing your ability to deal with the changes that happen to you which you don’t? choose.? And it’s about increasing your own and other’s capacity to choose and take on preferred changes.? You will learn the five disciplines of people who are great at dealing with change, and find out how to enhance your natural “CHANGE-ability”.?

There are common threads running diverse on how to make change easier for ourselves, from psychology and sociology to evolution and biology.? And of course we have extensive experience in implementing change in organizations.? People who are good at adapting are characterized by five disciplines: GROUNDED, OPEN, TENACIOUS, ORDERED and CONNECTED.?

What about Resistance?

Before we dive into each discipline, let’s debunk a common myth: We resist change.

We actually don’t resist change, but do resist something that accompanies change…LOSS. One of the toughest aspects of change is letting go of what is known and familiar.? People have asked whether we resist the loss of familiar skills and abilities, or the anxiety associated with the uncertainty of trying something new or being exposed to old risks.? The answer is both, in different proportions. It depends on your personal history and personality.?

THE CHANGE-ABILITY DISCIPLINES

After addressing this common mis-perception about resistance, the next question is usually: “Well, how do I know if I have what it takes to deal with change well?”? There are five clear, consistent and compelling disciplines, or “CHANGE-abilities”, that people who have mastered both planned and unplanned change practice. In-depth research reveals that these disciplines are not only typical of excellent self-changers.? They characterize people who are well-adjusted in general.

Grounded

This is the most important CHANGE-ability.? You may have heard the phrase “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.”? Well, this CHANGE-ability can be summed up: “If you don’t know who you are, you may not end up anywhere.”?

There are two parts to the discipline of being GROUNDED.? One is knowing yourself, having positive self-esteem and a belief in your own self-efficacy (ability to get things done).? The second is having a clear sense of what’s really important to you...having a clear purpose for your life.?

Here's an informal assessment of the degree to which you’re GROUNDED:

• I have a clear and accurate idea of what’s important/unimportant to me
• I tend to make strong demands on myself
• What others say about me is very similar to how I see myself
• I have clear, specific goals for my life
• I’m a worthwhile person
• I’m good at most of what I put serious effort into

Tips for being more GROUNDED

Clarity is essential to being GROUNDED.? First, you must be clear on who you are and what you are good at.? Knowing who you are means being clear on your positive and negative attributes.? A good way to start is to complete a personality profile like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) or DISC.? Then, seek and incorporate feedback from others you trust and respect.

Another aspect of clarity is having a clear, positive, preferred future to focus on.? One way to do this is to write your own eulogy; one paragraph which describes the positive impact you’ve had in your life.? Then define a short-term objective that starts you down the path to achieve that objective.? Then constantly test how your plans will enable you to achieve your hopes and objectives.

Open

This has to do with being more flexible – more accepting of new data and information, and being more open to others – open to their perspectives, thoughts, and emotions.? Being OPEN is a basic capacity to be receptive to new experiences, new data, questioned assumptions, etc., and to modify previously held beliefs, opinions, thoughts or feelings based on this new information.

Part of being OPEN is knowing when you should prepare to change; before you absolutely have to.? When external change is forced on you, the challenge is to define what about your current role is changing, and what new role(s) you’ll need to take on.? This should be done based on a clear idea of what’s most important to us.? Change always involves taking on a new form...so we're not so much going from something old to something new, as we are creating a new facet of our identity, or face to the world.

There are a few items you can use as an informal assessment:

• I continually seek new ideas and perspectives.

• I feel that it is important to be candid with others.

• I focus on the future rather than the past.

• I regularly look to others for input on challenges that I am facing.

• I usually review my assumptions before reaching a conclusion.

Tips for being more OPEN

You can increase your own OPEN-ness.? The first step is to become aware of your hopes, feelings and concerns. Another key capability for enhancing OPEN-ness is improving our ability and skill at seeing patterns underlying the chaos surrounding us.? Some things you can do right away to enhance your OPEN-ness include learning more about change, uncover and question your own assumptions and generate alternative ones, and start asking more questions of others.

Another key capability for enhancing OPEN-ness is improving our ability and skill at seeing patterns underlying the chaos surrounding us.? Both the Taoist and modern Western scientific approaches emphasize that healthy systems (plants, bacteria, humans, communities) are OPEN – they adapt and are adapted to.

Tenacious

Being proactive and able to maintain consistent focus to achieve what you need. It is “stick-to-it-ivness”, persistence in the face of obstacles and a willingness to tackle tough challenges in pursuit of important values and goals.? There is also a sense of continually moving forward and striving, of trying to improve, and being willing to lead the way for others.

At the heart of being TENACIOUS is the ability to steadfastly pursue what is most meaningful to you.? Tenacity has FOCUS as an essential component.? First we have to have something to focus on.? This means having a clear, positive, preferred future to aim for – a compelling purpose to draw us forward.? One way to do this is to write your own eulogy…without putting a lot of thought into it, write down one paragraph which describes the positive impact on the world that you’ve had in your life.? Put it away for at least a day.? Then go back and read it.? If this were read at your funeral, ask yourself three questions:

• What would the people listening to it think about you?? Feel about you? ?
• Would your kids and grandkids be proud of you?
• Are you proud of what’s being said?

Now take it a step further. If you didn’t think the people listening to your eulogy would feel great about what you stood for and what you achieved, here’s your chance to start re-writing it.? Here is the informal assessment:

• I am my own toughest critic.

• I don’t give up until I’m done with something.

• I maintain consistent focus on what is important.

• I am very proactive.

• I continually seek out challenges.

Tips for being more TENACIOUS

At the heart of being TENACIOUS is the ability to steadfastly pursue what is most meaningful to you.? Tenacity has FOCUS as an essential component.? First we have to have something to focus on.? This means having a clear, positive, preferred future to aim for – a compelling purpose to draw us forward. ?

Now define one short-term objective that will start you down the path to what you’ve described. You purpose is an aspirational statement that pulls you forward.? Objectives are the specific, short-term aims you’ll commit to accomplishing in order to reach your goal and realize your life’s purpose.? This leads to the second aspect of the TENACIOUS discipline – being proactive.?

The actions I’ve described to enhance your TENACIOUS discipline might seem very thinking-oriented.? To a degree they are.? But the key to success in being TENACIOUS – clarity of purpose, dogged persistence and focus – all rest on a foundation of commitment, which gets its force and staying power from emotion.

Ordered

There is both a strategic and tactical sense of being ORDERED.? More strategically it’s being able to see how things fit together (recognize underlying patterns). Tactically, it’s being able to prioritize and put things in order (be organized).The strategic aspect of the ORDERED discipline is the ability to grasp underlying patterns, or order, in seemingly disparate events or information.

The second element of the ORDERED discipline is to be organized; which works against the natural tendency for things to run down. The Second Law of Thermodynamics holds that in a closed system things progress toward a state of increasing entropy, defined as “a measure of the disorder that exists in a system.”? It’s the natural tendency things have to run down over time.? Is there anything that combats this?? Yes, the opposite force exists as well.? With negative entropy, or negentropy, a living system gets more energy from the environment than it uses. Just as entropy is the natural tendency of things to lose energy, there is an opposite “organizing principle” bringing things together; a tendency towards greater order. here are a few items you can use as an informal assessment:

• I can easily adapt if things don't go as planned.

• It's important for me to have a place for everything and everything in its place.

• I enjoy seeing how things fit together.

• I can easily make sense out of confusing situations.

Tips for being more ORDERED

An important skill to develop to enhance the ability to see patterns is to understand the fundamental cause(s) of a problem.? Another simple thing to do is put information into categories.? This will help with organizing as well.? Finally, list the pros and cons of the status quo and of changing; plan activities to enhance current cons and future pros, and minimize current pros and future cons.

Jerome Bruner, a noted American psychologist, says that our mind uses two basic rules to bring order to confusion:

1. Minimize surprises – people expect things to stay same; they perceive what they expect, despite contrary evidence.? For example, I’ve worked with several people whose performance had fallen off to the degree that they were close to being fired or moved to a different position.? When it happened, they’re almost inevitably surprised.
2. Maximize attention – people notice and remember the aspects of a situation most pertinent to them at the time.? So if you’re driving along in your car and you get hungry, you’ll tend to notice restaurants. ?

Because of these innate mechanisms, we tend to be bad observers of ourselves and our own behavior.? It’s why we make the same mistakes over again.? We don’t notice ourselves getting into bad habits.

We can enhance our ORDERED CHANGE-ability by looking out for paying attention to indications that our environment or situation is changing.? We can become more aware of our own filters – our habitual ways of behaving, thinking, assessing and deciding.

Connected

Next to GROUNDED, the discipline of being CONNECTED is the second most important CHANGE-ability.? It is the discipline of establishing and maintaining solid reciprocal relationships based on mutual trust and sincerity.? Central to this is the ability to rely on others and let them depend on you.? There are a few items you can use as an informal assessment:

• I feel at ease when building rapport with others

• I find it easy to establish trust with others

• Other people regularly seek my advice in dealing with their problems

• I enjoy and actively seek to work with many different types of people

Tips for being more CONNECTED

Being able to SENSE what’s going on under the surface is key to being more disciplined about connecting to others.? This means knowing your own biases, typical reactions and perceptual filters, and being open and able to read another person’s.? Broadly speaking, this means being able to read them well, as shown below.

Being able to sense what’s going on under the surface is key to being more disciplined about connecting to others.? This means knowing your own biases, typical reactions and perceptual filters, and being open and able to read another person’s.? Broadly speaking, this means being able to read them well, as shown here.

Reading Another Person

• Knowing your own motives and being in touch with your own emotions
• Being able to accurately read another person’s motives and emotions
• Having the skill to establish trust based on these elements

One of the major reasons we don’t connect to others better is because we have a natural tendency to assume that others see the world as we do.? ? When that turns out not to be the case we have a tendency to get frustrated and/or label the other person as different and somehow weird or deficient.? To increase our own readiness to connect to others we should understand what our natural preferences are, and try to get a sense of how others view the world, consciously inquiring into and work to understand another’s motivations, beliefs and assumptions. ?

One way to do this is to use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or a social styles indicator to show different approaches to knowing the world and ourselves. To be more CONNECTED, it can greatly help to appreciate the others’ different styles and perspectives, understand how they’re different than ours, and take steps to bridge the gaps. ?

To increase our CONNECTED discipline we can also draw on several therapeutic techniques that originated with the eminent psychologist Carl Rogers, together referred to as People-Centered Therapies. I’m not suggesting that you undergo therapy or perform it on your friends and colleagues.? But we can use some basic techniques relevant to those of us trying to better connect with others.

People-Centered Therapeutic Techniques

• Taking personal responsibility for improving
• Increasing belief in self-efficacy and the inner drive to become more mature and well-adjusted
• Self-disclosure: opening up about important/personally sensitive topics
• Listening to and playing back underlying hopes, concerns, emotions
• Distinguishing differences among similar data or feelings, seeking additional information, developing alternatives