by David Harder
What can you do right now? Appoint change agents at all levels of the organization. These are individuals not selected for their seniority or functional level. They are selected because they are the successful early adopters of change and engagement. They are naturals. They appreciate the benefits of a new way of working and living. In fact, they are energized by it. Each one can become a valuable coach and mentor to the people around them, perhaps the most valuable.
In smaller organizations, mentors are directly responsible for helping the new people develop, change, and engage with the organization. In larger organizations, we continue to develop mentors but also often provide more formalized learning and change opportunities. Mentors can be particularly powerful in helping colleagues break out of the trance as well as let go of cynicism, contempt, aimlessness, and resignation. They can also identify and help resolve skill deficits. As with a 12-step program, mentors are equally susceptible to falling behind, but with healthy, intact teams mentors will also be supported by their colleagues.
In other words, reverse mentoring is also encouraged. For example, when an intact team participates in one of our Inspired Work programs, most become more compassionate as they hear firsthand about the hopes, dreams, aspirations, and challenges of their colleagues. When we dissolve the silos and separation, we produce stronger relationships and the human heart emerges easily. It shows up when we have each other’s backs.
Creating cultures like this require courage, they require everyone’s participation and accountability, and they require the kind of heart-driven actions that awaken almost everyone. When we encounter those rare individuals who are beyond reaching, it may be time to set them free. Do not allow them to thwart the positive progress and momentum. Make your environment transparent. Foster skills and behaviors that don’t allow any reason to hide. Empower everyone who has already changed to help others catch up. Give them the life-infusing skills and expect the best from them.
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The Art of Change
Personal change can be one of the most frightening of human experiences. It often requires letting go of old beliefs, behaviors, outlooks, and sometimes even our friends and jobs. At the very least, engagement requires thorough self-examination of obsolete truths. Is it still true? Does this outlook still serve me?
For example, there are quite a few parents who believe their children should set aside their real ambitions by going to college and getting a “real job.” Is that belief system still true? Letting go of that belief system introduces some parents’ greatest fears about their children’s well-being and future. Successful personal change thrives when people help each other. In isolation, most workers cannot even articulate what actually frightens them about change.
Artfully changing our lives and organizations requires that we respond to fear in healthy and positive ways. For many, to fluidly find and listen to the truth, and to skillfully reinvent our lives, requires a reinvention in how we view and respond to fear. In our culture, fear is ridiculed and demonized, yet we still experience it. Self-help gurus promise that if we take their course, we will overcome fear, but it is still there. Behavioral scientists have identified the purpose of fear is to take action, and yet so many of us are conditioned to not take action when we are frightened. The conditioning that has led many Americans to use inaction when frightened has led to large swaths of our culture into creative thinking, which is only the first half of real creativity. Creative thinking isn’t creativity until we take action. Unfortunately, those of us who fear the risk action requires end up running from the very actions that will change our lives and our organizations.
In a culture fixated on security, we have reinforced the myth that there is something fundamentally inadequate about us when we feel fear. If that is the case, we construct our lives around avoiding fear, and as a result, the real and best opportunities don’t even reach our field of vision. All of this strange ideology disappears as we cross a street and a large truck roars around the corner. As it heads directly towards us, our biology takes over. An alarm goes off that pours powerful hormones and chemicals into our body. This system is perfectly designed for pushing us into action. Why does our culture need to make up so many strange stories and myths that contradict basic biology?
One of the most famous quotes of all time is Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” We sent more than 17 million Americans into World War II. I have yet to find any of those soldiers’ stories repeating the president’s missive. On the other hand, we find countless narratives in which those in the frontlines characterized the experience as the single most terrifying event in their lives. In some cases they did hide. In others they shot first. In all cases, they took action.
Perhaps a healthier alternative statement would be, “The only thing have we to fear is to forget courage.” True courage isn’t about walking into difficult situations as a robot devoid of feelings. As a famous male icon of that era, the brutish John Wayne, once said, “Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.”1
Cher has experienced lifelong crippling bouts of stage fright. She tells journalists that it is as bad today as it was in her 20s. Early on, she depended on Sonny Bono to get her on stage and keep her grounded. Today, she deals with it by hiring stage managers who, if needed, drag her to the stage door. Once on stage, that previously terrified woman, in an instant, becomes Cher.2
I mentioned previously how some groups that I worked with in the early days would get into debates about whether our discussion concerned a vision, a mission, or a purpose. This discourse would detour us from defining a new game that would put everyone into action and hence risk. So, I told them to use all three. Similarly, rather than debating whether we should overcome fear, include fear, or avoid fear, let’s move the organizational culture forward by making it okay to be frightened (or not), but always rewarding others for courage. Promote courage. Make courage a vital part of the organizational ethos.
Our dysfunctional responses to fear erode change and engagement. If someone is afraid to look customers in the eye, how can they connect? If a leader is afraid to look at the truth, how will employees trust they can live out their personal ambitions? If a CEO is afraid to stand for value, how can the company foster it? If we continually pine for a simpler past, how can we possibly learn how to build our future? What is it that frightens us about change?
This is what I have learned.
A few years after we began Inspired Work, a series of insights emerged from observing our participants. As they designed compelling change within their lives, our participants had to consistently work through a series of obstacles. Our participants come from every walk of life, but this quest to change brought up fear and discomfort in literally every participant. These challenges can impact many if not all of us.
From the time that we commit to change, we begin a journey that includes four distinct events. Each event has a tendency to be more frightening than the previous step. Embedded in a successful journey through each event is a series of life skills that are learnable. Consequently, many of our participants realize their ambitions by developing the skills. Building these skills within any workforce represents a relatively straightforward and simple exercise. The skills elevate our individual and organizational capacity to change to one of finesse and perhaps even artfulness.
Some of the skills we will examine have been dismissively called “soft skills.” Why? These are often the very skills that require a degree of courage to use and to learn. As we proceed, I propose we aptly name them “courage skills.” When we examine these skills carefully, we find the very tools that help us to connect with the world around us.
As addressed previously, meaningful change begins with a compelling and personalized vision. This is the fuel that drives people to move forward. One of the primary reasons surveys are greeted by the employees with cynicism is that questions are often skewed towards supporting the corporate vision without any inte
rest in hearing what employees want to accomplish.
One of the breakthroughs in this solution will be found in insisting on both strong organizational and individual visions. As robots become part of every workplace, we will not be looking for humans to continue exhibiting the robotic behavior we created during the Industrial Revolution. Getting there requires that we understand the mechanisms in which we commonly trip up and the skills that will help us sail through change. Once activated, the overall process of self-change is learnable and can be sold to all workers. But first, test the processes yourself. I don’t want you to sell something you haven’t embraced. Like learning to play the piano, it can begin with the awkward attempts to play scales and simple pieces of music. Stick with it, work with it, and become artful in changing life for the better.
Without the fuel of vision, there is no reason to go through the discomfort and work associated with personal change. In this chapter, we are going to examine the real reasons we are afraid of change and how to get through the events that cause those fears. To succeed with change, all that it takes is an open heart, a dose of courage, and the willingness to learn new skills.
Successful change is based on a journey that includes four events. Each event has a tendency to be more frightening than the previous step. We master each step through understanding, motivation, and skill building.
Let’s begin with the first step. Consider the possibility that all of us know, on some fundamental level, that when we commit to personal change, we step onto a road that will include a series of progressive challenges. We can easily keep off this road by using three magic words. For example, ask someone the question, “What do you want to do with your life?” Bets are pretty high someone will respond, “I don’t know.” These three words represent the end of the conversation, and unless we persist in answering the question, they are off the hook. In our culture, we seem to have a collective interest in protecting this “out.” When we use the words, people rarely, if ever, challenge the statement.
Step 1: Commit
“I don’t know.”
How do we get past this obstacle? Retire the words. “I don’t know” is no longer a good enough answer. Ask everyone to dig and never settle. Your organizational mentors will be asked to send an employee that offers this out to go back and answer the question. It is a fact that all of us have our own truth. Establish cultures where everyone’s truth is defined and told. Without this one transaction, you have an organization filled with “I don’t know” and this is one of the first seeds of disengagement.
We don’t need to build cultures that scare people into engagement. However, leadership needs to make it clear that we will not accept “I don’t know” as an answer about one’s mission, vision, and purpose. These three words protect “the trance.” Let’s build cultures where everyone is connected to the answer. If it is out of sync with the organization’s mission, vision, and purpose, take the initiative to connect them. Today’s leaders need to skillfully knit the two together.
Step 2: Declare Our Vision
“You’re crazy.”
Everything of value in our culture is a collaborative experience. If that is difficult to ponder, consider that all of us are here because two people collaborated. Let’s agree that our next step is to declare our vision. Who do we tell first? Usually, we begin by telling members of our tribe. The problem is, tribes have rigid rituals and expectations, and when we break those rituals, they generally respond with some form of “You’re crazy.” For example, let’s say that we go home to the spouse and declare, “I’m going to leave the six-figure job that I can do in a coma. In fact, I’m going to start a business that is altruistic in nature.” What will the spouse say? In an alternate scenario we call a meeting with our coworkers and tell everyone, “I know the budget has been slashed by 40% but you know what? Today, we are committing to a business revolution.” You guessed it, they are going to think and say, “You’re crazy.”
In the natural progression of articulating a vision and bringing it to life, we begin by telling someone, and usually that someone is a member of our tribe.
Welcome to the second step.
Many of us don’t really think about the power that tribes have on our lives. Whenever we belong to a tribe, we are making an agreement to play by the rules of that tribe. This is the essence of belonging. Tribes include families, employers, religions, political parties, social groups, and community groups. The power of belonging to a tribe cannot be underestimated. Author Seth Godin said, “It turns out that tribes, not money, not factories, that can change our world, that can change politics, that can align large numbers of people. Not because you force them to do something against their will. But because they wanted to connect.”3 Of course we want to connect! This dynamic also implies how important it is for employers to become the tribe of choice. The dark side of the goodness of tribes is they do have rigid rituals, expectations, and influence that can keep many of us fully stuck.
Los Angeles is a city of tribes with thousands of groups adopting distinct rituals, values, and expectations. I have three styles of suits, two types of sport coats, and two forms of casual wear, all so I can be respectful when I visit client sites. None of them appreciate my showing up in the wrong costume. I’ve been told, “Leave the tie in the car,” “Wear a jacket,” and “You look like one of us.”
The pressures of tribes on career choices are legendary. During a particularly large public program, we had about a dozen men come back from lunch laughing. They had defined the Jewish mother’s hierarchy of acceptable career choices. It was all based on how one mother reacted when the other shared what her son did for a living. There were three acceptable choices and each one provoked varying levels of enthusiasm. A minor rise of the eyebrows was CPA. Halfway up the forehead was attorney. To the hairline? Of course, it was doctor. A specialist provoked a natural facelift.
One of those sons went home and announced he was leaving his legal practice to become a florist. How do you think they responded? I am just kidding when I share that one aunt cracked an egg over her head.
Sadly, our tribe often reacts to a new mission, vision, and purpose with the default reactions of pushback. It isn’t a particularly conscious way to react as it is usually driven by fear. Of course, it is easy for us to react with righteousness and anger. Our loved ones are supposed to support us. Our colleagues are the ones who ought to understand. Our spouses should be happy and back our new ideas. But this is not how human beings process change. Human beings are hard-wired to think of something other than themselves for a maximum of 15 seconds. This means that when we make a declaration of change, the tribe wonders how it is going to impact them or their fears about us. My good friend Tom Drucker launched the Xerox Sales Institute in the early 1980s. Faced with global competition for the first time, Xerox hired a cadre of behavioral scientists to study the psychology of selling. This is where they identified the 15-second process, which turned pitch-selling on its head. People are not interested in our resumes. They are not interested in our declarations. People are focused on one thing and that is fulfilled expectations. Today’s better sales professionals don’t make pitches; they ask great questions. The best of our modern leaders are inquisitive and constantly finding the needs and expectations of their stakeholders. Tribes have a tendency to be more receptive when we make the declaration in ways that fit the tribe’s needs and expectations. We increase our probability of success by managing these tribal responses. Also, a new mission can often require the needs of an additional tribe or moving altogether.
Here are a few examples of speaking or not speaking to expectations:
(Self-Indulgent Version)
“You know what? I’m quitting the law firm on Monday and going to cash in my stock to start a business of my own. I’m buying that florist shop on the corner. You’re upset? Why can’t you be happy for me?”
(Tribe-Friendly Version)
“I have an announcement to make. For the last ten
years, I’ve been bringing all of this negative energy to our gatherings. You have become used to my unhappiness with practicing law. So, I’m pursuing work where I can have more freedom and get out of endless, mentally strenuous days. I’m buying that florist shop on the corner and my commitment is to show up to the family with a smile on my face and flowers in my hands.”
(Self-Indulgent Version)
“Profits have been sinking for a long time. So today, we launch a business revolution. All of you are going to bring one actionable innovation to me by the end of the month and we are going to pull out of our nosedive. Now, get back to work.”
(Tribe-Friendly Version)
“Many of you are uncomfortable with the cutbacks and the downturn in the market. I was sad to see so many people leave. But, you are here and you are here for a reason. I am asking that everyone works on one actionable innovation and have it ready by the end of the month. If we create a business revolution, all of us are going to have more to work with, we will have more security, and we will look back on this period as a turning point, one that we remember with pride. My commitment to you is this experience will help all of us grow.”
The problem that many of us have with change is that we don’t really think about the impact and the influence of tribes on our decisions and commitments, especially when it involves a change in the tribe’s beliefs. Sometimes, we hide the commitment so we don’t have to deal with the pushback. Often, a colleague is sitting right next to coworkers, withholding a breakthrough because he is concerned with the cynicism and contempt that would get showered on him for speaking up.
