Honing your personal leadership skills will require you to become adaptive to change. We are continually confronted with change whether in our personal lives or professional lives. Some of this change is within our control and some of it is not.
You may already embrace change and positively seek it or you may feel uncomfortable and resist change. I used to resist change and wanted to stay within my comfort zone. I realised that this was an element of my personal leadership that I needed to develop. Only once I became more comfortable with change, did I enjoy the benefits of new opportunities, greater learning and deeper relationships.
My friend and fellow coach Eilidh Milnes, speaker for confidence, interviewed me recently on what I have discovered about adapting to change, what barriers we put in place to resist change and 3 top tips in how to adapt to change. You can listen to our brief 10 mintue exchange here.
Summary:
Adapting to change is about mindset. Whilst many of us resist change, it has in fact been our constant companion throughout our life. From when we learned to walk, run or ride a bike, we grew up with change. Yet today, many of us see change as an interruption of certainty. When we shift our mindset to embrace change and focus on the positive outcomes, it becomes easier.
More often, it is not the fear of change itself rather the fear of our perspective on our capacity to deal with the change that creates the resistance to change.
Our resistance is due to our expectations. Expectation of what we might lose from any change, expectation of the process pain of change and expectation of the outcome of any change.
3 top tips in adapting to change I recommend are:
- Focus on the possibilities for growth from the change.
- Get clear on what you want from the change. Accept it is happening, be pro-active and decide what you want to get out of the change.
- Review and celebrate the process and the outcome of change. What worked well and what could be better next time!
For the full transcript of our exchange, you can download it here:
