Change is Opportunity: How Top Leaders Embrace Change

In today’s business environment we are constantly being challenged with new and unpredictable obstacles.

So far in 2022, we are dealing with readjusting to a post pandemic hybrid work environment, the great resignation, and in the last month a brutal war with additional repercussions to the supply chain and record-breaking gasoline prices. As companies navigate this fast pace of change it will require each of us to adopt a different mindset.

Top leaders view change as an opportunity. They shift their mindset to accept change, instead of just coping with it. Top leaders embrace change and work through their discomfort of unchartered waters.

Otherwise, we will become overly constrained by our own thoughts and we will not progress. Change will leave us behind.

Learn to avoid these three unhelpful mindsets and act:

1. Don’t become overly accommodating to change without thinking it through. If you blindly accept the change, you can largely abdicate your own authority.

• Look for a reasonable move for you or your team to take in response to the change that would provide value to the organization.
• Define potential solutions before you take problems to the boss.
• Be data driven. Back up any issues you have about the change with data. Perhaps, a decision was made at a higher level that overlooked important details.

2. Don’t resist change for the sake of resisting change. Rather shift toward a change-positive mindset.

• Seek to understand how the change might be good even though it is different than what you experienced in the past. Don’t hold on to the comfortable past. Push yourself to see the possibilities.
• Intervene with your ideas at the appropriate time during meetings or brainstorming sessions. Participate in healthy debate to understand the change, then commit to the change.
• Look for ways that encourage solutions rather than seeing the negative.

3. Don’t try to control the change by seeking information that supports your own views or reservations. This approach of burying your head in the sand will only create more discord for the team. A more productive way to look at change is to shape your own future.

• Discuss the change with others that think differently than you and with those that will give you candid input about the change from their own point of view.
• Team up with your colleagues to develop solutions to any obstacles the change presents to your organization.
• Continue to learn from the change and use those lessons to improve how you execute your work.

A change positive mindset will allow you to shift and adapt to new obstacles and help you become more resilient and increase your influence in the organization.