Change – How To Survive Tip 4

What is your attitude to change? Can you change your attitude to change….?

Before you can do the latter you need to be clear about what you think. Ponder these questions:

Change Questions

• How do you feel about change?

• Do you regularly initiate new things, have new thoughts on old subjects?

• What’s your instinctive reaction when you hear something is changing?

• How do you feel when you visit an old haunt where all has changed?

• How do you feel if the office furniture gets moved?

• What things in your life do you believe to be sacrosanct i.e. must never be tampered with?

• What things can you let go off easily?

• What changes can you see on your horizon over next 6 months?

• How does thinking about future changes that make you feel?

Now write a paragraph to yourself describing how you feel about change- it’s just for your eyes! Did anything surprise you?What changes (if any) would you like to make in your response to change?

This is part of a series on managing change. If you want to be certain of getting every post you can sign up for them simply by putting your email address in box at top of this page. And of course you can unsubscribe at any time.

Change – How to Survive Tip 2

The first casualty of change is truth.

If you are in an organisation undergoing major change you will know that communication is vital. All organisations know this and every single book on managing change tells managers to communicate, communicate and communicate!

And in my experience, all organisations start off with good intentions but become lapsed communicators somewhere along the way.

The reasons are many. Maybe the person in charge of communications suddenly finds their own job at risk and goes to ground. Maybe the project is floundering and no one wants to say so openly. But more often it’s because for long periods of time there is no real change. And organisations make the huge mistake of saying nothing.

And we know what happens to a vacuum? Someone helpfully fills it.

Managing Change Tip

Always try to distinguish between you know what as fact, actual fact from a reliable source, and what is conjecture, rumour, speculation and gossip. If you hear something about the process try and check it out. Try not to get drawn into discussions of how awful everything will be because actually, that makes you feel awful! It’s fine to let off steam now and again but endless discussion of how bad it all is will really bring you down and limit your ability to cope.

Details of my change seminars can be found here.

Change – How to Survive Tip 1

Change is most definitely in the air at the moment. But actually there is rarely a time when change is not with us – thankfully, or we’d still be scratching our heads wondering if a wheel might be a good idea or not!

I work in a lot of organisations who are undergoing change and the initial response is nearly always the same. Employees feel threatened and anxious, sickness levels go up, productivity suffers. And the toll on individuals can be enormous.

That’s the downside. But don’t forget change can also be hugely positive! It’s hard to remember that when change is being imposed but you will probably have had as many positive experiences of change in your life as negative ones. It’s just that we remember the negative ones so much more clearly!

If you are experiencing a lot of uncertainty in your personal life, a change at work over which you have no control can be the final straw. The Holmes and Rahe stress scale is still a useful guide to thinking about the impact more change might have on you.

Managing Change Tip

My first tip is to take a look at it, see how you rate and then take steps to look after yourself. It might be that you join up with a friend to help and support each other, or make sure you are eating healthily and look after yourself physically. Or find out what is on offer in your organisation to help you – mentoring, counselling, even subsidised gym membership!

Resolve now not to be a victim of the changes but take some control where you can.

This is the first in a series on managing change. If you want to be certain of getting every post you can sign up for them simply by putting your email address in box at top of this page. And you can unsubscribe at any time.

Coping With Change

‘If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude’. Maya Angelou.

Most of us, when faced with a change outside of our control, insitinctively react by wanting to hold onto things just as they are (even if they aren’t that fabulous – better the devil you know….!).

A few of us will say we’re good at coping with change, but many people I work with tell me how much they hate change, and wish ‘they‘ would just leave things alone for a while.

Lots of us think we’re not good at coping with change but in fact, assuming you are adult, you will already have coped with lots of change in your life and have masses of experience to draw upon. Some of those changes you will have managed better than others and this exercise will help you to realise what some of your coping strategies have been in the past.

A Change Exercise

Take a sheet of A4 paper and turn it sideways (landscape if on your computer). Decide what scale you are going to use. For example, if you are in your early twenties you might have a timeline divided up into two year gaps, e.g. 1-2, 2-4, 4-6, etc but you’ll probably start from when your memories begin, say 5! If you are older, you may use a 5 year span 5-10, 10-15, 15-20. Choose one that’s appropriate. Draw columns down the page for each span of time.

Once you’ve marked off your sheet, put into each of the time frames all the changes you experienced during that period. For example, at 5 you started school (how did THAT feel?), and will have had different schools at different times. You may have moved home, you started working, you maybe left home, siblings may have arrived, parents may have divorced, you went to college, decimalisation was introduced, you had to wear a seat belt, smoking was banned in all public places and so on. This is a great exercise to do in a group as you will spark each other off as you remember more and more changes that you have experienced, some funny, some serious, some sad, some really good.

A Change Survivor

The point of the exercise is to illustrate that you have survived all those changes and not only survived, but also accrued some valuable life skills along the way. Those skills stood you in good stead once and will do so again, if you can just access them in your mind and remove some of the inevitable fear that accompanies change. One of the most helpful things you can do to help cope with change is to stop telling yourself it’s bad and that you’re no good at it!

Coping with Change Article

I have written a much longer article on change which also looks at some of the theory associated with experiencing change. It’s available with many others free of charge on my web site. You can read it by clicking here.

Share Your Tips

If you have your own particular ways of coping with change in your life I’d love to hear them, simply comment on the blog; it’s easy! I look forward to hearing from you!