Welcome back in your Leadership. I'm Chris Lorenzo and welcome to this week's Thoughtful
Thursday. Don't forget to follow us on YouTube at Hacking your Leadership and leave
us a review on iTunes. On this lefful Thursday, I want to go
over something that is it's pretty common in the leadership space. Is this this
concept of managing change? You know, changes, Change is the only constant
I've heard that my entire life and organizations are constantly changing, and it change
is never an easy thing. There are some people who say they thrive on
it and they love change, and I'm sure that maybe that's the case for
some people. For most people, it can be stressful. Even if they
inherently believe the outcome on the other side is good, it can be stressful.
And you know, there's this this kind of chart that has been adopted
by a lot of organizations that talks about the emotional cycle that employees go through
when it comes to change, and we'll put a link to it in the
podcast description, But in general, employees start with denial. They through anxiety,
shock, resistance, fear, anger, frustration, confusion, and stress.
Then there's this kind of transitional period where you see some creativity, some
people kind of thinking about how they can adapt to these new changes and adapt
them in their own role and how they can they can impact on them.
Then there's some skepticism, but it's like people become cautiously optimistic. They start
to accept it, then they become impatient that other people aren't accepting it.
Then they become hopeful. Then there's some energy around it, You get some
enthusiasm, and then that leads right into the next change. Right, So
it's like it's a constant cycle and a lot of leaders don't manage this cycle
correctly or or don't lead employees correctly through this cycle. And as I want
to talk about this because I think it's a it can there are different parts
of this cycle that impact leaders differently, and I think, you know,
it would help our listeners if we talked about some of the ways that we've
kind of interacted with this cycle over the years. Yeah, I can tell
you, like, I think everybody goes through it, and I think that
people skip through different parts of it based upon like who they are, their
perspective of the world, and shall they process some of these things. Like
so for me, um, you know, like I I read through this
and I'm like, yeah, I'm not quick like like like denial is like
the first thing. UM, I don't know that I spend much time in
like the denial, the shock, the resistance. I jump right into like
the anger, um and so because it's just kind of like what are we
doing? This is crazy? And but but I also moved through that pretty
quickly. So like I I think that UM, having you know, a
long career UM in a place like retail leadership, again, you're kind of
used to like this ongoing change to your part, like to your point,
like there's always something that's changing. There's always a different approach, there's a
different strategy, there's a different you know, the way that we do things,
and it's constantly being UM adjusted in that type. So like you kind
of get used to the like Okay, it's gonna be what it's gonna be,
But like what questions do I have or how do I move quickly?
Knowing that I'm responsible for leading people, so like I can feel a certain
way about something but also understand that this is what we're doing organizationally, I
have to make that come to life, like that's actually the job that I
have, and so I think sometimes for me it's helpful to kind of work
through some things quickly, no matter how much my initial reaction is to then
get to the point of the responsibility of my role as a leader, I
think that helps me get through a lot of these stages very quickly. Yeah,
I think you mentioned important here, which is the role of the leader.
Meaning if you are just an employee who doesn't have people reporting to you,
then your role is whatever it is in this Like you can pick your
poison on where in this chart you tend to start and the different things you
can kind of pass through quickly versus the things that you kind of have to
you dwell in longer. If you're a leader, you are still going through
that as an employee, but you also have a responsibility to kind of help
your people transition through the process as well. And sometimes your people will have
different places on this kind of cycle that they naturally gravitate towards. And when
a lot of leaders get tripped up in this, it's when they treat all
of their employees in the exact same way, or they treat their employees in
the way that they themselves are reacting to this and You see this. Where
this kind of rears its head is when you, as the employee, are
feeling either either denial, anxiety, shock, resistance, fearing, or frustration,
any any of those, and you go to your boss and the response
is already at enthusiasm, like, oh, this is going to be amazing,
right, you know. So if the if the boss is there,
it means one of two things. Either they started this process a long time
ago and failed miserably to bring you along for the ride, or they're lying.
They're not actually enthusiastic about it yet there's somewhere else in this transition period,
and and they believe their responsibility as a leader is to exude enthusiasm in
the hopes that you will kind of use their example to make it through the
rest of these things. And all that does is you see right through it
as the employee. When my leader does that, I see right through that,
because there's no way they're enthusiastic about something they just heard about the day
before. Instead, they're trying to fake it till they make it, or
they don't even worse, they don't care they're enthusiastic because in their mind they've
drink the kool aid it's their job, and they move through it without having
to go through these things. But that isn't how you can lead a team
of people who go through these actual issues. And so what I'll ask you,
Lorenzo, is I want to know about where you get stuck in here.
You say you kind of naturally start at the anger slash frustration phase,
not really in the anxiety or shock or resistance or fear part. But as
you move through these transitions, where do you get stuck as a leader and
how do you get through that in helping your people get through it as well?
So I want to ask you that. At first, I want to
get up toward it from our sponsors. All right, the runs, Oh,
where do you find yourself spending the most amount of time in this transition
period? And how do you how do you up your people get through it?
No, it's a great question. I think the two places where I
get stuck in this is I think in just the elements of the frustration piece,
when I really am not connecting the dots and understanding from a long term
standput, Like I understand that change is necessary. I know that sometimes many
times we have to just do things for the moment, but also my brain
in the way that I'm wired, I think about like the long tail on
this, like how is this going to have an impact long tail? And
and have we considered those things? You know? My hope and belief is
that they have been considered. But sometimes like I feel like this, this
is going to cause more harm than good in the long term, so I
tend to get stuck a little bit there and slows me down. But then
really for me, impatience, like like in specifically the impatience around even though
I might feel a certain way about this, even though I may, you
know, have this just feelings about what's going on, I firmly believe that
we have this responsibility as leaders to what you said earlier, which is bring
our people along, meet them where they're at, and help them work through
this change because feeling the way that you're gonna feel about it's not going to
change things. Because I gonna change this, like this is the thing that
we're going to go do. And so sometimes the impatience thing around other people
or other leaders holding on to some of these previous emotions for too long of
like I understand that you're upset. I get that maybe you're frustrated. Yes,
like, like I could acknowledge that people are working through these types of
things, which you do have to move beyond them if we ever have a
chance to get into like the ability to be creative and to figure this out
and to you know, eventually have an impact on the work itself and kind
of moved this forward. That for me, I think is where I get
stuck the most. It's just like giving people the time to process or work
through the things, but then having some of them still stuck and not wanted
to move forward. Yeah, I agree. I think that's everybody gets to
the acceptance phase, which is right before impatience. Everybody gets to the acceptance
phase on their own timeline. And once you're there, it can be hard
when the rest of your organization or your colleagues aren't there alongside you. It's
possible some of them got there before you. It's possible that some of them
got there before you and they were frustrated at your lack of acceptance. And
then once you get there, now you get to be frustrated at their lack
of acceptance, you know, like they're at at other people in the organization.
That's when you've moved into the kind of impatience phase. But it's it's
interesting how this process works, and it's whether it's a small change or a
large change. It could be, you know, being fired from an organization,
or it could be, hey, we're going to change this computer system
from this one on to this one, and it's going to change the way
that you do this one process that might have not to five percent of your
of your of your day job. Um. So regardless of it, it's
just the levels of these emotions are different depending on how impactful that changes to
your life. But but make no mistake, if you're a leader, there's
gonna be this this transition that occurs with all of your employees, and it's
your job to kind of recognize where your employees are falling along this this kind
of roadmap, um and meeting them where they are in a way that is
genuine that doesn't doesn't give off that you are um somehow immune to this phase,
to this process, that you go through it as well. UM,
but you have kind of a maybe a healthy history of experience of going through
similar things and knowing that it's going to be okay because you've been through it
before, being able to share those experiences with your employees might help them get
through that a little bit better. Um, you know, devaluing their experience
or or getting frustrated with them for not being where you are, it is
not the way to help them through it. Yeah, and I want to
call it out. I think I'm happy that you said that because I think
it's important to say that. You can acknowledge that you have also been through
some of these stages, but you cannot be dismissive in where they're at,
So you cannot say like, oh, like like when I first heard this
too, Chris Man, I was like, what the heck is going on?
So like I totally get it, but like let's move beyond that now.
Like you, you don't get to just stay there like you want to
acknowledge and be like, hey, I totally understand it. Like like I,
you know, initially when we have changed like this, I have very
similar feelings, very similar emotions. You know, a couple things that helped
me kind of work through it or maybe this, this and that, but
this is about you right now, so like like like you know, what
what do you want to talk about or like how do you want to kind
of talk through this or what can I share with you that might be helpful
as we're considering this change in the work that we need to do. So
like, I think that's important because I think that happens too. It was
like, oh you know, yep, hey, I get it. When
I first heard it last week, I was really mad too, but like
it is what it is. Where are where we are, So like let's
go, Like that's not going to help you, you know, get people
through the process. No, not at all. If by the nature of
organizations is that the knowledge or the strategy trickles down, and so the higher
up you are in the organization, the earlier you were able to start this
process. And if you're hearing, if you're giving the information to your people,
the idea that you had, you know, one day or one week
or one month to be able to get through this and now you expect them
to be where you are is insane. Like you you need to at least
give them the leeway that you were given by your boss. And you need
to also take into account that maybe you've done this before and so it's easier
to move through these things than it is for your people, or maybe because
of your position, you're impacted less by it than they are. Maybe all
your job is is to hold them accountable to the change that's impacting them that
isn't impacting you at all. So keep that in mind too when when you're
kind of deliver bring news and you're kind of helping them get along. Allow
them to move through the process in their own pace. As long as it
is they are clearly moving through it. They can't they can't get stuck too
long in one area, but they need to be able to move through it
absolutely and well that it brings us at the end of this episode, this
is hacking leadership. I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris, and have a great day.