Four Essential Skills for Being Good at Change

Whether you’re nine months into your new role or an experienced mentor, you’ve realized that change doesn’t stop. These four tactics from FranklinCovey’s research will help you lead change with “more confidence, less stress, and better results.”

1. Be aware of what change triggers in you--your emotional response. Recognize that a response in the moment is often the result of incomplete understanding of the change. By acknowledging the nature of your reaction and questioning it, you open up space to think through it more fully.  (Try FranklinCovey’s Change Worksheet)
2. Get curious. Curiosity is a super power!! When you tap into curiosity, you reduce stress, which then provides you full access to your prefrontal cortex--your powerhouse for analytical thinking and problem solving. Regardless of whether things aren’t going well, are going well, or seem calm, you can use curiosity to ask yourself What’s really happening here? How are my expectations impacting my reaction to this change? What new skills might this change require and does that make me anxious? What’s possible now? What can we be doing better? Some of these questions align more to when you’re struggling with change, and all of them can be adapted to fit any experience with change.
3. Step up on the balcony and then return to the dance floor, and back again. When you’re navigating change, you need to be able to hold both your vision and the path right in front of you simultaneously.
   • When you find yourself in the weeds, return to the balcony. Why is this change needed? What problem will it solve? How is this change leading toward our vision? Get back on the dance floor--determine your next step, and get moving:)!
   • When you find yourself struggling to make progress or obstacles have surfaced. Get down on the dance floor. What's happening day-to-day that’s impeding progress? What’s your next littlest thing to remove a barrier or get the music playing again?
4. Be fully committed to the change. Are you all in? Or, do you have lingering doubts, the energy of which is palpable. Your people will KNOW if you’re not 100%. If you feel your energy waning, or your confidence eroding, go back to your purpose. Why the change? What can you do to bolster your own energy around it? Maybe you’re not making progress, so you start to question it; or you’re running into a lot of resistance, so you question whether the change is even worth it. You might need to tap into that curiosity: Is a new approach called for? What’s our ultimate goal? This type of questioning can refuel your motivation for the change. 

When you don’t initiate the change, and you’ve done all you can to understand it but still can’t authentically support it, you may have to make a change yourself. It can happen that the change conflicts with one of your core values, and the lack of alignment is so great that you cannot reconcile it. 

As a leader, you may find yourself coaching employees who experience a disconnect to the extent it keeps them from moving forward; they find themselves no longer aligned to the vision, values, and mission of your district. 

Honing these skills and practices better equips you to navigate and lead change.

Read the full article: https://app.franklincovey.com/explore/managing-company-change/4-essential-tactics-for-being-good-at-change/ (subscription may be required)