What leaders need to know about change | Taylor Harrell | TEDxSDSU

Several years ago I was on a flight and this gentleman sits next to me and makes typical airplane small talk and tells me

what

are you doing and I told him that I study and teach

leaders

hip and without pause and very serious, he says okay. , so like confidence drops and stuff and I'm like

what

, because the part of me that had just spent about seven years in grad school wanted to swear to this guy mostly to myself that I didn't spend much of my life learning how Trust falls, but the other part of me knew it was a four hour flight and I'm in a window seat.

I have no idea how long I'll be committed to this conversation, so I just said yes, I'm basically relying on guilt. You can imagine that

leaders

hip development is not exactly about doing trust falls, but about understanding what it takes to walk with people into the un

know

n and try to build a better world, so today I want to talk to you about an idea that is in the heart. of the work I do that is leading

change

now, what if I asked you what

change

s you've experienced in the last two years? It's an impossible question wear a mask don't wear a mask work from home go back to work open schools close schools make banana bread make sourdough I mean it hasn't stopped it's all we've been doing and we psychologists are tired They call this change fatigue.

It is where many changes are happening at the same time and that is why we burn out and become apathetic and frustrated, but change will always be a constant in our lives and, in fact, it is necessary for our progress in society. and necessary for our evolution as human beings, so imagine the changes you have experienced in recent years and I would like you to raise your hand if you think the leaders you saw did a fantastic job leading the change. Well, maybe two of you this is good, this is job security for me, but this is reality.

Good leadership is the exception, it is not. the norm, but good leadership makes a difference in how committed, committed and hopeful we are as we walk into the future now in my job I often talk to leaders and tell them what the hardest part of leading change is and they always tell me that it's the people because people resist change and they tell me about their attempts to start a new business or launch a new project or maybe new policies, new innovations and they will say it's very frustrating because people don't get on board with the project or they drag feet or maybe they're just flat out opposed to your efforts or they'll say, you

know

it's confusing because I talk to people and they say they're committed, they say they're with me but then they find out they've fallen back on their old habits and old behaviors and nothing changes. and then, as leaders become more frustrated with the resistance they are experiencing, they come to meet strength with strength.

It's a very popular leadership technique that I call because I said so, it's where leaders say, "do it." It's because I said it, parents, you may know this too, but as you can guess, this doesn't work, at least not in the long term, you may get compliance, but you will rarely get true commitment and at this point the leader becomes has exhausted. their ability to inspire the hearts and minds of people and influence them in that way, so now they rely on the authority of their position to make people change and it is a relational dynamic in which leaders and their people They meet again and again. we make a crucial mistake from the beginning we are not curious about the real cause of resistance what is underneath the change what people are really resisting I found an answer to this question in one of the first books on leadership that I read, a book by Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky said that people don't resist change, they resist loss.

This completely altered the way I thought about change. It's not the change we resist in and of itself, it's what we stand to lose if change actually happens and leaders spend. We spend so much time thinking about what we want people to do that we forget what we're asking them to give up. Now there is classic research by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky that found that the pain of losing something is twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining something else, so even if the future looks pretty good, the fear of losing makes us hold on. this control of the status quo now, loss can encompass many things throughout our lives, people put things into future plans, but there are several core types of loss that are particularly painful in social settings such as those where there is leadership and I want to explore five of them with you today, so first safety, the most basic, will this change jeopardize my sense of safety on a neurobiological level?

We

need

to feel safe physically and psychologically and we get these things: We get this predictability in our life from things like stable jobs and reliable finances and healthy relationships or maybe you have some rituals and routines that you've established for yourself and for others. More predictability equals more security, so when something comes along that makes your life suddenly unpredictable, it equals danger and that's why we recoil, we cling to certainty because we are seeking security and freedom now, just as we want to feel safe and secure. and with our feet on the ground, we also

need

to feel free, fundamentally, we mean how our life unfolds, how we get from A to B and the actions we take.

Now think about this dilemma that much of our workforce is facing right now, 60 million people. They could do their jobs completely from home, but Gallup just found that 90 percent would prefer a partial or remote work option, so if employers came back tomorrow and said we need everyone in the office seats from eight to five from Monday to Friday, we would expect resistance because this decision limits the autonomy that people have come to value three statuses, well, this change cost me my sense of status among my people, social hierarchies govern our relationships as human beings, whether formal hierarchies or not, and the higher the status, the more respect, the more importance it has.

You have more power and influence and once you have it it's hard to let it go. This reminds me of an organization I worked with and they were trying to implement this new technology that really changed the way they and their people work together. learn a lot of new things and after several months it wasn't very successful, it didn't stick, so I started asking some questions and I met linda and linda told me, listen, I've been great at my job for 20 years. For years people have come to me when they have questions and now all of a sudden they are trying to make me learn all this new stuff and I'm not sure I can or even want to do it and I feel like people no longer respect what I have to offer and I get it, I get it because I imagine that if we felt like Linda, if we were in a position where we had spent two decades building a reputation and all of a sudden that disappeared with some change in our environment we would probably go back four years too. that we want to highlight we also want to belong to one of my clients sarah she had just gotten a promotion and she told me it was bittersweet and I'm like no I don't understand it because promotions are good and she said you know I've been at this job for years and for years I have been partners with these people, they have been my friends, they have come to my wedding and now all of a sudden I am their boss and it's like our relationship changed overnight it feels distant it feels tense and I understand it This promotion gave her a sense of importance and status but she was also worried that she would have a hard time belonging to a group that she really came to know and love and for me Sarah's story also reminds us of this paradox of change in which we can experience the same event and feel both joy and sadness, joy for what we are gaining but sadness for what we have to give up and finally five justice if you have a brother you know about justice one year for Christmas my dad just welcomed my sister and me the exact same gifts he just received two of everything completely identical down to the print on our shirts the most peaceful Christmas we have ever had but when you encounter justice in the world and decisions are made that put justice at stake, such as For example, decisions, actions that could challenge the right to marry who we love or decisions that could exacerbate wage inequality, expect resistance now, as it turns out there is a common thread between all of these basic needs, the reason why they are so important for us and so deeply painful to lose them is because when we are asked to abandon them, we have to question fundamental parts of our identity, who we believe we are.

Who am I without this job, title or person? What does it mean for me and my people if we continue to get the raw end of the deal? Will I recognize myself if I don't look competent or if people don't respect me? For me, we hold on so tightly to our identities and so if change requires us to give up a part of ourselves, it feels like the ground is falling out from under us and so how do we find our balance? ? There was a study done by Merlin Venus. a Dutch professor and his colleagues looked at two groups of students and both groups of students were experiencing very disruptive changes in their business school and they both received these messages about what the purpose of the change was, what they should expect, what were some of the possible setbacks and what all the future benefits were, but the second group received an additional message and this message said that despite these changes, the core aspects of our program, teamwork, professionalism, equity, will not change for the students of that second cluster. four times more likely to accept change and adjust their behavior.

So what does this mean? It means that people are more open to change when they know what will stay the same. So the vision of a bright new future is only half of the equation we have. We also need to know what will continue and we can move forward when we highlight the aspects of our identity that will endure, so leaders must act not only as champions of change but as anchors of stability and stewards of identity. Listen, I'm just trying to get my people to use a new technology or get used to working with new team members and you're telling me that someone is having a full-blown existential crisis down the hall, no, it may not be that dramatic.

But don't underestimate the power that the threat of these losses has on our hearts and minds and in shaping our behaviors. When change occurs and loss is on the horizon, how do we guide ourselves and others through it? We must first consider the wisdom in resistance. Resistance can teach us if we allow it, it can teach us what is important to ourselves and to others and it can also teach us where we may have missed the mark, where perhaps our plans for change have caused damage and that is why we must go. Step back and rethink our approach, but sometimes change is inevitable or necessary and that means loss is the price we pay for it and sometimes it's necessary too, so we have to name the losses that others face and that We deal with ignoring or dismissing these losses, whether of others or our own, only breeds resentment and anger, but acknowledging these losses is an exercise in telling the truth, it is an exercise in giving permission to grieve what is gone, it is an exercise in saying I see you that sets us on the path to acceptance and then shedding light on what remains the same leading change is a conversation about reimagining our future, yes, but it is also a conversation about remembering ourselves while highlighting the parts of our identity that will endure if we give ourselves this anchor of stability. as we navigate the unknown and can finally turn towards possibility because when we know who we are and feel grounded in who we are, then we are free to dream of who we can become, so I leave you with this story about a moment of change that I experienced in my life and some of the simplest but extraordinary leadership moments also years ago I applied for this job in the leadership studies department and this was the job for me, it was the dream job and It was the job that many of my mentors had had before me: I would be in the classroom with students doing what I loved and so it was much more than a paycheck, it was a step towards what I wanted to be and it also happened that my mentor at the time was hiring for work so I was thinking I had a good opportunity so after about a week I hadn't heard from her so I emailed her and signed up and she just responds let's go for a walk.

I think you might as well have texted me, we need to talk or somethingjust as brutal, so I went and it was a beautiful day outside and we sat at this table and I just knew I said no. I understood and she just calmly shook her head and said no and I could feel the resistance in my body not wanting to accept the truth of this outcome because in an instant the picture I had of my future for the next three years. She just disappeared, but what she said next made the difference in how I was able to cope with this moment.

She said: I know this role was really important to you because it meant being able to do a job you love and because some people important to you had this role. role before, but you can still do what you love anywhere else in the world and just her recognizing what that meant to me, what that loss meant to me, allowed me to really face it in myself and face that this was the reality and I could feel the tension in my body starting to loosen a little and then she said something I'll never forget, she said it's up to you how you want to take this, but I hope you take it one way, I think. your spirit can and I let that sink in for a moment.

I hope you take this in a way that I think your spirit can and to me it was like she was holding a mirror up to me reminding me that I was resilient and determined and capable and that I love this job and when I was able to return home. to that truth within me then I was able to feel grounded enough to accept reality and then also consider the possibilities for my future. We have all experienced so much change and loss over the past few years and it is going to be the same as we walk forward in our lives, so my hope is that the next time that change occurs, we will take the opportunity to practice leadership, whether in your team, in your community or in your family, that we listen to wisdom and resistance, that we face losses. with empathy and anchor in the parts of ourselves that are firm and unbreakable and let go of the rest and then maybe it will be possible to write a new story of the future together, thank you