E010: The Change Curve

hi everyone. This is James and Jane, and welcome back to another episode of The World of Work podcast. Here we are again. Today we're going to be chatting about the change curve, so we'll do a little bit more of that in a minute. But if you want to get in touch, you can check us out on the world of work podcast.org

or you can follow us on Twitter at the World podcast, where we'll make sure that we share some of the additional resources and slides afterwards. Yeah, cool. So what have you been up to? How's your week been? My week has been. How has my week been? Do you know what? I've had a great week. I've had it's been unseasonably Sunny, if cold, yeah, it's been nice. I've I've made my my my twit. I've made so for those of you who aren't listening, in real time, I have thought two months ahead and already set my next year's goals, which I'm really pretty that's unusually well planned, so well done. It's unusually well planned and very unusual for me. Yeah, excellent work, but I do try and do it in plenty of time so that I can start thinking about how actually I'm going to fund

COVID. Great dreams, but need to get money invested myself somehow. Yeah, good. Well, I've had a good week too. I've had a unusual week for me in that I've been doubly musical and two different types of things. So I went to the opera, very exciting. Went to the Rigoletto. It was actually really good. So yeah, that was really good.

But also, within a couple days of that over and went to another concert to see a band, Canadian, sort of rock, alt rock band called metric. So there we go, like all swathes of music in a couple days, which is called metric. I quite like that. It's kind of fun, isn't it? Yeah. It makes me think. Anyway, yeah. So that was pretty good to enjoy that. Anyway, that's not too much associated with the change curve, which is our topic for today.

So as ever, we're going to be doing what we do. So we'll give you some definitions that we think are helpful for the change curve.

I will do a bit of a research round up looking at the change curve itself, how it relates to individuals going through change versus, really, you know, a bit of a theoretical mapping around how people respond to change. So, so we'll look at what it means for individuals facing change themselves, themselves, and we'll also look a little bit at what this means for people, maybe helping others through change. And as ever, we're focused mainly in the world of work, so that's research Roundup. Then we'll have a list of a week. So list of a week, we'll be focusing a little bit on some things that maybe cause people to start the change curve journey in the world of work, I will be sharing some stories from a keyboard, from our different experiences in the world of work. We'll have some final thoughts for you, some top tips. Then we'll be checking out and saying goodbye. So I think that's the plan for today. So do you want to kick us off with some definitions? Yep, great. They're pretty straightforward this week, just some basic vocabulary terminology that we're going to use. So Merriam Webster talks about change as the definition to be to change the makeup organization or pattern of something. Oxford Dictionary talks about restructuring as organizing differently. Cambridge talk about restructure as to organize a company, business or system in a new way to make it operate more effectively. So that's much more a situational definition, and I I'm not going to go into details of whether things operate more effectively, but I assume that's the ambition. Yeah, it's a goal. It's a bit it's a life goal. So organizational change, also from Cambridge dictionary, talk about a process in which a large company or organization changed its working methods or aims, for example, in order to develop and deal with new situations and markets.

So the restructure is often what comes out of the need for change in an organization. And two, three very specific words related to this process. One is grief, which might be a surprise to some listeners and not to others, but we'll explain why in a minute. So the dictionary.com, REV definition of grief, keen, mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss. Sharp, sorrow, painful regret, quite poignant, isn't it? It's pretty tough to say it loud when you read it. Yeah, so that's the first. The second is coaching. We're going to talk about that, because quite often change. We're talking about the context of coaching people through change. So the ICF, the International Coach Federation, definition of coaching is partnering with clients in a thought provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. So when you think about that in the context of coaching.

People through change. That's quite a lot to ask. It's a huge, it's a huge ask to get someone through a change and also to inspire them to maximize their personal professional potential. But it does actually help contextualize it. Yeah. And then the last, the last one I wanted to just touch on was the definition of transition from in 1981 an event or non event resulting in a change in assumptions about oneself in the world, thus requiring corresponding changes in one's behavior and relationships, which I think, I think gets lost, it does. I think that's a great definition. Yeah, I can't claim myself. My lecturer shared it with us during a lecture, and it really stuck with me to the point where I wrote it down, because I think it helps people understand their own situations, quite a lot. So that's everything from our dictionary definitions this week. Cool. Okay, so let's jump into a bit of research, round up, and we're talking about the change curve. So I imagine a lot of people know about the change curve, but I'm sure not everybody does. So really, the change curve, it's a graphical representation of how people's I guess morale and engagement varies over time in response to a large change, right? So how do people feel

from the point of something being introduced to their lives that causes them to change over the coming days, weeks, months, maybe even years, depending on the scale of a change. So that's the change curve in terms of its history.

The change curve actually comes out of some work by a woman called Elizabeth Kubler Ross, who focused very much on how individuals respond to grief, right? So the loss of somebody near or dear, I guess, at its most fundamental senses, the often considered source of a moment of grief. So you lose someone dear to you, and you start a grieving process. So Elizabeth Cougar Ross studied the process of the emotional response that people have to such a loss. And as ever anything in the world of psychology like this that's useful often gets,

I guess, transformed, to some extent, into something that's applicable for business. So as ever, so people reviewed the work that she'd done around how people respond to change, and took that work and decided, well, you know what, it's not just about the loss of a loved one or a loss of something important that instigates grief,

that would be the initial starting point for a change, it's all types of things that would probably lead to a similar set of sort of emotional responses over a similar set of time. So they took the Elizabeth Kubler Ross model and brought it into the workplace, and I renamed it as the change curve, and used it as a way to describe the emotional responses people have to an instigator of change over a period of time. So essentially, that's what the change COVID. Do you want to add anything to that? Anything I've missed, anything or No, I think it's really, really good. I think it's really simple explanation. I think the important thing to understand is it's a journey, like you say, and so it has. It's over time. And I think people forget that quite a lot, and the time scale could vary, right? And varies per person. I think it's really that's another thing that varies per person. And I think the other thing that's quite important to understand is that there's since been, well, I'm not sure if it's since around the same time, but there was definitely some work around looking at transition that noticed that it was applicable not just to negative experiences, but quite often to positive ones too. So going through the period of transition, there's slight differences, but ultimately they all start with a shock and they have a crisis point. Yeah? So

I think it's, it's important to understand that change can come from what appears at first to be a good or a bad place, yeah.

Important thing, yeah. So people like stability, right? I mean, change is uncertainty. It's discomforting. So be it positive or negative, people have a bit of a challenge. Yeah. And I guess the bit that I'm really interested in about the research stuff, which I'm still sort of getting to grips with myself, is what is uncertainty and what is change? And how can you split out the impact of the effects if you manage change so well that there is no uncertainty or limited uncertainty. How? How much is there still in effect? Yeah, I'm interested in that, yeah. And I think that's, like you said, difficult to do, but it's certainly an aspirational direction for leaders to head in is to try and minimize that. It's the biggest part they can play, right? Yeah, yeah. As well as making sure the change is valid and useful and well implemented, that's a whole different story. Yeah, not easy. So I'll run you through the change curve in a minute. But one other thing I wanted to say that you kind of alluded to there, Jane, is you said that people go through the change curve journey at different speeds, and I think that's really important to call out, particularly if you're a leader thinking about this type of thing. So there's several different things going on here. So individuals, I guess, innately respond to change at different paces. So if you're leading a team and you're introducing a change that affects everybody, some people will progress through that change process this change curve more quickly than others. They just naturally will. So when you're looking to manage and lead your team, you just need to be.

Aware of it, different people will be in different stages at the same time. So I guess that kind of implies that when we're when we're coming on to talk about how to lead through the change curve, it might not be a one size fits all approach. So that's the first thing to call out. You need to be cognizant of how your individuals and your team are feeling about things. The next thing that I think is really important to call out here, again, kind of reflecting on the leadership piece is that it's not just your innate, you know, sort of change responsiveness that will dictate how quickly you go through the curve, also how long you've been aware of things and how much information you have about changes affects it as well. So pardon me, we'll probably speak about this when we look at some thoughts from the keyboard. But when leaders lead change, they're often much further along the change curve than their teams are. And people sometimes forget how much further along the curve they are themselves as leaders than their teams are. So if you're leading through change, you need to really step back and remember that other people in your team will be at different points, not just because of their you know, their innate change responsiveness, but also because of the amount of time that they've had and how far along that temporal journey they are. So that's Enough waffling about bits around this. Let's actually talk about the curve itself.

So the change curve, say, starts at a mid level, and what it says is something comes along and it's an instigator of change. And when that happens, there's a bit of a shock, right? So somebody shot at the start of a change, then what happens next? Well, then people tend to deny it, right? So particularly if it's a negative thing, you tend to say, well, that's not really happening, or it's not happening to me, or it won't affect me. So for a little while, we often see morale, for lack of a better word, that's what we'll use for our vertical axis increasing a little bit. So people are like, well, this stuff's happening, but it doesn't affect me, you know, I'm kind of impervious, you know, I'll never get hit by that bus. Whatever it is. That's a bit of a negative view, but you know what I mean, win the lottery. Yeah, yeah, okay, I'll never win the lottery. And so, so their morale tends to go up a little bit as they deny what's going on, and then a little bit later on, people get a little bit closer to accepting it. And what happens then is they get angry, right? So what tends to happen then is, with the anger comes a desire to blame other people. So I'm angry. It's your fault. Why are you doing this to me? This isn't fair. All that kind of stuff. And some of that negativity comes out. And there morale starts to fall down, and it heads down below the point at which it started, before the shock happened.

And this is all in a broad phase of disruption. So after anger tends to come something along the lines of bargaining. And here people start to think about a little bit around blaming themselves and saying, Oh, is this my fault? What can I do to resolve this? How can we get out of this? I'm sorry that I led to this, things like that. And leading on from bargaining, you tend to get in towards sort of depression, which is really the bottom of a curve, and down here it's leading up to this crisis point. But here, individuals are kind of lost. They're uncertain. They don't really know what's going on, and they're kind of miserable about the whole thing. They can't really yet see solutions. You know? They're clouded by the negatives, without being able to see a real way forward. And

that's really when you're at the, probably the darkest part of the response to any kind of change. It's kind of a hopeless period, and it's sort of crisis, right? I mean, stuff sort of falls down a little bit, and people don't really have a will, of a drive to progress through it.

And as you start to come out of depression, people start to explore what the future could look like, and they start to be able to visualize what the future might be. They start to rationalize a little bit. You start to make sense of some of the causes of a change, but also start to reflect on some of the practicalities and specifics of what a future might be. And that's the start of this sort of acceptance phase. And as you start to visualize the future and start to accept it, people tend to move bit more into activities like problem solving and trying to figure out, okay, well, if this is the way it's going, how can I make the most of this? What can I do to get a good outcome for myself? How can I help others along this journey? How are we going to make this work and people start to explore the future through that stage and really come to accept it? And that's the real bulk of the change journey kind of completed. And by the time we get there, morale tends to be above where it was before the shock. And people are on a new journey and heading towards a new future that they've explored, that they're fairly accepting of, and that they probably see us as a way to create something good for the future. And then as we move out of that, particularly in sort of business language, we start to get words like commitment, and you start to look at people being committed to the new change, and individuals starting to move on.

So that's my potted summary of the change curve. Have you got any thoughts on that? I've always got thoughts. Yes, I know it's a great question. Catch all, isn't it? And.

Do. I think, like a lot of the stuff we look at in psychology, there's various rumblings around how good the evidence is, although, interestingly, there's some there's some data coming out of scandal countries around it, it projects, of all things, that actually shows some really good evidence. I think it's important to understand that the the original cycle was never meant to be about organizational change, and like everything we talk about, things were things were created way before they were trying to help businesses. I really like it. I find working with senior leadership staff, it is one of the most effective ways of explaining to them what's going on and actually asking them to individually consider where their team are, yeah, not as a group and not, most importantly, like you said, where they are, where are the people you're working with. And the other thing we talk about is slopes. So we talk about the change curve on a slope, and there is some evidence to suggest most people move around. It pretty similar rate. But the whole point of a normal distribution, the whole point of the science, isn't most which means that there will be people who move faster and slower. So it's really important to track where your team are, because it will stop you as a manager from having to deal with things like, you know, phone calls at eight o'clock in the morning one day, when suddenly someone has panic, because you've realized they've moved very quickly to realization of what it means, for example. So I think it's a brilliant model. I think it's really effective. And one of the things I really love about it is that, for me, it was the first time that it was shared with me. I've been through lottery, structures, nonprofit, but

it was the first time that I heard in important meeting rooms with important people emotional language used, and I think that's because it comes from a grief model. It was really powerful to have senior leaders when I was quite Junior using language that acknowledged that emotions play a part in business performance, and they should and they will, because you need to get people through these emotions in order to get them to a place where they are happy. For me, it was the first time that I started to consider that happiness impacted organizational research. Yeah, oh, good. I think that's a lot of good stuff in there. I was just thinking, as you talked about about, you know, the fact that people often go through at a fairly similar place. And I think that's right. One thing that it made me think of, though, is that people tend to go through it linearly, but you can be pushed back as well. I mean, you can, you can kind of accelerate your pace through it, but some stuff can happen that sort of pushes you back to an earlier stage. So, you know, you might have gone through anger and be kind of depressed and and, you know, starting getting close to that journey towards acceptance, but if you're managed in an inconsiderate or inappropriate way, or something happens there, you can easily revert back to anger. So if you learn at that point about something that makes you feel unfair or triggers your values, you can step back a little bit and suddenly be angry with the organization again. And have to go through that process. And without question, it's where I've seen value stuff in personal value stuff into play the most. And I would also say that

organizations, they're really i Yeah, everything you just said about understanding that the way you behave with one employee can impact everybody's change curve. Yeah, I have absolutely seen consistently people badly behave, badly treated, or just it thoughtlessly treated? Yeah, actually, the word I'm looking for, and it whip through an organization by lunchtime, particularly if you're all in one venue, yeah, it's contagious. Very, very contagious. It's so one of the things, one of the things that we talked about a lot in the most recent time I went through this was, how can we treat every single person as an individual the best we can? And, you know, for example, we didn't have when we went through restructure. We didn't have a single meeting in one place. Every goal, no one was asked to travel more than because we were remote organization time, no one was asked to travel more than a certain distance. Everyone was given the opportunity to talk amongst themselves. There wasn't everyone was dealt with quite individually and uniquely. And it wasn't perfect, because it never is, but if you do, I've seen it time and again where, like, entire organizations have been put in one ballroom and just told Yeah. And you're like, really, yeah, it doesn't is that a good way of helping anyone? Yeah? Oh, we're all in it together. Well, we're not, because some people in the room know what's gonna happen, and some don't, yeah, and some people have known for a long time, and yeah. But I think, I think as a model, and that is what it is. I think it is useful. I think it brings that number one, it brings that feeling of emotion in and allows people to start talking about it. Number two, it recognizes that people it's a curve, and therefore people are at different places on it. And number three, I think it gives people some language that is useful in articulating how they feel, particularly if they are uncomfortable. If they can, if you can show it to them and say, How are you feeling? Are any of these words resonant? Do you feel that this is a process you're going through? It can help and it can make them feel okay. I think some people, particularly early careerists, quite often, feel like when they're going through change, good and bad. Change like they're not meant to feel like this, like professional it kind.

Normalizes it. Oh, and it does it totally, it totally makes me know everyone's going through it just, you know, yeah, I might have been through it five times, so I might be better at handling and predicting and managing my behavior around it. Yeah. One thing I'll say is that, you know, the language that I used there is a bit of an amalgam of the different change curve models that are out there. So if you look on the internet, you'll find a whole series of change curves ranging from the original through to different interpret interpretations and lenses for business. So what I've talked through pulls together points from all of them, and you can find your own, you know, you can find your own models out there, but I tend to look at Hobson. I know a lot of people. Ross, yeah, and they're all broadly similar. So this gives you a sense of what we're talking about. The other thing I wanted to touch on before we look at, you know how to respond to this is, you talked about getting your leaders to plot in some conversations where their teams are. I think it's really good to do that, and I think it's really good to have them also plot where they are versus where their teams are. So, you know, we've done activities where we've had, say, a group of leaders in the room and said, Okay, why don't you as leaders, plot individually where you are, so we can see where the leadership is Now, having done that, I'd like you to step back and think about how much you've communicated to the teams when you did that, and where you think your teams are on this. And I think that's a really good way to draw up a fact that leaders do tend to be a good few stages ahead. Yeah. And I also so the other things that I think come in into play. Here are, have you been through it in this context before? Absolutely. Have you been through it in another context before? And what else is going on in your life? Yeah. So one of the things that we really encourage, I really encourage leaders to when they're about to go through a transition is if they're in a small organization or medium sized organization, particularly, make sure they know if anyone else is having any other major transitions. So really interestingly, when I started my masters, and my Masters is part time, and it requires a lot of balance, there were 70 of us from across the world sitting in a room because we came in for the first weekend. And our lecturer, who also has to be a lecturer in careers, which is hilarious, so she's actually lecturing us about this stuff, she stood up in the first session and she went, the most best chance you've got of being successful is not to have any life events during your two year masters. And we all, we all looked and went, You're kidding, right? And she was like, Look, I understand you can't stop you getting ill, your family getting ill. You can't stop winning. Maybe you can stop winning the lottery. Don't buy a ticket. But she was like, the stuff you can control, control so don't get married, don't plan on having kids in the middle of it, because it will it fundamentally, you will be going through too many transitions at once, and your brain will just really struggle, and you won't get the best out of it. And she talks about, when she starts teaching the transition stuff, she talks about how important it is to understand that you might have two similar personalities, similar experiences. But if one of them has a private situation going on and has not disclosed it, such as, I don't know sort of parent is unwell or whatever, and you don't know that, you have got to understand that will have a massive impact on their behavior through the curve. Yeah, absolutely, because they might be doubling, effectively, the magnitude could be doubled. Yeah. So this is like working memory as a concept, and, you know, the emotional drain and just just the consistent message around understanding that a lot of the reason that we need to be aware of it is around mental health, yeah, and it's an unspoken thing quite often that we don't really say the real reason we need to check on all this stuff. Yes, we want a better performing organization. We also make need to make sure, need to make sure no one goes under the bus. Yeah, yeah, cool. So, so that's kind of what the change curve is. So quick recap, you get shocked by a change. You initially go into denial. You then maybe become angry and blame other people for it. Then you go down into a depression, where you're inactive and unhappy about things, and then slowly, you you come out about you get through that point of crisis, and you start to accept the change. And then once you've accepted the change, you can start to move on. So that's, that's fundamentally what the change card is. So the next bit we're going to touch on is,

you know, as a leader, how do you respond to people in these different stages, right? I mean, you go through different things and and if you're leading a team, then you're going to have to work with people as they go through shock, denial, anger, depression, acceptance. And what you want to do as a leader through this is, is you want to help people through the curve. Because fundamentally, regardless of what the change is, getting through the curve faster and with the least amount of disruption is the best thing almost always for you as an individual and for your organization. So again, the role of a leader is to help people with that. And we want to explore a little bit what some of the different ways of leadership are that might help people when they're the different stages. But I guess, sort of overarching this, are a couple of themes as well around, I guess, just the way that you work with people, and we'll do a deep dive later on in some of these models. But, you know, transactional analysis is an important piece here. So a transactional analysis model is basically a model of how you interact with other people. Do you do you treat people as peers? Do you treat them kind of as subordinate children, or do you look up to them and treat them as, I guess, sort of superior adults? Would you say that's.

Their kind of description, high level of transaction, yeah, the way, the way, certainly, the way. I've learned it. It's about and which of those will then encourage other behavior of the others. Because the dream is, obviously that you treat your peers like adults, yeah, and you behave like an adult, and everyone behaves like adults. But

the idea is, if someone else is behaving differently. How can you maintain your adult status rather than, you know, yeah, then respond in a really not helpful way, yeah, so. So I think you know, overarching, this whole thing about leading up this through change is is a an overarching message to treat people like adults, you know, treat them kind of like your emotional peers. Treat them like grown ups with their own set of emotions and their own set of rational of rational decision making frameworks and their ability to act in an adult way. So, you know, in all of these stages, you should be treating them like adults, and you shouldn't be making decisions for them. You shouldn't be imposing things on them. You need to let them explore.

And I think that's the overarching, you know, high level message around this, I would say, be really, really clear as well what your role is and isn't going to be within your team. Decide how much of yourself you are willing to give, yeah, comfortably. That's going to work for them and work for you, and stick to it and have that down somewhere, yeah, yeah. Be really clear, because you can get really easily, particularly if you're someone who is

quite engaged with your team on social level, then you can get really dragged into stuff, and it's not helpful for them. Yeah, they need, actually, what they quite often need is someone who is honest, open, direct, and can just tell them the status quo, and then let's but, you know, you can identify the people to support them. That's helpful, yeah? And you can help them through the change curve without being an enabler of, you know, slowing this stuff down so you can help them through the curve, without giving them solutions, without overly sympathizing with them, because all those types of things tend to be unhelpful in, you know, helping people through the change. I think the biggest thing I've learned, and

it's true in most models of behavior, but be really clear about what role you're going to provide, yeah, and perform and then perform that role, yeah. And then don't perform any other role but signpost, yeah. And I think, I think that's where I've seen most effective, and things like Team contracting and stuff like that, you know, ways of working contracting can help with some of our definition and exploration of absolutely what's expected of people. So let's look, then a little bit, at some of the things that leaders can do to help people through the different stages here. So if we think back to the start of a model, and again, you know, these slides are up in the web, so you guys can have a look at this when you're ready. Yeah, actually, I would really encourage we're going to put it up. We're going to put the couple of models up, yeah, when we put this episode out, so that actually, if you want to have it in front of you, and you want to look to it in front if you don't know it, it's really useful, yeah, walking through it. Yeah, that's right. So very early on in the model, when, when somebody goes to change, they're kind of shocked, and they go into denial, right? So here, individuals don't really think that this stuff's happening, or they don't think it's happening to them. So what's the best role of a leader in this environment? Well, the best thing that leaders or managers or coaches can do in this this type of situation is just to communicate facts, right? So people think it isn't happening, so just be really clear on the facts. Don't be emotionally involved. Just, you know, answer fact, answer questions. Make sure that facts are really clearly laid out and things are simple, right? And it's just by saying things in a simple and clear way that's honest and open, but you'll help people get over that denial. So you know, people will think it's not going to happen to them, and all you can do is reiterate the core messages of what's going on in an unemotional way, I'd say, to help them get up to speed with that. I think so, just two things of that, and you might cover it, but one is, this is where you really want to remember what you know about your workforce, so communicate in every way and be consistent. So when we do, when I've been through this, we've done it on paper, we've had verbal conversations, we've done slides, and we've done and we've given everyone everything, and we were like, you know, you pick and you go, and they'll be the person who reads five minutes and then goes and thinks about it, yeah, and they'll be the person who reads every piece of information. But I and the other thing I would say is slightly, I would slightly tweak my approach. In comparison what you said, I think you can be you can share emotions without being emotional. And I think so. One of the most powerful things I've seen is a CEO expressing regret for the situation and sharing how he felt when he first realized but did it in a really unemotional way, so he didn't make it uncomfortable for anyone. Yeah, but he was really clear. He had been on this journey for a bit longer, but at the beginning, he had felt and it was like he was giving them permission to say, Yeah, but I would definitely agree what you don't want to do, if the last thing you want to do absolutely is get emotional yourself. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes emotionality clouds for fact. So, so sometimes people need that stark information, I think, to help them through and that multi channel approach that you talked about. You know.

Verbal communications, written communication, without question. I've watched it done verbally, and I've watched 90% of the room only hear the first sentence, which completely destroys the point. Yeah, and I'm gonna flip side about if you don't tell them the stuff till the end, but nobody listens to the stuff at the beginning, because they're all waiting for the big message, right? I mean, it's hard and hard to get it done. So then after that, people go, you know, into this sort of angry stage. It starts to be really disruptive to their work. And individuals going through change, as I said, they start to blame other people and point fingers, and then they move on to starting to blame themselves. And when people are in this blame environment as a leader, it's quite a difficult situation. And I guess kind of the best thing you need to do for your team, but the best way through is to be a listener, right? So, so you want to listen to what people say. You want to acknowledge what they say. You want to hear them,

but you you when, while you're hearing them, you don't want to do any more than here. You want them to know that they've had a chance to speak and that you've listened to and you've understood what they're saying. But what you don't want to get drawn into is agreeing with or disagreeing with any of the sort of emotional content and interpretation of what they say. And you know, if you go into that sort of agreement or disagreement or offering solutions. Then, then you kind of become an enabler, and you'll slow down their ability to get through this curve. So it's kind of hard, but you just listen, it's super hard. I tell you. Why else is super hard is because there are legal processes when you come to organizational research that have set time frames. Then quite often, you're moving your process Yeah, at a different speed than suits the people, the majority of people you're working with either too fast or too slow. And

my experience is that, in particular, has been incredibly challenging to deal with, because on the one hand, you're meant to be listening and actually responding to people's thoughts on what you're wanting to do, and on the other hand, you're trying to be aware that emotionally, they're in very different places, yeah, and they're not in, they're not ready, or they're too ready. Yeah, it's difficult. So I find, I found that very difficult in the past, and I've seen it struggle with others as well. Yeah, it's not an easy time.

But, you know, the guidance would be just listen. You know, do your active listening? Do all those types of things. Use some of those coaching skills around the listening. You know, you can ask some questions, but don't offer solutions,

and don't jump in and say, Oh, yes, isn't a world unfair? I mean, that's the last thing you should do. I'm feeling it too. You don't care. That's not what it's about. If you are feeling it, they don't care. You don't want to be aligned in this stuff. What I would say, though, is

be really clear at noticing mood. So we were talking earlier about contagion, so how emotion could be catching and I think it's one of the really important things, is getting lots of people in organizations to be aware of where the mood is going in certain teams, because it is helpful to other leaders to understand what they might be seeing around coming around the corner. Yeah, that's a great chat. So sharing your observations, what other leaders are really good, and you don't have to that's not about necessarily any sharing private conversations about I get a sense from a big team as a whole, this is where the emotion might go. And you could, just as a leadership team, plot where your team are on the graph. I mean, that's useful thing. Yeah, share, share lessons.

So once individuals progress through that sort of angry stage of blaming people, they go towards the latter stages of disruption, where they're kind of, you know, bargaining, and they're a bit lost and they're kind of confused, and they're not really sure what's coming. And and it's here that people start to think about learning more. And around here, people can, you know, can, let me say that again, around here, leaders can start to provide a little bit more gentle guidance. You can start to focus a little bit more on the future. You can talk about, you know, some of the positive things that are around the horizon. And by doing that, you can, you can kind of help steer people towards a better future for themselves and a better appreciation of what's coming. So when individuals are lost and confused, it's the time to start with gentle guidance. It's not about being directive. It's none of those things, but it's just starting to have conversations about what's coming

up. And then, you know that's people going through that sort of stage of disruption, bargaining, a bit depression, but starting to look to the future. And then you can kind of help guide them out through that, and then things get a bit more kind of exciting and active from a leadership perspective, when individuals start to rationalize so as I start to come out of this depression stage, and I start to really envisage the future, then what you find is individual rules tend to start asking questions about the future that are sort of speculative questions, like I wonder what This will mean. How will we do this in practice? What do I need to do to make this work? How am I going to transition more quickly and effectively, and when people start asking those questions and moving towards that acceptance piece, leaders can start to respond, I guess, a little bit more positively, so you can start to build on those nuggets of future looking positivity and.

Enthusiasm, you can maybe offer a bit of support. You can help people towards finding solutions, even if it's just giving people time to work on finding solutions, that's great, and that's an investment in nourishing their investment in a better future. So focusing on stuff like that is good, and leading, leading in that way that gives people the space to focus on good things is really helpful. And individuals from there work towards starting to solve problems. And again, you want to give them space to solve those future problems. You want to help them invest in those and and you know, as you go through this curve, you in terms of keeping the business as usual, the day to day tasks going, what you'll find is that earlier in the stages, so during denial and anger and some of the Depression, people might need more directed leadership, because they're not in a space to think and be sort of creative about how they work, they work themselves. So therefore, therefore your leadership needs to be fairly directed. But as you get to this later stage, and people are being are exploring the future and accepting the future, you can step back from some of that directedness and be a little bit more coaching, provide a little bit more empowerment and autonomy, and let people start to create and shape what they want the future to be. And then as you start to move out of exploration, towards sort of rebuilding and commitment, then you step back even more, and hopefully you there. Then start to set future goals. You start to work with people around what's on the horizon, and leave people more of a space themselves to figure out how to get there. So at a high level, that's kind of what it feels like to me. It's, you know, start with clear facts, be directive where necessary, where people are struggling with some of the work because they're distracted. As it progresses, you start to help people focus a little bit more in the future. Increasingly provide support. And as you transition towards

the completion of a change curve, you start to empower people more and provide a little bit more autonomy so people can reach their goals. So that's kind of my summary of sort of leadership through the change curve. It's really good. Yeah, I think,

I think just reiterating at every stage, you do have this constant battle between HR and legal process, and you want support people, and you have to be aware of that as a leader, and know that you may be limited in what you can do directly, yeah, because of the requirements of where you what you need to be doing in the process. And I think the other thing is understand that some people will leave the cycle, yeah, and you know, quite often it's it's not necessarily the people you want to leave the cycle, in the sense that,

if people are very have been through it before, and they know how they feel about it, and they know how long they believe or they perceive, it will take too long for the organization to get on back On a level pegging they will leave. Because not everyone, particularly, I think people who deal with change relatively effectively, if they if they know that, or they believe the organization is not going to deal with it particularly quickly, because everyone's going through it much slower than them, they'll just go and find someone that isn't going through it, yeah, yeah. Or if they're really good at thinking about it, they might think they're better opportunities elsewhere, and they're less concerned about that change and less risk averse, so they'll just jump anyway. Yeah, and I think that's that's one of the reasons why you really need to think about the reaction to uncertainty versus change as a leader and who has that uncertainty. Because certainly in my experience, in organizational restructures particularly, and actually location changes as well. It affects people differently, and the implication is that some people handle change really well. Actually, look at look at their situation. Maybe they're dealing with it well, because they actually live really near the new location, whatever, and actually they're getting credit for something they don't deserve credit for. And vice versa. People are getting critiqued because actually it's the store the store, the straw, the breakfast comes back. Yeah, they hang mail on a Friday afternoon. I heard it described as that type of stuff, right? That's another phrase for the nice strawberries. Okay, so, so that's kind of a high level, you know, research, research. Rundown on research, round up on all things, change curve. So the change curve. People get shocked, they go into denial, they become angry, they become depressed, and ultimately, they start to accept and explore a future, and then start to commit and rebuild towards a better future after the change that that's effectively, yeah, I think it's probably worth mentioning that the transition cycle that Hobson, Hobson uses, also maps out changes that you initially think are going to be really, really good, and he mimics it. And he says that basically, it's only the beginning that's different. So you might, instead of having shock, a negative shock, you will experience as a positive or excitement.

And then instead of the denial you're in, it's still denial, but it's a honey. He refers to it as a honeymoon. Yeah. Honeymoon. So you're in this denial where it's all gonna be perfect, good things gonna happen, but ultimately, the argument is that you still hear a crisis point, and you still have to reconstruct and rebuild. And I I really like that. I think it's a really important thing, because I think all too often, I.

Organizations do things that they benefit someone and have no understanding of the fact that they will still go through a transition. Yeah,

good change is still change, right? I mean, good change is still changing. There's still, you still need to manage that change. Yeah, so that's my buck there. Yeah. Anyway, all right, well, you touched on a few things there that I think lead us towards, I guess, our list of the week. You want to run through list of the week. Yeah, so we decided, actually, this was James LED. It's great idea to identify five really common situations that can trigger the start of the change curve, and maybe talk a little bit about some of the differences between them. So

the first is changing an organization structure. The second is changing your job so that might be redundancy, that might be getting a new job, it might be a promotion. The third is changing your boss so it might be losing an old boss, getting a new boss coming up yourself. And then the fourth is changing the geographical location of where you are. So Office moves,

moving the whole office, or you moving to a different office within the organization. And the fifth is changing of organizational process. So things like new IT platforms is

a huge one, always a huge one. And really interesting that some of the data around this that comes out of the scandit countries around it change, because my first experience of the change curve in practice was actually around it was it not about organization restructure, okay? I my experience was having a bunch of volunteers cry, okay, they would have been some 40 years my senior, crying in their living room with me in front of a computer telling me that their job was no longer going to be required because they couldn't do it. And me explained to them that that was nonsense. They had 40 years experience doing something that none of the people who could work with computers. We just had to find a volunteer who could help. Yeah, and actually, for me, that's why that situation. Is why I so firmly believe that the grief analogy is great, because it's about grieving for a situation that you were comfortable in or had accepted it. Well, everybody, I guess, kind of unconsciously, has created a future for themselves. Yeah, and a change, no matter what that change is, means that you need to give up your certainty in that expected future. So I think griefs are great, great analogy. So, so, yeah, I it, it's astonishing the things you go through sometimes in life, isn't it funny? And I just it has stuck with me

for nigh on 20 years. That is singular experience, the powerful moment. Yeah, I mean, I just never, never felt so out of depth in all my life, and probably still haven't, actually and all the things I've done anyway. So those are the five situations that we're looking at. I guess it would be useful to talk a little bit about how some of those might differ. Particularly, I think one of my frustrations is that I've been through a major office move, yeah. And

it astonished me how the lack of understanding, because it wasn't an organizational restructure, how little, and this is a long time ago, and I think it would be different now, but how little was understood that people had valid emotions, both practical, like it was going to cost them a load more money, yeah, because they were going to travel differently and parking, but also how they were minimalized and how they were castigated as people who weren't on the bus. Yeah. Had that phrase, get on the bus or go, yeah. It creates divisions, yeah, and,

and I just it, the level of frustration of that for me, was was huge. So I think there's something really important to understand that some people an office move would be really exciting. Yeah, some, and that's a really interesting example, because actually quite often, where you'll get downsizing, lots of people feel quite similarly. Yes, people might start to see this opportunity for themselves, but generally they will tend to feel quite sad, yeah, and they'll see it as a negative, because it's may well be to do with the performance of an organization, whereas office moves can be really divisive. Yes, by nature, they're gonna basically affect some people better and some people worse. And people build into silos based on how they're feeling about it and where they are, which I just think is astonishing. I think it's a great example, because the other things people will think of so people will think of restructuring as a catalyst to start this process. But quite often, people will just think, office move. That's fine, but really it affects people. You know, all these things affect people. The best part of the office move situation was a very brilliant lady, and she is brilliant, so very excellent program manager was put in charge. And I have never seen such a meticulously planned office move from a logistical point of view. Okay. Yes, yeah. I mean, you could not want for anything. Boxes were turning up as you'd always them, in the size, in the shape, pre put together with labels on them for what was going in. I mean, it was astonishing. The tours of the venue were per everything was perfect. And there was just a complete absence of understanding about people. Yeah, we were leaving a. Really, really

traditional place that had, at its very historical roots, the organization's heart and soul, yeah? And it was extraordinary how people didn't understand that we don't want to get to a new building. It's beautiful, and it won't be sweaty anymore, and you won't have to like, be freezing in winter, yeah. But we like where we are, not our home.

So that one, and I think also, I think the other one, that I think it's really interesting, that people don't think about is changing boss. Yeah, it's really interesting. I've seen quite a lot about getting a new boss and working with a new boss when you're in existing role. I don't see a lot about losing bosses. Yeah, not like as in, you lose them, but like as in, they go where they go.

I think I massively underestimated it, from a personal point of view, how I grieved for our relationship and I had this new relationship, and I was like, Well, this is all right, yeah, but I want that one too. Yeah, where's my boss? And yeah, I found, I suspect that has something to do with the fact that pretty much every single boss I've ever had, I've kept as a friend because I've not really wanted it well is I don't go basically,

so maybe I'm just not through the change curve. Yeah, that's not a bad thing. But for me, I think the really powerful thing for both people going through this and people helping people go through this, is to recognize that when we talk about change, any change that someone feels is big enough to trigger this cycle should be accepted and recognized. And you know, you as a manager, don't get to decide when people when a change is big enough for someone to have this experience. Yeah, because it's not your choice. It's about understanding where someone is on something. And I think all all of those changing your job, your boss, your location, your systems, or the organization itself changing, I think

trigger slightly. They're the same curve, but they trigger different numbers of people and different groups of people. So for example, when you change the system, there's a bunch of people have probably been calling out for it, who are bloody, yeah, dancing in the corridors of your building. And then there's probably someone quite quiet hiding in the corner going, what does this mean for me? I've always put in that information now there's a system to do it, or what you're automating the whole process. What does this mean?

And so for me, those it's I just think it's really important to understand all of those different types of scenarios, because I'm sure it's more. I absolutely sure there's more. But those are the ones that just gives a range for people to refer Yeah. I think it's also interesting that things like Office moves and it processes are nearly always managed by very logistical it's a technical technical people and for

HR staff, particularly and leaders, please, please, please, understand it's not just a logistical process. Yeah, I think we're getting ready to move on to some thoughts from a keyboard, but I just wanted to ask your thoughts about the change curve in relation to getting a new job or a promotion. So we talked earlier about how you know this sort of change curve can be triggered by positive as well as potentially more negative changes and more challenging. So have you got any thoughts on how you know or why you go through a change curve in relation to something so ostensibly positive as getting a promotion? So I think you know, we were talking about this earlier, and I think positive experiences. The actual classic I will give you is when I was in an organization that got a new CEO, and it was a CEO who's well known to the organization, was coming back to the organization, and everyone was really, really excited. And I remember sitting there going, you understand he's not going to come back the same person. He's been gone for 10 years. He will come back and he'll want to do things like, no, it's gonna be amazing. We'll be parties in the street. And for me,

that's quite similar to getting your job something really positive happens. Yeah, and do you have the shock? Yes, because you didn't expect it. And everyone it's just, it's a different kind of shock, right? So you get that initial gossiping, and that initial like, oh. And there's a heat to it. And then there's this kind of high plateau, rather than a low plateau. So rather than denial, you get this, this kind of, as I say, he refers to it as honeymoon period, which I love. You're like, Oh, amazing, yeah. And then

there's a steep down curve much steeper actually, is the argument than when you've already sort of had your bad news, where you go through what they refer to as uncertainty, losing confidence and confusion, yeah. And I think losing confidence is really key. When you get new job, you're really excited, right? And you're like, they believe in me and I can do this. And then you get in, and there is this period where you go, I can't do this for my life. Why did I ever do it? Why would they accept me? Oh, there's a guy who's already in the team. Why hasn't he got the job? He's way smarter than me. Yeah, and all of that and confusion about what you do and not knowing where you go. And then it's at that point that the two that the positive and negative converge into a crisis point. And the idea is that there is this turning point where.

Is this internal crisis, and it's this is the point at which you accept and begin to acknowledge the change in its truest form and begin to turn towards rebuild. Yeah. Now the challenge is with new new people with new jobs, if they do not understand this curve exists, and particularly with new jobs or a or a big promotion or a restructure that really benefits you. If you do not recognize the cursor sips, you will not recognize where you are, yeah? And if you don't recognize where you are, you will bottle it, or you will leave, or you will fail, yeah, with it, or you will genuinely start believing this ridiculous narrative in your head that you can't do it, yeah?

And so one of the really important things is to recognize that point at where you're like, hang on. I really wanted this. And the way I would describe it, my mum has been saying to me since I was very young, be careful what you wish for. Yeah, I've had that phrase as well, and it sticks with me. And I use it. I used to be quite scared of it, because I'd be like, Oh, she was right. Be careful what I wish for. And now I've got it, and I don't know what to do. And now I use it like a mantra or a badge of honor, because I'm like, right? I wished for this. I wasn't careful. I've got it. What am I going to do? Yeah, how do I make it? How do I make it better? How do I get from where I am? I'm stuck with it because I went and I have a real thing. I think it plays really well to my ego, which is this concept. And I think it works really well when you're coaching people, particularly who've gone after promotion. Particularly who've gone after promotion, yeah, where you get to a place and you go, hang on a minute, you went after this, yeah? So you cannot opt out unless it's like, bad for you, yeah, if it's just that you think you're no good. No, you went for this. Yeah, there was a version of you that thought you were, I love that. There was a version of you that saw this future, but not this future where you've got crisis point. So let's get you to the future you want to be at. And I think that's a really good way of doing it. And I think that, again, the words that you use around grief are really similar, letting go, yeah, so letting go of what you thought it was going to be like, and actually accepting what it can be like, accepting so this concept of accepting what the real situation is, it's like when you get a new job, you think, then, brilliantly, find it. We've got half a budget, yeah? You never knew what the budget was in the first place. You pitch for something, yeah. And you get there, and then it's this testing, and then you build this new confidence, yeah. And you have a confidence in your transfer. And it's the fact that, you know, it's the butterfly, it's where you merge out and you go right? There has to be a Christmas bit. There has to be a bit where you're in is Christmas.

There has to be that bit where you go in and you're like, Oh, what am I going to do? What? What is my future going to look like versus what? What is the idealized future that I've created? Yeah, do you know, like, system, you, or theory, you, or something?

No. So there's like a new sort of approach to change, Otto, somebody rather out of MIT. Now, from one of the German universities, I forget surnames system U or theory U,

and some of the words you use there reminded me of it. And it's another sort of model of change, but it's very similar to this, and you need to let go. Theory, you present change, improved behavior. Auto Sharma. Auto Sharma from the U lab, yeah, yeah. You love stuff, yeah. So some of your words there really reminded me of it. So he, within this model, talks about letting go, to let come, and that whole journey of change, meaning being, you know, encapsulated by a need to let go of something before you can go through that transition period, to let something come in terms of a near future. So, you know, his linguistics copy a lot of a negative curve of the chain. So I've got it up in front of me. And his linguistics, it is literally you Yeah. And he talks about praise. He's written a book called presents, presents, yeah. And his curve, if you imagine the you moving from left to right on the you down and up, downloading past patterns, suspending, seeing, redirecting, sensing, letting go, presencing, so connecting to the source of the problem, who is myself, what is my work? And then letting come crystallizing. So being really clear in your vision and intention, enacting, prototyping, embodying and performing.

So I'm from what I'm taking from it. It is this ability to recognize what was gone before and see the flaws in it, yeah, and be willing to let it go, and willing to let it go, come back to yourself, looking to the future, understanding and crystallizing and having really clear what you want, yeah, and then starting to test and move through it. And I have, I don't know who this guy is, I'm gonna Google it, but I'm googling it now. I'm gonna read more of it, because my bet is that there's a lot of language in here that is based off top, yeah, because particularly the stuff around testing and embodying and prototyping is really similar, yeah. So I'd love to do an episode on theory. You at some point, Emily, you laps and stuff, but we'll do that another time. I just had a crossed everybody by her, yeah, no, it does, absolutely does. And,

oh, it can be traced back to Buddhism, terrorism and service. Can we do a spiritual, religious Well, you know what? And over management model. My final thoughts gonna be from terrorism. So welcome.

Oh, okay, so should we jump on to a few quick stories from a keyboard? Anything you want to touch on, absolutely should you want me to stop? Yeah, okay, so

the one I want to particularly talk about is I was working in a team, and it was one of the most high performing teams in an organization that was performing. Okay, yeah, as the organization had no problems, but it wasn't brilliant. We got a new got a fancy new building, yeah, and this high performing team had built some really high performing, performing behaviors and cultures within their little office. It used to be a very compartmentalized building. It was old. It's pretty great, siloed in and they were siloed, because what they'd done is they blocked them. They perceived they'd block themselves up against mediocrity. The organization was running, okay, but they wanted to be amazing, right? And they did physically. They made the space different. So there were posters up identity, yeah? They had, they had incredibly tight emotional relationships. They were very close together, yeah? But they also believed in making everyone friends, so they used to have signs on the doors to ask people to pop in to get chocolate, and they wanted to connect the organization moved to an open plan, beautiful building. And as an organization, the organization benefited hugely. There was huge cultural change that was indicated by the change of space. Lots of processes by HR were put in which were much better, and as a whole, the organization thrived, yeah, but in doing so, this high performing team lost their identity, because everything about who they were different was being knocked out by this organization, and that's the right thing to happen. I want to be really clear. I don't think anyone in the team thought it was the wrong thing, but they grieved for it. We grieved for it. We watched it, and we watched our our own personal team identity, we do construct, and we had to figure out who we were in this new setup. And there was a period of denial where everyone just kind of behaved the way they had in an in an old individual office. And we were like, we can't do this. Yeah. We have to be different. The organization is different now. And actually, we have to not hold ourselves up as the great, this great high perform team, and we have to ask them not to as well, yeah, because we want to be different if we're going to be good at being this wider team. Yeah, we have to be a team player, yeah, in a different way. And

it was, it was, it was an extraordinary period of time, because none of us saw it coming. Yeah, you know, we had some really smart, admittedly not career extensively experienced, but really smart people in the team, and we had talked so much about the change, yeah, and we hadn't spotted this and it just happened over

habits, behaviors, everything that made us who we are changed, yeah, and we were so we were not six. Performance absolutely crashed, yeah? Because no one knew what to do. No one knew where to have meetings, because we had such a different culture to everyone else. We used to have games in our in our operations meetings, because quite boring at times, but we had to get through them. So we used to have games and throw suites around, and suddenly we had these glass walled meeting rooms. We were like, we can't, yeah, CEO can see we can't be throwing sweets around. Yeah, that's not who we and it was fascinating. That's interesting, and it's a great example of things to look out for when you're thinking about So, yeah, that's, I guess that's my point. My the reason for the story is just, you know what you will get hit for six about what can trigger the change curve.

Spot it. That's the thing. Look for it. Look for something's changed. You can never predict. You never always predict where it's going to come but look for it, because as soon as you find it, you can figure out how to help people through it. Yeah, no, that's a good one. And my sort of story is just a sort of a moment in time that really stuck in my mind, and it's

from a sort of announcement and restructuring as well. And over the course of my work, I've done a fair bit of work, sort of planning and delivering restructures. And the language we use is, in the organizations I've worked in, you've gotten an announcement. So you announce that a change is coming, and then you'll go through a restructuring process, and then you'll have an outcome three months later, or whatever it is, depending on the thing, on the length of a process and the scale of change.

And for me, the first time I worked on one of these projects, and you're off in your closed up project room, you do all your stuff, you get used to it, and then the announcement comes. And I just remember being in an office when the announcement came out of changes and restructures coming, and just looking at the total disruption across the whole floor. And this was a floor of maybe 200 people that I was in, sitting in at the time, and everyone kind of gets up and leaves their desk, and everybody's off leaning over other people's desks, having conversations. All the work sort of stops. And you can just see this massive effort amongst everybody here to come to terms with the start of this shock. And for me, that sort of energy spent getting used to that announcement was such a powerful thing of or a powerful image in trying to capture the scale of disruption that these things bring. Oh, that's amazing. So you always talk about return of investment, yeah, my biggest frustration is that organizations don't accurately capture.

Calculate the cost of transition. They calculate it based on desk moves and people lost, and they don't calculate it based on it that, yeah, time lost and morale and people just going through the motions while they figure it out. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. Okay, so final thoughts, top tips, any final thoughts? Yeah, one for me, it's, a two parter. Respect and accept so respect how people feel, yeah, and accept that you can't control, either the speed they go through the curve, or that you cannot control and that you cannot control their feelings.

Be direct, be open, be compassionate. People. Remember that that love everything else that's good there. You know, people's reality is their reality. It's no good thinking about it differently. It's up to them, right? Don't be annoyed to them. Just that's, that's not, actually, that's not top tip. That's just frustration. Yeah, annoyed with people because they're going through it slowly. That's ridiculous, yeah? And yeah, I've seen it millions of times. It happens because people get leaders getting patient. They're like everyone else has been through it. Well, this person matters as much, actually, yeah, deal with it. Yeah. Okay. And, you know, I said earlier, when you were talking about theory, you that my sort of final thought was going to be kind of aligned to that. And this was actually something I listened to ages ago on radio, a program about Taoism. And there was a little example in there that stuck in my mind about this. And I guess the you know, the message of this is that being quick and accepting of change is helpful for you. And all this stuff about the change curve, a reason we're speaking about it is it's around helping people through the turmoil and disruption of change in a way that's good for them. And the analogy of a story that comes somewhere from Taoism is about stones in the river. And it's it stuck with me well, and it says there are two types of stone that exist in a river. There's the type of stone that's slightly embedded into the bottom of a river and static, and the river flows past it, and all those little bits of the river flowing past whereabout to stone down. So the stone that's trying to hold the river back is the one that gets worn small. And there's another type of stone, which is the type of stone that isn't anchored in the bottom of a river, but moves with the eddies and swirls of a river. And that stone transitions to new and different places, and it doesn't always know where it's going, but it remains. It's more of its integrity over that journey, so it doesn't get worn down by the river. And for me, there's something really powerful about that, around the fact that fighting against change can be really emotional full, you know. I mean, it can take a real drain on your time. So for me, there's something about trying to get through the change curve fast, because it's better for your own sort of emotional integrity. And I guess your well being to some extent. And I've seen some examples of people who accept change quickly, and I've seen examples of people who fight against change, and in nearly every example, the people that accept change quickly and move on have, in my view, better well being and better future outcomes for themselves. So I guess that's a bit of a sort of preachy final thought. I am fascinated to we talked to in a previous podcast about personality types, yeah. And I am always quite interested in the concept of how people who are particularly open and agreeable