Comfortable with Uncomfortable
Change is a constant, so for leaders, what’s the use of a basic change model? Because when your normal pace of adaptation is outstripped by a changing situation, you’re in a perilous place and a team looks to its leader for answers- and you won’t have nearly enough.
By simply highlighting what’s normal in a rapidly changing situation, however, you build:
- Resilience. Outlining the emotions felt during rapid change, you prepare a team to accept that stress is normal, likely to be temporal and to build coping mechanisms. Chunking a task builds less overwhelming near-term goals.
- Agility. Outlining some phases aligned to a change model helps a team anticipate what will likely happen next, what to expect, what to do in advance and builds tempo.
Not only does a change model show difficult times are likely to pass, but also something unexpected: By harnessing the natural creativity and innovation in the hardest phase of change, a leader can guide a team toward its future- which, by the way, probably won’t look like the one expected at the start.
