Thursday, February 6, 2025

Managing Change

When we intentionally lean into signals of discomfort to change with curiosity, we can uncover hidden wants and needs that can help achieve a more successful outcome—especially for those most impacted

By Amanda VanRookhuyzen, Business Analyst

If your work involves leading others through change, you have likely experienced a wide spectrum of resistance and readiness. Unless the change has zero impact on human beings, the level of grit required to successfully guide a group of people from A to B is closely tied to their level of readiness.

A group that is eager for a change is much different to usher forward than a group that is not. Sometimes, what seems like a brick wall one day can become rice paper thin the next.

My willingness fluctuates all the time. Catch me on a good day—in a way where I feel consulted—and my ears will probably be open. Toss a new idea at me when I am neck-deep in deadlines, and you might want to buckle up.

I can think of a few instances with colleagues over the years where I have mixed feelings about how challenging I must have been for them to navigate through change. I never intend to be difficult!

I have appreciated their approaches tremendously. They provide enough psychological safety to garner an authentic response from me nearly every time—even if my input wrestles with what is being proposed (and knowing it can be hard for me to express conflicting viewpoints when they are raw).

One of them even sent me the best gif after, which was a guy driving a boat and a fish jumping out of the water and hitting him in the face. Makes me smirk every time I think about it.

Change is hard, especially when we feel it is not our choice or if we have multiple stressors going on in our life. It is normal and expected for most of us to experience some level of discomfort as we attempt to reorient from what is to what will be. Discomfort can sound as crisp as a pessimistic concern or as muffled as an alternative solution or idea.

I am a big advocate for seeking out and considering stakeholder requirements in general. In my experience, they can make or break a positive outcome.

Discernment can be an art when it comes to selecting the most appropriate approaches since stakeholder characteristics are diverse, nuanced, and can shift over time. There are plenty of change leadership strategies and tactics to choose from.

Some approaches prioritize speed and accept the risk (and potential consequences) of emotional impact. Other approaches prioritize an outcome where those who are most impacted have an opportunity to be heard and hopefully get on board.

But even with the best laid plans to host interviews and focus groups, if your initiative involves asking humans to change something about what they do in their daily work, the element of readiness will be a force to be reckoned with. You can either ignore or invest in this factor.

Both options can end up consuming time and energy—whether proactive or reactive. If you opt out of making time for folks to express their concerns up front, you may find yourself spending more time navigating complaints later.

I find that my ears have learned to pay attention to spikes of discomfort when I work on projects. I remind myself they are like trailheads. Time (and courage!) permitting, I practice being curious about what is underneath the discomfort, because this dialogue often reveals requirements in disguise.

I try to welcome new insights at any stage in the project because certain aha moments don’t happen until details about the new thing become clearer. And when expressions of discomfort simply trace to generalized anxiety around change, taking a few minutes to hold space for such emotions can still help foster a smoother transition toward readiness.

There is no guarantee that a more proactive approach will eliminate reactive attitudes or promise all stakeholder wishes will come true. Some might consider it a gamble of style, especially when there are time constraints or when the cause of change is regulatory and cannot be avoided or easily altered.

Nevertheless, the return on investment often takes the form of healthier solutions, slightly quieter implementations, and stronger long term relationships—which all sound worth it to me.

The bottom line is that I try to remember my own fickle relationship with change whenever my work involves guiding others by attempting to provide the same psychological safety that I so appreciate when provided for me.

Managing Change

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