Friday Thoughts with Lucy

Work, people, change and whatever else has caught my attention this week.

Who Supports the Leader When Everything Is Changing?

I’ve been thinking a lot about leadership and change this week, which isn’t entirely surprising given that I’m getting ready for Leading Change Without Leaving People Behind later this month.

One of the things I keep coming back to is how much we expect of leaders during change. We expect them to have answers, communicate clearly, reassure people, deal with resistance, keep the work moving and somehow remain calm while they may be experiencing exactly the same uncertainty as everybody else.

And sometimes they don’t know either.

They may be waiting for a decision from above, worrying about their own role or trying to implement something they didn’t design. They can be trying to support a team while privately wondering whether the change is actually going to work.

I think we sometimes forget that leaders experience change too.

Who supports the person doing the supporting?

This has made me reflect on something I’ve been doing for myself.

I coach other people. A significant part of my work involves creating space for someone else to think, untangle something complicated and work out what they want to do next. You might therefore think I’d be particularly good at doing that for myself.

I’m not sure any of us are.

I’ve been part of Jessica Wiggins Lead With Impact coaching group, a small online group of leaders, and I’ve found it genuinely helpful. Not because someone is giving me all the answers, but because it gives me somewhere to stop.

There’s something valuable about being with other people who are also leading things, sharing what’s actually happening rather than what leadership sometimes looks like from the outside, and having protected time to reflect on your own decisions and experiences.

I spend a lot of my working life thinking about other people’s organisations, other people’s teams and other people’s challenges. Having somewhere where I get to think about mine has reminded me that reflection isn’t an indulgence for leaders. It’s part of doing the job well.

Change needs space

That idea of space has found its way into the work I’m doing on Leading Change Without Leaving People Behind.

When change happens, we tend to focus on the visible stuff: the plan, milestones, communications, responsibilities and implementation. But people also need space to process what is happening.

Some people will do that quickly. Others need longer. Some need to talk. Some need information in writing and time to think before they can tell you what they think. Some will immediately see opportunity while someone sitting beside them is wondering what they’ve just lost.

Neither response is necessarily wrong.

And leaders need that processing space too.

I don’t think good change leadership is about having everyone enthusiastically on board from day one. Sometimes it’s about being able to sit with uncertainty, listen properly, recognise that people are experiencing the same change differently and resist the temptation to label every difficult response as “resistance”.

One of the questions I’ve been using recently is:

What has this change taken away?

It might be certainty, influence, routine, confidence, relationships, status or simply knowing what happens next. Understanding that gives us somewhere much more useful to start.

That’s what I want to talk about on the 22nd of September

Leading Change Without Leaving People Behind isn’t going to be another session telling you that communication is important or putting a change curve on a slide.

I want to talk about the humans.

Why does loss of control matter? Why can a seemingly small change have such a significant impact on somebody? How might neurodivergence affect the experience? What can fight, flight, freeze or fawn look like at work? How do we give people meaningful influence when we can’t give them control over the decision itself?

And importantly, how do leaders look after their own capacity to lead while they’re doing all of that?

Because leading people through change doesn’t mean standing outside it with all the answers.

Until Next Friday Take Care!

Lucy