My team and I are struggling with significant changes taking place in the business. Help!

I lead a team of 20 people most of who are struggling with significant changes taking place in our business. The hard part is that I am struggling with the changes too and need some help.

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most responsive to change.” Charles Darwin.

Change is the one constant that will remain as we continue to move through our lives personally and professionally. Dealing with changing circumstances can at times be liberating and at other times debilitating… or something in between. Before looking at how to support your team members, I invite you to look at how the changes that are taking place are affecting you.

A place to start is to become conscious of how you perceive the current changes.

There is a very simple, but sometimes elusive truth. The way we look at things makes a difference. Here’s a familiar example you may have heard: blondes have more fun! Notice your tendency to take a stand as if this is either true or false, it actually doesn’t really matter. What matters is if you take on this belief or way of looking at life situations, things are coloured in a certain way for you. If you are blonde you probably expect to have more fun, if you are not a blonde you may be wishing you could be or are possibly coming up with an alternative perspective that lets you have fun. You may have a strong opinion about the comment, either in agreement or disagreement, or have an emotional response. You create this, and the resulting behaviours and outcomes are influenced by the perspective you take.

Think of some of the things that you make up.

What are you making up about the future of your role, your team/business or the changes ahead?

Exploring the perspective you are in about a situation is a simple yet powerful way to manage your emotional state, your outcomes and create opportunity.

If you are going to a meeting and you are dreading it you are in a perspective. If you are excited about an upcoming event, you are in a perspective. The circumstances will be the same no matter what perspective you are in and your way of looking at the situation will have enormous impact on how you think, feel and respond – thereby affecting the outcomes you get.

It’s powerful to explore the perspectives you hold. Draw a circle with eight sections to it (see diagram below). This exercise will help you explore the perspective you are currently in with regards to changes ahead and help you to identify what support and actions need to be taken.

Explore each perspective in the wheel and reflect where you are in relation to the changes that are taking place, settle on the place that reflects where you are currently, the perspective you hold. You may be in more than one place. If none of the sections reflect this for you, choose the ‘something else’ section and name it.

Once you have chosen the perspective that resonates with you reflect on the following questions from this perspective.

• What’s it like here for you?
• How do you feel here? What comes up for you?
• What’s hard about being here?
• What’s good about being here?
• What support do I need here? Who can I ask for help?
• What is available from this perspective? (What’s available may be positive or negative).
• What are you creating from this place, you are creating something, is it what you want to create?
• Is this a productive place for you to be in? Is it where you want to be?

Think about the behaviours that result from this perspective and the resulting outcomes from the behaviours. Use the model below to help you with this. Write down the perspective in the first box then add all the behaviours that you would expect to see, and then the outcomes of these behaviours. Next choose a desired perspective and work through the model, adding desired behaviours and desired outcomes.

The good news is that our behaviours are something that are within our control and something we can change if we choose to. Changing our behaviours will change our perspective and outcomes.

Having taken time to explore how you feel and the perspectives you hold, now create an action list of what you need to do to move forward. Awareness is the first step; however awareness without action is a waste of time.

Having explored where you are at I now invite you to shift your focus to your team.

1. What you expect your teams to go through in the coming months.
2. How would you expect people in your teams to behave?
3. What signs do you need to look out for that will indicate if team members are struggling? (Look at both verbal and non-verbal cues).
4. What do you think they will be going through emotionally?
5. What is the culture of your team now? How do you expect it to be affected by the change?

Indicators that team members are struggling could include:

• Team members becoming withdrawn, quiet and depressed
• Working from home more frequently
• Short fuse, agitated and irritable
• Passive aggressive behaviour
• Changes in normal behaviour and work patterns
• Heightened emotions

Team members may be going through feelings of loss as their circumstances change. Loss is cumulative and may evoke other losses, being aware of this helps to stop making judgements about people not coping with change. If this is the case it’s important to ensure team members get the support they need via your EAP program.

Look at what’s happening in the culture of your team. Signs to look for that may indicate that the culture is not healthy are:

• Gossiping. This is common when people feel that they don’t have a voice or feel that they do not have accurate information. If this is happening it is a cue for you that messages about what’s occurring in the business are not being communicated clearly enough.
• Survival of the fittest, people looking out for themselves with a very individualistic focus.
• A flat and de-motivated culture, lacking energy, tired and emotionally depleted.

The most prominent theory on loss and change was developed by Elizabeth Kubler Ross who worked with terminally ill patients.

Her model highlights the phases that people go through when confronted with a loss. One of the most dominate aspects of change is loss. Understanding this model will help you to understand yourselves and others, and possible reactions to the change process. It’s important to note that these reactions are normal and to communicate this to your team.

Dr Kubler Ross’s model helps us to understand ourselves and others beyond grief by helping us to understand how we deal with loss of any kind. This can be applied from a grief model to a change model to help us understand ourselves and others in relation to responses to change.

Understanding change, and our responses and behaviours to change is important in helping to navigate any changes in our lives both personally and professionally. It’s also important to normalise this – it’s a process most people go through.

By indentifying where you are at, you can make choices about the support you require, asking for help or the direction you need to go in.

Pollyanna Lenkic is the founder of Perspectives Coaching, an Australian based coaching and training company. She is an experienced facilitator, certified coach and a certified practitioner of NLP. In 1990 she co-founded a specialist IT recruitment consultancy in London, which grew to employ 18 people and turnover £11 million ($27 million). This blog is about the mistakes she made and the lessons she learned building a business the first time round and how to do it better second time round.