Welcome to the New Manager Podcast.
I'm your host, Kim Nicol. Hello and welcome.
I'm glad you're here and I hope you're doing well.
If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, I want to
invite you to come work with me. I'm taking new clients.
We work together one-on-one. We get to focus on your career,
your life, what's going on with you day-to-day so that we can
get you a bit out of the weeds to see the bigger picture.
Find some options, reconnect you to your agency to what it is
that you want. Find out where the obstacles and
the blocks are and then create a plan to move past them.
It's not just going to help you with your day-to-day work and
your career goals, but it's also going to shift and transform the
way that you're thinking about yourself and your life in a much
bigger, more holistic way. So you can start.
If you're curious about that, then book a consultation.
It's free. It's a chance for us to meet, to
talk one-on-one, to get a sense of what your goals are, what
we'd be working on and how I would approach that, the
perspective I would have to offer to you.
And then if that feels like a good fit, then I'll explain how
exactly we can work together. So book a consultation by using
the link either in the show notes or go to my website
kimnickel.com and you'll find a link to get on my calendar there
for today. I want to leave you with
something kind of short and sweet, but something I've been
thinking about a lot. And it's this idea of managing
change. And whether you are trying to
create change in your own life or whether you are seeking to
initiate change in your organization with your team.
If you're trying to change by, you know, managing up or if
there's some kind of change happening in your organization
and now it's your job to communicate that change to
others on your team, this is going to be relevant to you.
And for today, I want to simply leave you with a picture about
why we resist change. So, number one, we tend to
resist anything that requires effort.
This is not a problem. This is you know, like your your
brain being really efficient and it takes energy to learn new
things and to do new things. And your brain is like, if I
don't have to why, why would I? You know, if this already works,
why would I change? So #1, expect there to be some
resistance anytime there's change on the horizon, even when
it is change you want. So if you set some intentions
for this coming year about things that you have wanted to
change about yourself, you might have found yourself in the
position where you notice yourself avoiding or resisting
or fighting the change, even though on one level you want it.
Like you're choosing this change, but for some reason
you're still just, you know, kind of fighting it.
So think of it this way, right? There are kind of three main
things that you'll identify and you'll need to manage if you're
going through change or wanting to facilitate it #1 the thought.
But I don't know how that creates resistance.
When people say but I don't know how they will resist and kind of
stay stuck in the place that they are. #2 I don't know why.
If people don't know why they should change or if you.
I don't know why you should change.
And I mean on a deep level, not on a surface level.
The surface level doesn't hold a lot of weight.
But deep down, like where you feel it in your bones, that
sense that oh, I know why I need to change.
I know why this matters to me that will be more effective if
we don't answer that question. I don't know why.
Like why should I change? Why is this happening?
Why are they initiating this change?
Then we'll have more resistance. And third, this is the big one.
I don't want to. Sometimes we don't want to
change and that's what's going to get in the way.
And this one is interesting because it could be something
that is a bit underneath the surface and not obvious, kind of
like how, you know on the surface you might say, yeah, I
want this new job. I want to progress.
I want the income, I want the responsibility.
I'm ready for a new change. But then underneath all of that,
where maybe you're not fully aware of it, you're actually
afraid of that change because you're afraid, well, what if I
don't do it well enough? You're afraid of, you know,
failing. Or you're afraid that if you
succeed beyond that of your community or your family or your
friends, you might be afraid underneath that you'll lose
those relationships with people that are important to you.
Or maybe underneath that potential success, there's a
fear that you won't belong. Maybe your background is
different than you know what you know of the background of the
other folks who are at that level.
And so we want to be able to to understand that whatever that
surface level resistance is, the resistance of, I don't want to.
We also want to investigate and get curious about what might be
beneath that, what might be underneath that.
I think one of the things that can happen in the workplace when
there is a change happening and there is resistance to it, I
think we sometimes imagine that people just need more
information or they need to, you know, they just need to change
their attitude. You know, we're we're going in
this direction and you just need to get on board with it.
And when we take that approach, we end up making things harder
for ourselves and for everybody else.
Because unless we're mindful of where the resistance is coming
from and unless we start to get curious about it, it's like
we'll always be trying to solve the wrong end of the problem.
So instead, we want to start looking at what could be behind
this resistance. And it might be multifaceted.
They might be things that are all related.
It could be that the fear of gosh, but I don't know how to do
this. I don't know why I should.
And underneath it all, I just don't want to because I'm
worried that you know, like some, some there will be
something that happens that I'm just, I don't feel prepared for
that I'm uncomfortable with. We want to be able to look at
that and understand that. And now what I want to invite
you to do, and this is honestly a lot of the work that I do with
my clients, there's a change that they want and then we
figure out what you know, what needs to, what needs to change
in order to have that change. So for example, if you're doing
a job search, you know the change you want is you want a
different job. The fear might be, I'm afraid
that I'm not qualified. I'm afraid I don't have the
right background. I'm afraid that I won't fit in.
I'm afraid that if I apply, I'll get rejected and then I'll feel
bad. So then the change that needs to
happen to facilitate that change is the willingness to take those
actions and the willingness to love yourself and support
yourself even through the discomfort of doing new things
right. So when you are going through a
change, you want first to start to understand this for yourself.
This is also one of those things where when you're on the
outside, it can feel so easy to say, oh, you know, I don't know
why my team just doesn't change. Like they have all the
information. They should just get on board,
but that doesn't actually help them.
And so it's easy to remember that when we are looking at
someone else's change, it can feel so simple.
But for ourselves, we can often miss the underlying obstacles
and not fully realize what is it going on in our own mind, in our
own heart and emotions and in the way that we're perceiving
things that will either have us moving steadily towards the
change we want or continuing to avoid resist.
You know people say self sabotage, but I think it's not
exactly a sabotage kind of thing.
It's more like there's a deeper logic and you are so loyal to
that you can't even see it. But it's driving so many of your
behaviors and choices. So you know, for the coming
week, what I'd offer you to think about is noticing your own
life. Where is there a change that you
want to create for yourself and notice what type of resistance
you have? Is it?
I don't know. How is it?
I don't know why I should, Is it?
I just, I don't want to. That's always the fun one.
Because on one level you're like, no, I I do want this
change. I I do want it.
But when we sit with it, when we investigate, when we get
curious, when we remove the judgment and start to look at
the truth underneath, there's often this feeling, this little
voice inside that says, but I don't want to.
And you know, it might be activating your inner you know,
rebel like Rebel Kid. The inner you know, you can't
tell me what to do. Like that internal resistance
that's like you can't make me starts to activate.
You want to be on to yourself and understand how that works so
that you're working with yourself rather than against.
It takes so much energy to be in that state of internal conflict
and there's just there are better ways to do it, you know.
So that's what I love to help folks with.
If that's something that you are also looking to understand, then
we should definitely talk. If you are in a situation at
work where you are trying to manage change or facilitate
change, then that's also something that we can coach on
so that you have a strategy that will be more effective and more
you know, that will work with the humans that you have on your
team and in your organization. And you're also not using
unnecessary energy trying to like force something, but
instead we're going to address it directly.
We're going to address it strategically or going to
address it mindfully so that you have a way to work with and
through the resistance that is going to come up.
Because that's just, you know, pretty much a given, right?
There's always, there's always like like any time there's
change, expect there to be some resistance or hesitation.
So the goal is to not avoid change or avoid resistance.
The goal is to understand that it's going to be there and have
a plan, have an approach to work with it.
So that is what I wanted to share with you today.
Thinking about change, How do you manage it?
How do you facilitate it? How it works for yourself, How
you can use that self-awareness to then become more effective at
managing and facilitating change around you.
It's a really, I mean, it's a really fun topic.
We could talk about this for a long time, but for today, that's
what I'm going to leave you with.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a great day and
I'll talk to you next time. When you're more effective at
work, you're happier in your life, and when you're happier in
your life, you're more effective at work.
I can help. Go to my website Kim Nickel com
and sign up for a coaching consult.
It can get better.