several years ago i was on a flight and this gentleman sits down next to me and and strikes up the typical airplane small talk so he says what do you do and i said i study and teach leadership and without pause and dead serious he goes okay so like trust falls and stuff and i'm like what because the part of me that had just spent about seven years in grad school wanted to swear to this man mostly to myself that i didn't just spent that much of my life learning how to do trust falls but
the other part of me knew that this was a four hour flight and i'm in a window seat i have no idea how long i'm going to be committed to this conversation so i just said yes basically trust fault as you can imagine leadership development isn't exactly about doing trust falls but it is about understanding what it takes to walk with people into the unknown and try to build a better world so today i want to talk to you about one idea that's at the heart of the work that i do and that's leading through
change now what if i asked you what changes have you experienced in the last two years it's an impossible question wear a mask don't wear a mask work from home come back to work open the schools close the schools make banana bread make sourdough i mean it hasn't stopped it's all we've been doing and we are tired psychologists call this change fatigue it's where a lot of change is happening all at once and so we get burned out and apathetic and frustrated but change is always going to be a constant in our lives and in
fact it's necessary for our progress in society and necessary for our evolution as human beings so imagine the changes you've experienced in the last couple of years and i'd like for you to raise your hand if you think that the leaders you saw did a fantastic job leading change okay so uh maybe two of you this is good this is job security for me um but this is the reality good leadership is the exception it's not the norm but good leadership makes all the difference in how engaged and committed and hopeful we are as we
walk into the future now in my work i often talk to leaders and i say what's the most difficult part about leading change and always they tell me it's the people because people resist change and they tell me about their attempts to start a new business or launch a new project or maybe new policies new innovations and they'll they'll say it's so frustrating because people won't jump on board or they drag their feet or maybe just flat out oppose their efforts or they'll say you know it's confusing because i talk to people and they say
they're committed they say they're with me but then come to find out they've resorted back to their old habits and old behaviors and nothing changes and then as leaders get more frustrated with the resistance that they're experiencing they come to meet force with force it's a very popular leadership technique that i call because i said so it's where leaders say do it because i said so parents you might also know this one but as you can guess this doesn't work at least not in the long term you might get compliance but you'll rarely ever get
true commitment and at this point the leader has exhausted their ability to inspire people's hearts and minds and influence them in that way and so now they're relying on the authority of their position to make people change and it's a relational dynamic that leaders and their people find themselves in time and time again why we make one crucial mistake right from the start we don't get curious about the true cause of resistance what is underneath change that people actually resist i came across an answer to this question in one of my very first leadership books
that i read a book by ron heifetz and marty linsky and they said that people don't resist change they resist loss this completely altered the way that i thought about change it's not the change that we resist itself it's what we stand to lose if the change actually happens and leaders spend so much of our time thinking about what we want people to do that we forget about what we're asking people to give up now there's some classic research by daniel kahneman and amos tversky that found that the pain of losing something is twice as
powerful than the pleasure of gaining something else so even if the future is looking pretty good the fear of loss causes us to keep this white knuckle grip on the status quo now loss can encompass many things across the course of our life people places things future plans but there are several core types of loss that are particularly painful in social environments like ones where leadership is happening and i want to explore five of those with you today so first safety the most basic will this change jeopardize my sense of safety on a neurobiological level
we all need to feel safe physically and psychologically and we get these things we get this predictability in our life from things like stable jobs and reliable finances and healthy relationships or maybe you've got some rituals and routines that you've set up for yourself and the more predictability equals the more safety so when something comes along that makes your life all of a sudden unpredictable it equals danger and so we push back we grasp for certainty because we're looking for safety two freedom now just as we want to feel safe and secure and grounded we
also need to feel free fundamentally we want to say in how our life unfolds how we get from a to b and the actions we take now think about this dilemma that so much of our our workforce is facing right now 60 million people could do their jobs completely from home but gallup just found that 90 percent would prefer a partial or remote work option so if employers came back tomorrow and said we need everybody in the office button seats eight to five monday through friday expect resistance because this decision constrains the autonomy that people
have come to value three status well this change cost me my sense of status among my people social hierarchies govern our relationships as human beings whether they're formal hierarchies or not and the higher the status the more respect the more significance the more power and and influence you have and once you have it it's hard to let it go this reminds me of an organization i worked with and they were trying to implement this new technology that that really changed the way they work together and their their people had to learn a lot of new
things and after several months it wasn't very successful it wasn't sticking so i started to ask some questions and i met linda and linda told me listen i have been great at my job for 20 years for 20 years people come to me when they have questions and now all of a sudden they're trying to get me to learn all these new things and i'm not sure that i can or that i even want to and i feel like people don't respect what i have to offer anymore and i get it i get it because
i imagine if we felt like linda if we were in a position where we had spent two decades building a reputation and all the sudden that was going away with some change in our environment we'd probably push back too four belonging just as much as we want to stand out we also want to belong one of my clients sarah she had just gotten a promotion and she told me it was bittersweet and i'm like i don't understand because promotions are good and she said you know i've been at this job for for years and for
years i've been peers with these people they've been my friends they've come to my wedding and now all of a sudden i'm their boss and it's like our our relationship changed overnight it feels distant it feels strained and i get it this promotion gave her a sense of significance and status but it also she worried that it cost her belonging in a group that she she really come to know and love and for me sarah's story also reminds us of this paradox of change that we can experience the same event and feel both joy and
sadness joy for what we're gaining but sadness for what we have to give up and finally five fairness if you have a sibling you know about fairness one year for christmas my dad just got my sister and i the same exact gifts he just got two of everything completely identical down to the print of our shirts most peaceful christmas we've ever had but when you encounter fairness out in the world and decisions are made that put fairness at stake like for instance decisions actions that might challenge the right to marry who we love or decisions
that might exacerbate pay inequity expect resistance now as it turns out there's a common thread among all of these core needs the reason that they are they are so important to us and are so deeply painful to lose is because when we're asked to give them up we have to question core parts of our identity who we think we are who am i without this job or title or person what does it mean about me and my people if we keep getting the raw end of the deal will i recognize myself if i don't see
myself as competent or if people don't respect me we cling so tightly to our identities and so if change requires that we have to give up a part of ourselves it feels like the ground is falling out from underneath us and so how do we find our footing there was a study done by merlin venus a dutch professor and his colleagues and it looked at two groups of students and both groups of students were experiencing very disruptive changes in their business school and they got both got these messages about what the purpose for the change
was what they should expect what were some of the potential setbacks and what were all the future benefits but the second group the second group got one additional message and this message said that despite these changes the core aspects of our program teamwork professionalism fairness those will not change the students in that second group were four times more likely to accept the change and adjust their behavior so what does this mean it means that people are more open to change when they know what will stay the same so the vision of a bright new future
that's only one half of the equation we also need to know what will continue and we can bring that forward when we highlight the aspects of ourselves of our identity that will endure so leaders must not act only as champions of change but as anchors of stability and stewards of identity now you might be thinking listen i am just trying to get my people to use a new technology or get used to working with new team members and you're telling me that someone is having a full-blown existential crisis down the hall no it might not
be that dramatic but don't underestimate the power that the threat of these losses has on our heart and minds and on shaping our behaviors so when change is happening and loss is on the horizon how do we lead ourselves and others through it well first we have to consider the wisdom in resistance resistance can teach us if we let it it can teach us what's important to ourselves and to others and it can also teach us where we might have missed the mark where perhaps our plans for change have caused harm and so we need
to go back and rethink our approach but sometimes change is inevitable or it's necessary and that means that loss is the price we pay for it and also sometimes a necessary one so we have to name the losses that others are facing and that we're facing ignoring or dismissing these losses either others or our own only breeds resentment and anger but acknowledging these losses is an exercise in telling the truth it's an exercise and giving permission to grieve what's gone it's an exercise in saying i see you and it puts us on the path toward
acceptance and then shine a light on what stays the same leading change is a conversation about reimagining our future yes but it's also a conversation about remembering ourselves at the same time by highlighting the parts of our identity that will endure we give ourselves this anchor of stability as we navigate the unknown and then finally we can turn towards possibility because when we know who we are and feel grounded in who we are then we're free to dream about who we can become so i'll leave you with this story about a time of change that
i experienced in my life and and some of the most simple yet extraordinary moments of leadership as well years ago i applied for this job in the leadership studies department and this was the job to me it was the dream job and it it was the job that many of my mentors had had before me i would be in the classroom with students doing what i loved and so it was way more than a paycheck it was a step toward who i wanted to become and it also so happened that my mentor at the time
was hiring for the job so i was thinking i i got a pretty good shot so after about a week i hadn't heard from her and so i emailed her and and check in and she just responds back let's go for a walk i'm like you might as well have just texted me we need to talk or something equally as brutal right so i go and it was a beautiful day outside and we sit on this table and i just kind of knew i said i didn't get it did i and she just calmly shook
her head and she said no and i could just feel the resistance in my body not wanting to accept the truth of this outcome because in an instant the picture i had of my future for the next three years just vanished but what she said next made all the difference in how i was able to meet this moment she said i know this role was really important to you because it meant getting to do work that you love and because some important people to you held this role before but you can still do what you
love anywhere else out in the world and just her acknowledging what that meant for me what that loss meant for me it allowed me to to really face it in myself right and to to face that this was the reality and i could feel the the tightness in my body start to loosen a little bit and then she said something i'll never forget she said it's up to you how you want to take this but i hope you take this in a way i think your spirit can and i just let that sink in for
a moment i hope you take this in a way i think your spirit can and for me it was like she was holding up a mirror to me reminding me that i was resilient and determined and capable and i love this work and when i was able to come back home to that truth within myself then i was able to feel grounded enough to accept the reality and then also consider the possibilities for my future we've all experienced so much change and loss in the last couple of years and it's going to be the same
as we walk forward into our lives so my hope is that the next time that change happens we take the opportunity to practice leadership whether that leadership is in your team or your community or your family that we listen for the wisdom and resistance that we meet the losses with empathy and anchor in the parts of ourselves that are steady and unwavering and let the rest go and then it might be possible to write a new story of the future together thank you
