The Human Side of Change
I have had a lot of conversations this week about change, and the reality is that leadership development is the human side of change.
So I want to talk to you about some of the things that have come up in these conversations this week today on the podcast because I know how easy it is to distance ourselves from change, when we should really face it head on. Change can be sustainable, change can make you a better leader. Listen in to find out how!
On this episode you’ll hear…
Why leadership development is so crucial for the way we show up and do our work, especially in seasons of change
Where employee engagement and technological advancement meet to create opportunity
Why it’s important to look at how you can apply your unique strengths and gifts to the rapidly changing environment around you
What it looks like to have a sustainable approach to change for yourself and when to know when it’s time to take action
The impulse to distance ourselves from change and why it’s important to steer away from this and pushback against barriers
Ready for more?
Listen in:
-
** This is a raw, unedited transcript
Chaili Trentham 00:00
I have had a lot of conversations this week about change. And the reality is that leadership development is the human side of change. So I want to talk to you about some of the things that have come up in these conversations this week today on the podcast. I had a team workshop I was facilitating nearby and chose to go to a different staples to pick up printing of these reports that I use in this team training. So I had sent them to Staples and chose a staples further away from my house, but closer to where I was leaving the workshop, so that I could pick them up on my way. And while I was there, I there was an issue with the printer, which is why I don't print them at home because home printers are the worst. But I'm standing in Staples talking to the manager there as he's working on getting my reports reprinted. And a woman walks in and was in a in a rush and was struggling with the Self Service printer kiosk. And he was wonderful, and walked over the manager and walked over to help her, figure it out and try to help her with her data on her phone and why it wasn't allowing her to print. And ultimately, it came down that she was in a big hurry. And it was a resume that she was printing in which made sense because she was in full like business attire. And so he goes, let me print it real quick. And she goes, I'm so sorry, to me, as I'm standing there at the counter too, because he kind of moved his attention to her. And I was like, Oh, no mind is printing, you're fine. It's okay. And he went ahead and printed her resume slid it across the counter. And she goes, Okay, how much do I owe you? And he goes, No, no, you just go Good luck on your interview. And it was just one of those feel good moments where you're like that 20 cent copy that he just sent her out the door with hopefully change the trajectory of her day and how she approaches that interview, but also changed my view of the staples that I'm standing in, right. I'm like, wow, that was really good customer service there. He just won her over and she will come back and she will print in the future. And at the same time, I'm standing there as an staples client, and I like to print things. So I go there a lot. But feeling like I made the right choice and bringing my business here. So we start to chatting. And I asked him is kind of printing becoming archaic. Because as I was on my way to pick up the copies, my husband was sure to remind me that I print more than any person he knows since he's in the digital tech space, and that it's so archaic. And he just is amazed that I print as much as I do. But so as I'm talking to the store manager in the printing department at Staples about this archaic field, he goes, Yeah, it's it's kind of a dying field. And I'm an expert in it. And that struck me. And so of course, as a leadership development, like tell me more, how does that make you feel? If you're the expert, and people are not not flocking in. And he laughed, and he said, You know, I used to be the store manager at Kinkos. If any of you remember Kinkos, it was a print and copy center, and in the same city where I was in. And he said that monthly they did $450,000 of sales at the printed copy store. And then now in his department at Staples, they do 20,000 a month. That's a huge difference in overall revenue for a specific service that you are the expert in, right. And so I asked him I'm like, so you're obviously keeping this alive. But what does that looks like moving forward? And he's like, Well, I've just become an expert in other things. And this made me think because I was walking into a workshop talking about productivity and efficiency and change for our leadership, how leadership development is so crucial for the way that we show up and do our work, especially in seasons of change. Because our industry has changed technology changes. I saw a statistic the other day in a McKinsey report that McKinsey research estimates as many as 800 million jobs could be displaced by automation by 2030. It's 2023 already. And so in seven years, 800 million jobs could be displaced. But we know that with any technological advancement and change, there's a human side to that, right. And so that's where I realized and some of the change conversations that I had beyond my staples conversation, that when we look at employee engagement, and then we also look at the larger scale, business objectives and outcomes, strategic deliberations and decisions that are being made likely in response to technological advancements. We have an opportunity to look at how transformation across the board integrates the human side of it, because here I am standing looking at a manager at Staples who's really good at his work, and also really gets client service side of the business, right? Like he really gets that a 20 cent copy that he just gave away, can impact his whole department in the future, as I'm standing there, paying hundreds of dollars to print out reports, and we'll for sure 100% remain loyal and true to Staples. So if we look at leadership development as the human side of change, we have the opportunity to see that we are all in change processes, right? Tell you that development is always happening, and change is constant. And so how we respond to that, and how we continue to find learning solutions, to grow, to see our unlimited potential, in our own strengths and gifts, and how we apply that to the changing environment around us, we really have opportunity. So don't let that statistic about 800 million jobs being displaced by automation, discourage you, but I think we have to start thinking through how we can have a more integrated approach between human capital the people side of things and technology moving forward. Right? Because technology might be wiping out print and copy services. But here's a manager standing there still doing really good work. And he's been rescaled, within a company in the same industry that is evolving, and he has evolved with it, and it's still there. And so what does that look like for you? What does the evolution of your learning look like? What does the evolution of your leadership look like? And how might you begin to create more meaningful learning opportunities for yourself so that you can have a sustainable approach to change for yourself? I recently was doing a certification course on all about change and removing barriers to change and what that looks like, for individuals within organizations. And I want to share some of the insight that I was able to glean from that course, because I think it's helpful as you're beginning to unpack the ways that change is moving around you. And if you want to revisit the VUCA episode that's here on the podcast, please do and talking about change that is going on all around us and in marketplaces. But essentially, when we look at change from an individual standpoint, we're always going to experience some sort of pushback, right? It's just natural, it's inertia, it's when you get pushed, you tend to push back. And so a lot of times when we experience change, we put up that wall, that barrier, right? And we kind of start to push back on the push to change. And so if we can begin to eliminate that immediate knee jerk reaction to push back, we have opportunity to really see what could be, right if we borrow from design thinking the what is, and that's usually where the change is when we're looking to navigate in the current context. And then we step into a space of what if, and we can look at all of the opportunities and options there. What if things were different? What if I respond to this change? What if I allowed this change to move me? What if I move in it right? And so when we eliminate pushback, then we can begin to see opportunities for movement. But then we also know that there is a status quo bias with movement that sometimes losses look larger than gains, right? And so when that's like looming in front of you, that's a disadvantage. And you might be looking at a change and thinking, is it worth it? Is it worth it to change that thing in my life? Is it worth it to get that certification? To help with my job? Is it worth it to start implementing rituals and rhythms and practices to make a change in my life, right. So here's the interesting thing that I learned, I learned about some research that suggests that the potential gains of doing something have to be two times bigger than the potential downsides to get people to move and to take action. So money, let's think about it money, if there's a chance you have $100 on the table, and there's a chance of losing that $100 Most people won't make that bet if the upside is only a few dollars. And so the research actually shows that like I won't put down $100 bet to only win 150 They show that the potential win has to be at least 200 It has to double before most people would take a bet. So think about that in your work the status quo bias and how it might play in have whenever people think about changing their compare things to current state that is changed right? When we look at organism organizational change processes, we look at the current state, the desired state and the future state three phase process. If you look at change management across the board, there are risks Richard's upon researchers who have named this three part framework, something different, but essentially, it's always three phases. It's the current, the desired, and the future. And so when we're comparing things, if it seems like the potential games barely outweigh the potential losses, why would we move? Why would we risk that right? And so we have to make things more salient and more meaningful and more approachable so that we know that the game is worth taking a risk for and making a change for. So on top of that, that whole Well, I'm going to stay where I'm at that leads to the endowment effect, right? Of we've always done it this way. And so I'm just going to keep doing things the way that I've been doing them because it works. And even if it that's not the most productive or most efficient way to do things, at least I know I won't fail is how people feel when they're motivated and functioning under the endowment effect. And another aspect of of the walls that we put up is that we tend to distance ourselves to I said, I was on my way, when I stopped at Staples to a team workshop. And sometimes when we are in the midst of large scale change, it's really hard to see our individual role in the change itself, right. And it's difficult to understand how my personal development could contribute to the bigger picture. And so we often distance ourselves from change, right? We're like, well, that doesn't impact me, or that's not my department, or that's not my responsibility, or this one, I don't want to bother them can come up. And so I was headed to this team meeting and or workshop that I was facilitating. And in it, we're using some assessment assessments to unpack personal leadership development styles, and how that impacts the overall implementation of some of this organizational change. This team is going through some of the growth pains that they're experiencing currently, some of the rewriting of their KPIs currently. And what's interesting is, in our conversations that day and talking about change, and how we might have to change the way we approach the work we do for this team. Individuals were having these aha moments that they maybe weren't as far from the tactical change at hand that we were discussing, as they thought they were that maybe they had a bigger role, and a bigger opportunity to have capacity for change in that role than they initially thought. The listen to this distancing is totally normal take, putting up like some pushback, stepping back, distancing ourselves from the greater problem, talking about how maybe it's not our problem, that's all totally normal and change. And so what was really fun about this workshop for individuals experiencing change in their organization, was to begin to unpack how they can begin to be more proactive and showing up as a leader in that moment, in the change that's happening in some of the projects that they're implementing. And when we talk about it from the perspective of productivity and project completion, it really is amazing to see that we can put ourselves in a seat much closer to the actual change, which connects us to the greater vision and values that are probably driving the change. And we all know I've you recently heard the burnout episode of How values misalignment is a big mess in organizational burnout, right? Like organizational burnout, individual burnout within an organization is happening. And often that can be contributed to by a values mismatch or not feeling like they're part of the greater vision of the organization. So when we look at that, one of the ways that we can minimize that Fallout and shrink that gap of a person feeling connected to the work that they're doing, and the change that is happening, is to make tactical and tangible connections from our individualized values and strengths to the organizational values and to the strategic outcomes at play in the change. So if you're you are personally undergoing an experience or you are in a context where lots of changes happening around you, I encourage you to think about kind of those, those different pieces of change and the barriers that you might put up that you might be pushing back. That you might be trying to maintain the status quo because you know, it works, at least it works, right? Maybe not the most productive, most efficient version of you, but it works. And then distancing, separating yourself from the greater strategic objectives that are out there or separating ourselves from the specific project outcomes that we're shooting for and inside seeing that you are an integral part of an overall change system. And all of that starts with your own leadership development and unpacking that for yourself personally So that's kind of a third conversation change conversation I had this week was talking about how change is big change is messy. But at the end of the day when we look at leadership development, as an individual's response to change and an opportunity to engage with change, and develop individually and see ways to proactively change behavior, as a part of the greater change system or transformation, we have profound opportunities for how we level up our leadership. Right? The guy at Staples didn't just decide, you know, at Kinkos, we were really thriving back in the 90s. I probably left out that part that he was talking about the overall revenue at Kinkos, 20 years before, was much higher than staples currently. But he didn't just give up he saw that it in fact, is a dying field and industry, the print and copy world. And instead, he has made changes for his leadership and is still thriving and loves his work. That was how we rounded out our conversation. But he loves what he does. He loves showing up there. And then he wished me well as I headed off to my workshop. So what changes are you facing today? And how can your leadership development and continued growth and learning contribute to your overall engagement and thriving and success as an individual and as a leader? If you're currently going through a change process, or trying to navigate ways that you can develop yourself as a leader, and are embracing individualized change in your life, let me know I want to know how I can support you and how some of the future learning on this podcast can help you Cheers.