Resilience and Change
Article by Kevin Rowe
There was a time when people did things 'for a change' because life was made up of status quo. Perhaps the 60s (for those who were there!) broke that paradigm and now we are well aware of how change has become the norm, not the exception. It's in all aspects of our life, business and personal, and even our leisure activities are affected by change with a never ending plethora of new technology to entertain and challenge us.
Phrases like 'change is here to stay' or 'change is inevitable and increasingly constant' are catch cries of our modern society. And yet, many of those affected by change are saying 'we haven't coped with the last change and now they want more' or 'I'm worn out by all the change that's going on around here; I'm change fatigued'. Our society is experiencing more change at an accelerating pace and yet our natural preference is for predictability, clarity and a continuance of the familiar.
The tension between these two views of predictability versus uncertainty is demonstrated in many different ways. The behaviours we see in the workplace include:
- Going through the motions but no real commitment
- Conflict and tension
- Work based stress
- Patterns of absence - long and short term
- Compensation claims
- Demand on Employee Assistance Programs
- Learned helplessness: a disempowered workforce
- Workplace cynicism
Organisations experiencing these challenges become less agile and less able to rise to the opportunities offered by change. Valuable resources both in time and money are invested in the resolution of these barriers to agility and responsiveness. In the end, resistance to change represents a loss of productivity which is reflected in the bottom line.
In contrast to the people who are challenged by the pace of change are those who are able to exploit the opportunities for growth and development offered during these periods of uncertainty. We refer to these people as being resilient. We intuitively understand the hallmarks of resilient people, they:
- Are energetic
- Seek to learn
- Want to solve problems
- Seek to explore
- Take risks
- Work together
- Feel in control
- Are curious
These people are able to realise the new reality much quicker, they come through change quicker and reach new levels of productivity faster.
Why is it that some are able to flourish during periods of ambiguity and uncertainty and yet others become victims of the process? We assume some people are just naturally resilient, that their natural confidence and positive outlook gets them through. Where does that leave everyone else?
We understand leaders have an important role in the change process. Coaching and empowering people through change are functions of leadership. The role of the leader in times of change is to:
- Show the way, to explain the change journey.
- Communicate, (avoidance of delivering the message is not an option)
- Clarify where there is uncertainty
- Empower people and challenge 'learned helplessness'
Many leaders have some way to go in assisting their people through the process of change. In the absence of these skills it is encouraging to know that individuals can achieve resilience through their own efforts. Through a collection of learnable skills there is a way forward for those who are less intuitively skilled in coping with change. However, to develop these new skills of resilience we must first:
- Develop strategies for overcoming learned helplessness
- Take personal responsibility
- Identify the old habits that are impediments to successful change
By challenging our old habits we can all learn skills that will help us in these uncertain times. The key features of these new skills of resilience include:
- Effective networking
- Dealing with success and learning from mistakes
- Planning for success
- Managing the tension of competing demands for your time and energy
- Effective communication
Through sustained practice and commitment to the new behaviours, and support by our leaders and organisations we can all learn new habits of resilience.
Most organisations implicitly believe that in times of change people will rise to the occasion and if unable to cope, will simply manage themselves out of the way. Current evidence from Australia and around the world suggests this is not the case. Whilst some thrive and are able to exploit the opportunities offered by change many are ill-prepared and as a defensive response become barriers to timely and innovative change.
The problem is that the way organisations have 'burned' people in the past is no way to build our future. Change in the 80s and 90s was a money-centric process and people were the unfortunate but acceptable casualties. With fast falling birth rates in the new millennium we are heading for a time when there simply aren't enough workers to go around. That means organisations need to invest in resilience to protect productivity and meet business goals despite the increasing rate of change.
changedrivers has developed approaches to help your leaders and their people understand the process of change, enable them to plan for it, to communicate and to identify the opportunities for growth and development and to learn the new skills of resilience. This way you can turn the rhetoric into action.