Discomfort of Change
Would you feel better if life was predictable, familiar and easy to control? For some it might feel calming to have a predicable life and for others it might feel suffocating.
Change is constant, heard that before? But change is also uncomfortable, how you see that discomfort is the key to embracing change.
I was asked to lead a ‘Communicating through change’ Communication training workshop to help a leadership team to prepare for an upcoming organisational change. I asked this room of leaders how positive they felt about change, and their comfort with change.
The response was mixed, some thrived on the energy and excitement of trying new ways of working and continually improving whereas others dreaded the disruption and saw change as a distraction from ‘business as usual’.
This seemed to send a ripple through the room.
I suspected that this was a subject that they had skirted around the edge of but never really taken the time to address. The senior leader of this group was excited by change and saw continual improvement as the way to evolve and survive in business, he was fuelled by change. But about 80% of his team felt disrupted by change and resisted it.
How do you feel about change? Excited? Anxious? Or something in-between?
Resisting change is natural
When something feels unfamiliar, our defences go up and we experience more fear around it, which causes us to become even more wary of it. This wariness keeps us from embracing the change. So we avoid it. By avoiding it of course the change is frozen, it is still there, it doesn’t go away but we are locked in patterns and situations that stop if from being able to evolve.
Make friends with discomfort.
Of course change will bring some level of discomfort but we can learn how to experience it and navigate our way through it and therefore change our relationship with it. Here are some tips on how:
Get clarity. Get engaged, learn more, pay attention and ask questions. By learning more about the change it becomes more familiar and known.
Connect with the change positively, what will it give you? Think about the other uncomfortable things you have experienced that resulted in a positive outcome.
Meet and move through discomfort. Name and own the emotions in the discomfort, maybe there is anger or frustration or anxiety. Calling out an emotion helps to ease its hold on you.
One of my favourite children’s books was ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’ by Michael Rosen. The story follows a family going for a walk.
We're going on a bear hunt.
We're going to catch a big one.
What a beautiful day!
We're not scared.
They come across a series of obstacles and for each one they say:
We can't go over it.
We can't go under it.
Oh no!
We've got to go through it!
Change! We’ve got to go through it.
If your team or organisation is navigating change communication will be essential.
