Making Changes

As a consultant, performance coach and trainer, I am frequently asked if what I am doing with an organisation, an individual or a team will result in any real change. The answer is ... it depends!

And this is not just a flippant response.

Obviously organisations and individuals want the reassurance that the service they are paying for will result in a positive - and preferably measurable - outcome. That's great. I want the same thing too. There's nothing more frustrating for most of us than to feel as if nothing has changed when we complete a project.

So why does the answer depend, and what does it depend on?

Well let's remind ourselves that organisations and teams are comprised of people. Yep, I know this sounds obvious, but a lot of change management talk seems to ignore this inescapable fact.

So applying a people lense to change means that we can look at it from the perspective of some of the recent neurological research that has been conducted over the past 20 years or so. Now clearly I am no great expert in this field, but there has been plenty written about it over recent years. Indeed a lot of Daniel Goleman's work (our Emotional Intelligence guru) is based on the neurological research conducted by Joseph LeDoux.

Now we all know that making changes in our own lives is tough, and making changes in organisations can be even tougher. Some of you might even remember that piece of popular advice that it takes three weeks to break an old habit and three weeks to build a new one?

But what the neurological research has done, is provide us with a scientific basis for understanding why making change is so difficult.

Apparently our brains are constructed to quickly detect changes in our environment and unusual or different occurrences. The orbital cortex (sort of behind our eyes) generates these signals in our brain, and the orbital cortex is closely linked with the brain's fear circuitry - the amygdala.

These two sections of the brain (the amygdala and the orbital cortex) compete with the prefrontal cortex of our brain for attention (processing time and speed).

So what? Well it's the prefrontal cortex where our higher and more conscious cognitive processes occur.

When we are learning something new, we need our prefrontal cortex to be working hard.

Think about learning a new language, learning to drive, concentrating on developing your listening skills or whatever.

We need to consciously make the effort to master, think about and practise these skills. It's tiring too. Why?

Again the research has shown that using the prefrontal cortex uses more energy than using the part of the brain where our learned skills reside and can be enacted unconsciously (the basal ganglia).

So, what does this neurological research tell us about making changes?

It's going to take a conscious effort.
It's going to take more energy.
It's going to take some time before we can use the skills unsconsciously.
We will encounter some resistance within ourselves.

So, how do we begin to address these challenges?

The first point to note is that an individual, organisation or team will have to want to change. The coach, consultant or trainer cannot make the conscious effort or conduct all the practice that mastering the change will require. What we can do is provide the background knowledge, some scenarios for practice, and we can provide encouragement and positive feedback.

But probably the most important point to note is that an individual, organisation or team will need to arrive at their own solution. In other words, it has to be their plan. If they do that, then that desire to change is their own.

Victim Mentality

Last night I attended a professional development session for executive coaches run by the Institute of Executive Coaching (Australia) , and one of the subjects that came up was working with counterparts or clients with a victim mentality.

I'm sure you've met someone like this. You might even do it yourself sometimes. When we see ourselves as the victims we are thinking and perhaps saying things like:

* It's not my fault.

* No one else gets it. They're all too stupid.

* Can you believe what she did to me?

* I'm sick and tired of...

* I'm always so busy I never have time for myself.

* Why does this always happen to me?

* That's the way it's always been around here.

* It's the system.

One of the interesting things that I see in my work, is that this sort of attitude also manifests itself in teams as well as individuals.

So, just what is a victim mentality?

It's often described as when someone is always blaming someone (or something else) for the bad things that happen to them. As it develops, it can become so extreme that the person begins to think that bad things always happen to them. They rarely, if ever, take responsibility for their own actions.

Seeing this sort of mentality in an individual or a team is a massive danger sign.

So, what can we do about it?

I always like to use an adaptation of Stephen Covey's Circles of Influence and Concern.

Sure, there are lots of things we are concerned about, but over which we have little control. But there are many things that we can influence, where we do have direct control.

Covey illustrated this by drawing two concentric circles - the larger circle he labelled the circle of concern, and the smaller circle inside this larger one, he labelled the circle of influence.

For example, I have a mortgage and I am always concerned about the speculation that the Reserve Bank will raise official interest rates, and that my bank will pass these on to me, increasing my monthly payments. I have no direct control over what the Reserve Bank or what my bank will do. So the official interest rates would be one issue that I could pencil into my large circle of concern.

But what do I control over my mortgage? Not the official interest rate certainly, but I can choose a fixed or variable rate. I can increase or decrease my monthly payments (within reason). I can increase the frequency of my payments. I have a number of choices about the actions I can take. So I could pencil these issues into my smaller circle of influence.

The point is, that I CHOOSE to do something. I can be proactive, or I can be reactive. It's my CHOICE. It's not the circumstances or the Reserve Bank that control that choice.

And this blog is not just about Ric's mortgage. We all have direct control over such critical things as our behaviour, our attitudes and our decisions. When we realise this, we can gradually begin to expand our circle of influence so that we begin to assert more control over those other things that concern us.

While we cannot always control the circumstance, we can control our response to it. We are responsible and accountable for that response. We have no one else to blame for it. It's not pop psychology. It works.

So, do you or your team choose to stay as victims, or do you choose a different response?