260 Why We Resist Change: Interview with Barbara Trautlein

Speaker A: Welcome to the Mindset Game Podcast. I'm your host, Vered Kogan, High performance coach and speaker. Each week we share leading strategies and techniques to help you leverage the incredible power of your mind to adapt better to change and create your best life.

Speaker B: Welcome to the M Mindset Game Podcast. I'm Verit Kogan and so happy to introduce you to Dr. Barbara Troutline. Barbara is the author of the best selling book Change the Power of CQ to Lead Change that Sticks. She's also the principal and founder of Change Catalysts LLC and originator of the CQ system for developing change intelligence. For over 30 years, Barbara has coached executives, trained leaders at all levels, certified change agents and facilitated mission critical change management initiatives, achieving bottom line business and powerful leadership results for clients. In recognition of her contributions and expertise, she was honored as uh, the Change Management Consultant of the Year by the association of Change Management Professionals, also known as acmp. That's how I got to meet Barbara at a recent event called Change Orlando where we were both speakers and I got to hear Barbara's presentation and it was excellent. And uh, Barbara, I'm just so grateful to have you here to teach our AUD a little bit of what you shared with the group that day. Thank you for being here.

Speaker C: Thank you for having me.

Speaker B: Let's begin by how did you get into this world of change and Change intelligence?

Speaker C: Yes. Yes. Well, let me tell you about my first day on the job as a change leader. And I say that we're all change leaders regardless of tenure, title or role. So this story starts when I'm just 25 years old. It's back in the 1980s, I'm that old and I was working as part of a consulting team and we were in a state steel mill that was in bankruptcy. So there I am, and again, 25 years old. It's a room full of about 30 men. They're all men. They've all worked in that steel mill for their entire careers. They're all 20 or 30 or 40 years older than me. So I get up and I introduce myself and I talk about how we were going to partner together to transform them to high performance, total quality, self managed teams. You get the idea. So I look in the back of the room and a gentleman stands up and he's 6 foot 5, he's 250 pounds. He's like the Hulk. He stomps right to the middle of the room. He glares at me and says we're still workers and we don't listen to girls. So that was the illustrious start to my consulting career. That was. But again, why do you think he said that? What do you think he was thinking? But more importantly, what do you think he was feeling? What do you think that steel worker was feeling?

Speaker B: Some form of threat, danger, potential loss.

Speaker C: Exactly. That was exactly my assumption. From that first day on the job, the steel mill was already in bankruptcy. It was the only job most of them knew and they desperately didn't want the doors to close forever. So right from that first day on the job, I had a lot of empathy for the people impacted by the change, the targets of the change. I knew there was a lot of fear, threat in the room that they were experiencing. However, I also knew right from that first day on the job that there was a heck of a lot of fear and threat and intimidation in the change leader standing in front of the room, who was me. So that's what got me down my now 35 plus year path of equipping, empowering my fellow change leaders, which is yourself and everybody who's listening right now.

Speaker B: Wow. Well, many of the people listening, thank you for sharing that. Are feeling some of that now, whether they're in a steel meal that might be closed or just in a job in a business that may be in danger in some way. What can they do?

Speaker C: Well, as you well know, because you are very knowledgeable and empowered and you train people in the neuroscience of leadership and the neuroscience of change. And we know, I'm an organizational psychologist by training and we know that to our brain, change equals pain. Same neuroreceptors fire when we're experiencing changes, when we feel physical pain. And so what's the implication of that? What happens is that what all the good stuff that feeds our brain, the oxygen, the glucose gets sucked down past our necks. So we can do what we can fight flight, freeze, faint, bond. Basically what the bottom line is that change makes us less smart, change makes us less smart because all the good stuff again goes to that fight, flight, et cetera responses. So what do we do then? So what's the implication for our brain? Well, we go to our well learned, dominant, habituated patterns, behaviors that made us successful in the past, and we don't even do those. Well, just when we need our cognitive capability to think clearly and creatively, invent new solutions, pivot, innovate, we literally get blinders on. And so that's what I say, that in the stress of change, when our IQ goes down, building CQ change, intelligence, that's what I talk about. It's like Putting our own oxygen mask on first. Remember to breathe well ABC first. We're aware. We're just aware. As you aptly train people, we're aware that this is happening in our brain and body. It's normal and natural. It's literally how we're wired as human beings, why we thrive as an, as a species, survive as individuals. So it's normal and natural. However, it's maybe not the most adaptive response to our present day workplace challenges. So just a is being aware that this is happening. Breathe as they tell us an emotional intelligence. Right. Separate that knee jerk reaction from a more adaptive response and then C is choose. C is choose. Make. We remember that we have choices. We have choices to lead ourselves and others through change. We have choices to navigate change, we have choices about how respond to change. And the more choices we have, the more power we have. The more choices we have, the more power we have. More positive power, more positive power to not lead change in a way that's to or in spite of against each other, but with and for others.

Speaker B: Thank you for that. And I'm curious again about, let's imagine there's someone that says that sounds great, but I have no choice here. I'm being asked to do this thing, let's say to train an AI bot to do my job or to whatever. So yes, I can be aware of how I feel and I can breathe, I can interrupt maybe some of the emotional physiological responses. I don't actually have a choice. What would you say to them?

Speaker C: Yeah, my favorite book of all time is Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. And as he says, life is never made unbearable by circumstance by just uh, but rather by lack of meaning and purpose. Nec says when we don't have maybe a choice in the situation, we always have a choice about how we respond, how we think about the situation, how we behave. In fact that's the only thing in life we can control is our choices, our behavior. So again that's, I think that's an opportunity again to really choose, to really choose. And I think that that's on a lot of levels there. It's do I stay in this organization that is asking me to make this choice or do I realize that I do have options? There might not be options I want to take given my family situation, my financial situation. And then it's a choice to stay and to figure out how we can think about the situation or attitude is going to be about the situation and therefore how we're going to respond to it.

Speaker B: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I mean there's some research uh, that's come out around mid career professionals being stuck so not just feeling stuck, haven't gotten the promotions, they haven't, they haven't advanced and that it's a very large portion, it's almost a quarter of 1.3 million people that were studied in this US based study. So a whole lot of people is in that place of um, I might not have a choice. Opportunities have not been presented to me. And I love your perspective here around choice as an empowerment. I mean not necessarily just to leave, but I mean also maybe to ask for what you need, maybe to learn something new. That mindset. When we do have more self awareness and we are able to be more regulated, we can imagine possibilities and advocate for ourselves. And that's a big thing I think in change management now because the old mindset a lot of times was okay, I'm um, employee, I'm on the receiving end of uh, the leader doing for me, giving me these opportunities, opening doors for me, training me, whatever that may be. And it's being flipped around right now where people really need to be the captains of their own ship and advocate for themselves and build influence and credibility. Uh, what are your thoughts about that?

Speaker C: Yeah, well, I know that you collaborate with Marshall Goldsmith and some of his wisdom. Um, one time I had the pleasure of hearing him speak live at a conference. What he talked about was that in fact a lot of the messaging around empowerment and empowering workforces and engaging employees, it can actually be insulting because the whole kind of vibe is that employees, that it's the onus is on organizations to empower and engage employees. And it's not wrong in the sense that, that I believe there is the opportunity, the need to create the structures and the processes and the openness for the culture, for engagement. And at the same time it's almost like that we're robbing people of their agency and yeah. That the assumption is it's the other way. And I think a lot of times in change it's the same way. What's the number one topic in the change management literature is overcoming resistance to change, overcoming reasons. The whole vibe of that. Well first of all is that resistance is bad and wrong. Whereas we know that it's literally how our brain is wired. We're wired to resist change, fear, threatening environment. So and I know just a little something to share for your listeners because I would imagine a lot of your listeners are change friendly, change ready. They get excited about change. And as we Know though we're the same way that we still get that hook, that little huh, Hook. But some of us who are able to move from the fear threat to the opportunity, maybe we recover from that, shall we say. Or to your point, we get, we're more self aware, we can get in a different place with that sooner. And yet that's the operating system of the human brain. So the whole vibe of the overcoming resistance is again, it's exhausting for leaders and it's probably insulting for everybody else. Also akin to that is the whole concept we need people to buy in, we have to get them buy in. And see that is so reactive, that's so after the fact. Whereas how can we encourage proactive build in? How can we have opportunities for people to build in? Because we know change management 101. People own what they help create. People own what they help create. So again, totally on the same page with you in the sense of that. How can we look at ourselves, encourage others to again re. Reignite their, their passion and their sense of urgency and just remember that, remember that because I think sometimes just our experience in organizations, in life could we could come up with different assumptions or different theories that may not serve us. Yeah.

Speaker B: And might not serve the change. So tell us a little bit more. What do we know about why change programs fail?

Speaker C: Yeah. So I think one of the biggest reasons is what we just talked about. We know that from research by Amy Evanson at Harvard and Google teams around the world that the number one factor of high performance teams is psychological safety, is that I feel safe to get my voice heard, to speak my truth, without fear of repercussions, vilification, ostracization. And I think that's the number one factor, not just of um, high performance teams, but a success or failure factor in change. Because so often what you see depends on where you sit. And change looks very different in different levels of the organization, different functions, different groups, different geographies. And if people don't feel safe to get their voices heard, they see landmines and those landmines go off anyway. So I think that that's, that, that's how I would answer that question.

Speaker B: When did you first realize that it is the people side of change that matters?

Speaker C: So after my, I spent the first decade of my career in steel mills and automotive plants and refineries. And uh, we had the challenging Times in the 1980s and then the 1990s was the Renaissance of American steel. Not a lot of people know that, but I helped start up about a uh, Dozen steel mills, and then also then started working in different kind of organizations. So healthcare, high tech, insurance, many different organizations on everything. Everything from mergers and acquisitions to ERP implementations. Many different types of change initiatives. And after 20 years, I sat back and I said, you know, we still have a pretty high failure rate of change. And even people who are highly successful in other aspects of their career struggle to lead change. So clearly something's missing. We have hundreds, if not thousands of, uh, models and methods and tools to manage change. We have, uh, stakeholder analyses and readiness assessments and communication plans, all that good stuff. We have hundreds, if not thousands of models to develop different kind of leadership and interpersonal capabilities. Communication, conflict management, and coaching. But what I realized was that there's a gap there. It's not just change management, it's change leadership. And it's not just leadership development, it's change leadership. So I put those two together and I thought to myself, iq, we know the importance of eq. What's the missing? It's cq. Being smart about leading ourselves and others through change.

Speaker B: Tell us more about what is change intelligence? How do we do that?

Speaker C: Yes, yes, yes. So change intelligence, how I define it, is change intelligence is the awareness of our style of leading change and the ability to adapt our style to be optimally effective across people and situations. Okay. So again, I'm an organizational psychologist. I love what Gandhi said, be the change you wish to see. I think change starts with us. And yet we also can look at collective change intelligence for our teams and organizations, but starting with us. So, for example, we've known each other briefly. I've been speaking to your audience for a few minutes now. How would you describe my style? As a speaker? Veer, what would you say? What is an adjective? Few adjectives you would use. Just how would you describe my style?

Speaker B: Collaborative.

Speaker C: Collaborative. Okay. Any other words?

Speaker B: You're curious. You ask me questions. What do I think about that? What is my experience? So I appreciate that.

Speaker C: Well, thank you. Well, it's funny because you're using C words. Collaborative, curious. Usually what I get is E words. Energetic and enthusiastic.

Speaker B: That too. Uh, because we're in conversation. I mean, when I saw you on the stage. Yeah, I would have used those words definitely. In conversation, I'm on the receiving end of it. And that's why I appreciate even more than the experience, excitement is the curiosity and the engagement.

Speaker C: Thank you. Well, it's flattering either way. But the only reason I say that I do use this as an example more when I'm facilitating or do training with people because as I share I didn't get that feedback that huh. I was enthusiastic, engaging or particularly collaborative like that. Until I started doing standup training and facilitation. The folks that I trained gave me that feedback and it was like holding a mirror to my face. I was not a aware that that's probably pretty high on those dimensions compared to a lot of people. So, so now you see that all these years later I'm still like that M. But now that I'm aware of that, what can I do? Moderate my pace, not be so dramatic. You get it? I'm just acting this out. But, but that's the key, as you know from all your work, helping people see their blind spots, become more self aware that it starts with us, the awareness of our style, our come from our tendencies. And, and then once we become aware of that, what's the corollary of that? The corollary that is we come, we become aware of other styles, we become aware of other choices, other options. Not a facilitation or interpersonal relationship but in this case of how we lead change. And again the more choices we have abc the more choices we have, the more power we have. So that's the essence of change, intelligence, being aware of one's own style. Be aware of other stuff. Because just like you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail and sometimes there's a nail in front of you. And that hammer is a very functional and adaptive tool. But sometimes you need a wrench, micrometer, power tool. Sometimes you're dealing with an ERP implementation, sometimes you're dealing with a uh, downsizing, sometimes you're dealing with a global pandemic. So again the more choices you have, the more power you have in a positive sense, the more choice. So, so that's the essence of the model. And so what are those choices? What are those options you have? What are those styles? Well that's what the triangle represents. And our tagline there is that I notice that we tend to lead change from some folks focus more on the heart. That's the people side of change. Some people focus more on the head. That's the purpose, mission, vision, strategy and some the hands. That's the process, the actual doing. So we're all blends of all those three styles. There's actually seven styles but those are the big big three leading change from the heart, head and hands.

Speaker B: I'm appreciating the mindset, the belief that in order to be more successful in change, more adaptable, flexible, we need to be in A place of conscious choice, meaning that, as you said, not rigid in the way we do things all the time, in all situations with all people, but really just to be able to have a wider perspective of what might be most needed at this moment in this particular scenario. And I love that the A and B, again, comes before the C, the awareness and the breath, uh, comes before the choice. Because if we are in kind of like we started this conversation in a nervous system state where there is fear, where we are not very regulated, we've got thoughts that are not necessarily healthy thoughts, our body's in a state of stress, we literally may not be able to adapt or soften these rigid strategies, these unconscious patterns that, as you said, we tend to go to in a distressed state, which might be to, to fight or to fight or to freeze. Right. Just to kind of disengage, whatever the pattern is. And so the key is then to become aware of what our default patterns are, is our go to the heart, the head, the hands, what is the go to. And then to be able to assess, okay, what is needed in this moment. Maybe I need to soften my grip on, let's say, the purpose. Because right now what's needed is connection. We need more of the heart, let's say. And I think that the ability to do that not just in times of change, but just as a human being, I think is wisdom. If you look at somebody that's gone through life, maybe earlier years there were more pushing and this and that, right? Certain approaches to get ahead, to survive. And then as they get older, needs change, values shift a little bit and there's just more perspective. They know certain things are not the end of the world. So we don't need to hold that rigidly or battle for certain things. We can kind of let go of the steering wheel sometimes and we'll survive and the world will survive. So what I see is kind of this change intelligence and your approach, approach is I just saw a tool for wisdom.

Speaker C: I love that. Thank you. And I can tell you another personal story. I love to say that every master was once a disaster and you teach what you need to learn. I'm still on the learning journey, but definitely a lot of my stories are from hard won experience. Uh, so back in the day when I was actually working on my first startup steel mill in the early 90s, I was, I say the people engineer. So just as the mechanical, uh, engineers and electrical engineers, metallurgical engineers were building the technical part of the steel mill, right, Constructing it, I was working with people at all different levels and roles in designing how the team based work environment was going to, was going to operate. It was very team based, engaged, involved work culture. And so it was going great because it was a startup. Everybody was hired because they wanted to work in this environment except with one gentleman who was the vice president of engineering who was a 35 year veteran of the uh, one of the parent companies tradition, very traditional work systems. And he was brought for his technical expertise, not for his love of this team based work environment. So as he said to me, he said Barbara, there's. Our president has five goals for the startup. Safe productivity, quality on time and the work culture is number five. So I'm going to, I'm going to focus on the first four. But his involvement was so important, it was crucial to success because if the engineers that reported to him the bulk of the salaried workforce when something went wrong on the line and they, they just did their own thing, they needed to work with the union people, right, the operators, the uh, maintenance people in order to really achieve the vision of self management. So what did I do? I do just you, you, you see me, I was, did all my enthusiastic come, come on, it's going to be great. This is exciting, it's wonderful. And he was having none of it. So what do I see now that I didn't see then is that my style is the combination of heart and head. We call that the champion style. I get where my clients want to go and I enjoy motivating and rallying people to get there. So I champion change. The neat thing about the triangle is the opposite side of the triangle is two things. It's one, what you tend to drop out most in the stress of change. So I realized about myself that oh yeah, people might get it, people might want it, but they can't do it. I haven't given the plan, the process, the tools, the steps to get from here to there. And the other thing about the opposite of this triangle is that those are the people who have that style that you tend to frustrate most because what's important to them and change is diametrically opposed to what's important to you. So what I did back in the day before I had these insights, I tried everything I could and I vilified him. I thought we should send him back to the, to the other company. I totally labeled him as a resistor. Right made him bad and wrong. And then finally though that wasn't going to happen, it was wrong. I didn't even really Request that. I just fantasized about it. I sat back and I took a breath. I took a breath and I thought to myself, what am I doing or not doing or overdoing that might be causing resistance to him? And I realized that I'm trying to be a champion of this change. He's perceiving him as a cheerleader. I'm focusing on the positive benefits, being all optimistic about how it's going to turn out. In fact, he was right. There was no examples of how this kind of work system actually did work in a joint venture union, unionized Japanese U.S. steel. There was no evidence of that. There was no data. There was no evidence. And I was being unrealistic in all the very real tactical work that he and his team had to do today. So I reached out to him and I apologized and I said, can we just sit down? And instead of me talking, I actually just want to listen to you one on one. And I want to understand what are your priorities, what's on your plate. I just want to listen. And he agreed. So we did. And then I said, okay, now can I go back and put a plan together that might jointly achieve all our goals? And he said, okay. So at the end, he was never an advocate, but at least he wasn't an adversary. And he did free up some of his junior engineers to participate in our design process. So fast forward 25 years later, just about a decade ago, I get a call and it's from this mill. And they said to me, hey, Barbara, do you still do that team stuff? Because I worked with them for about four or five years during the startup. And he said, because a lot of the old timers like you, uh, are retiring and our kids are starting to work here because it's in a cornfield in Indiana. And who was on the call? The union president and the plant manager were both on our design team. The plant manager was one of the junior engineers who got freed up to be. To be part of it. So again, in the end, in the end, a good story, happy ending. But was he resisting or was me not leading again? So I just share that because that was one of the origin stories of change, intelligence, uh, and again, some, I think, profound insights when you recognize that it's not them, or at least it may be partially them, but at the same time, I can't control them. I can influence them, but I can only control myself.

Speaker B: Thank you for that story. And I love the part two of it because that's just so cool. These ways of thinking and feeling and doing carry over into the future and into the culture. And I think the word intelligence is really the core here. Because when we are able to again have awareness, take that pause and uh, really understand that if somebody is the. Not me, meaning the, the shadow side, the opposite side, as you said of the triangle, that there's something for me to learn, for me to integrate with that in order for me to become more whole. So in your case, it was the, the doing some of the more tactical stuff because you were very much in the head and heart. So, so in that understanding, the pausing to ask the questions, tell me more, why is this important to you? The kinds of questions that I sense you probably asked when you were curious, wanted to understand what, what he needed, what the team needed, what was missing in your approach, essentially for him to feel safe, to lean into this thing that allowed you also to gain new resources, new perspectives that you may not otherwise had because you weren't in his shoes, you didn't have, have the same experience as he had, to come to the beliefs that he had in that moment. So you expanded your belief system, he expanded his belief system. And just like any, I'll call it polarization, because there was some active charge here. The antidote is really that understanding and the engagement, that coming together with a curious mindset, maybe not necessarily agreeing, but at the very least respecting as, as you did and he did with you, and maybe even considering what do you both have in common in common? You both want the startup to succeed. There are things that you both, as a system, both want, and there are things that as a system you're both afraid of. Right. That could lead to failure. So I really appreciate that example because I think it's just really important for people to understand if they themselves are feeling resistant about something or if somebody else we perceive that to be resistant about something, we want to consider what might they be afraid of losing? Like what is the reason? What is it that is creating what we see as a behavior, as a symptom. Because when we can understand that, then those parts of them at least can feel heard, which oftentimes does tend to soften things and at least make them not as closed off to hearing the logic and all that stuff, but it does build a relationship. So it's like that's the big gift in doing this work, is that we get to expand our own consciousness. We tend to collectively grow and there's just more trust and connection, which in this world of ours. What greater gift is that?

Speaker C: Absolutely. Uh, yeah. So we do some Fun exercises in our training we always start off with people taking the assessments so they have the self awareness and then we move into other awareness and relationship building. So an exercise that we do is pair the opposites. So I would have myself and this gentleman or groups of us usually come together and we talk about what frustrates us about each other and it releases a lot of humor, a lot of energy, especially if it's an intact team. There's that, but then what you value about each other and then coach each other about what to do and not to do, to communicate, work with, influence each other more effectively. And so it results in some great process agreements and to your points, a great awareness. And so that enables the individuals, like you said, to be more self aware, be more otherware, more empathetic, build more trust and relationships because they understand why each other does some things that can be pretty confusing. And that's also why I created the CQ assessment because we know that in change, in change situations, stressful situations, our brain is different. So I still love using the disc, the Myers Briggs strength finders, all those, I think they help us understand like our normal natural work and lifestyle style. CQ plays well with those other assessments because it helps us understand some people are very consistent. Like again, as you can imagine, a lot of engineers are on the disc, a high C, conscientious, process oriented and or on the Myers Briggs stj, very kind of detail oriented. But sometimes on the CQ assessment they also score that way. Sometimes they come out as high or heart because they know when they uh, play that role of leading change, it is about leading the people through the change, right? Or sometimes they score or higher head because again what really what they focus on is the why and what are we going to do and that exciting new vision. Do you know what I'm saying? So again it's interesting to help people see the different aspects of their personality. But what we also do then in addition to doing that kind of team building, interpersonal awareness is that for people who lead each other, have coaching tools to help them become more savvy in identifying what the sources of resistance might be. I agree with you that so often it's a sense of loss that, that fear, threat, something about their identity or their confidence, which again to us is a lot of times we would say that's a heart oriented concern, that emotional concern. Sometimes it's more of the head oriented concern. Like I honestly don't get it. I don't get why we're adopting this new strategy. I Don't get why we're going this new direction. It doesn't seem to make sense sense to me. Or I might get it in the big picture, but I don't see how it relates to us. And I don't get it, because it's going to make us whatever suboptimized. And then sometimes people get it wanted, but they can't do it. It legitimately is. There's something that they're confused about the priorities. They don't feel like they have the budget or the time. So it helps leaders be more savvy in terms of observing what people are saying or doing and then asking powerful questions, to your point, being curious. So therefore they can then adapt their behavior. They can take out different tools in their toolkit to, uh, have different types of conversations. You diagnose a problem differently, it's going to have a different solution or prescription. In the same way, we also help individual contributors get their voices heard. Because so often even a question or even if it's not an individual contributor, but anybody that's getting handed a change or met with a change to get. Because so often even a question can come off as resistance. Even a question appears as resistance. Yeah. So people come off as negative complainers, not positive contributors, in other words. So how can they also demonstrate that curiosity, ask the questions and then respond from their unique perspectives? So again, what you see depends on where you sit. It helps everybody avoid those landmines.

Speaker B: So anyway, somebody, so let's say somebody listening is like, okay, I either myself or for my team, if I'm leading a change, let's say there's disengagement in the heart field, like meaning they're not feeling it, they're not connected to it. There isn't like the emotional connection there. Or buy in what can they do to engage the heart. And then I'll ask you the same question. If someone doesn't get the why and then of course the hand, what can we do to equip, uh, people with the behaviors so that they're gonna have all three, the head, heart and the hand?

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Because again, that's the point. That's the other insight that people get, is that they value each other's perspectives because they might have a dominant style or things they tend to focus on. But any change needs an effective purpose and efficient process and engaged people. So all of a sudden you get the insight that, ah, uh, yes, sometimes I do need to adapt or flex my behavior to give the change what is missing. And though, wow, now I Have these colleagues who have gifts and talents and, and preferences that I don't. So it builds, it builds that. So anyway, so if you, if you're observing that yourself or others don't want to change as we say there's a heart oriented concern, there's some fear, threat concern about the impact on me personally, my job, my uh, relationships. What can we do right. As I say we can build team and build trust. We can have depending on the root cause, what the actual specifics are. Have one on ones actually sit down and talk to the person. Have a team meeting. Talk about as a leader, share your vulnerability. What are you feeling too? You're also a human being. We're human beings before human doings. So what are my feelings about this? That's the number one way to build psychological safety is have the leader express and share their feelings and vulnerability. Start with, start with the human connection. Have you know, you can have again town hall meetings, you can do pulse service to understand literally the pulse. Because as we say change is an emotional journey. We know also from the brain that we feel before we think. Literally our emotions mediate our thinking. So no matter how smart and well resource the changes, if there is that emotional source of resistance at best we're going to get compliance versus commitments and long term sustainability. So that, that's one if what we see instead is as I say, a lot of swirl but no strategy. People really don't get it. I think a lot of times what I coach leaders about is that because a lot of times leaders say I'm so frustrated. I communicated this over and over again. I've said it but as one leader told me, he said before I had these insights I just would have said the same thing over and over again. And he said now I see that I am talking up here about the overall business goals. What I'm not doing is help people seeing the line of sight between what your contribution is, why it matters. Now if you're suite in a uh, 20,000 person company, right you're not going to talk to every individual. Then again that's why again look at how you can make the, not just the overall business case, but the business case, right? That connection. And again how can we find opportunities for people to help build the solution in it? And then again if people are paralyzed during the headlights, they're not in action. That's a symptom that they can't do it. So again what is the root cause of that? Is it that it's another a priority change, fatigue, change saturation so prevalent because one thing that we have a research database of tens of thousands of change uh leaders around the world and is probably not surprising, the higher up you go, the more you tend to get head oriented leaders. So everything's exciting, everything is necessary. We need to move with velocity to transform. And so I love the expression that leadership is the art of focusing attention. So sometimes it's as not simple, but simple as this is the a priority, this is the first step, this is what we do now today versus boiling the ocean. And sometimes it is really that we don't. A lot of times again leaders may not see all the impacts of the change throughout the organization. So they might not be cognizant of um, that there are very real processes and norms in their organization which are standing in the way of good people behaving consistently with the change. Whether it's a reward system, operation system, communication system, whatever it is. And so again that's why people need to feel safe to say I literally can't do it or this is why this may not make sense or this timeframe or this method.

Speaker B: Thank you for all these tips. And we know the connection between the heart, the head and the hands. If you equip the hands, you said by uh, giving some more clarity on what to do and giving opportunities and prioritizing, people are much more likely to feel more ease because they're not as scattered or overwhelmed. They know what will be measured and they can then enlighten the head. Right. Why are we doing this specific thing, exactly how to do it so they can have more control over that piece, that's more value to. So they all kind of feed one another. And I can also see that if we were to have an order of things in a change, the heart would probably come first because people need to feel safe, feel heard, feel cared for. Somebody's got my back. And then to understand why are we doing this, what's the purpose, how does it connect with what's important to me and my future? And then they're much more likely to do the thing or give ideas. Right. As we said advocate, I think we should do it this way. That will come to them because they're not dysregulated, because they have the emotional safety and they have the clarity. So if I imagine that there's a connection there too around the order depending on where we are in a change.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So that's one thing that clients tell me over and over again, is that it gives them a simple but powerful common language to really Evaluate in the beginning the overall change and to use this as a planning tool. So to put it through, as we say, the CQ filter, let's look at the heart. What are our aspirations for how this could positively impact the people, the teams, the culture? Those are all hard considerations. What are maybe some fears or concerns that might occur and therefore what can we do? Okay, now let's like the six hats thinking exercise, take them each one at a time. Okay, now let's look at the head. What's our aspirations for how this change could further advance our mission, our ability to achieve our objectives, serve our customers, what could stand in the way, and et cetera. And then finally, can we do this? Can we do this? Are we set up for this? What's in the way? So right from the beginning, you're bringing all those three different perspectives to bear and then you can use that with your strategic planning team, go through that process. And then the beauty of it too is that you can use a process like this to then capture that, capture those insights and then funnel it one level down to your directs, like what do they see? And then let them bubble their feedback up. So again, right from the beginning, you're getting that proactive buy in, not that reactive build in. So I love that because sometimes, you know, like I said, oftentimes we see that the higher up you go, you do tend to get more head oriented leaders. Right? That's their purview. We have not to say you can't be in the C suite if you're higher, harder hands, we need all those perspectives, but they tend to gravitate. And you would think that they would all necessarily get along because similar styles, you understand each other better. But one executive team said to me that they're almost the heart, head oriented styles, yes, we're all high heads, but we butt heads, giving each other concussions, so get a lot of humor. So again, because again, they were all high, but they had different visions in those visions and they didn't engage the heart, they didn't come together to actually talk about these things. And also they were a lot of, they were corporate leaders, but a lot were business unit leaders too who actually had competitive practices in the marketplace. And they never came together to actually talk about how can we synergize across our business units for the good of the overall. So again, just these insights that uh, you get when a team sees its profile and they see they can give voice to their dynamics and even humor about it, which is we know is another way to help our brain to make us more open to new insights, new relationships, new ways of thinking and more comfortable. And it gives us a. So it's insightful, but it's also actionable. It sparks conversation and it gives us a path forward.

Speaker B: I love it. I see this. The integrated approach, head, hearts and hands and integrating the team unity over collective intention and all of that.

Speaker C: And humanistic and globally relatable. I think that's another thing that we need more of. One thing that got me down this path, too was just seeing the dearth of trust and the loss of loyalty. And so how can we rekindle that? And I think just by a humanistic model, humanistic approach, way of thinking about things, way of talking, engaging with each other again, I think that's the other thing that the database shows, is that we're much more alike than different. There's no statistically significant differences in results around the world.

Speaker B: And that human approach is more and more valued every day with what's happening in the world and divisiveness AI all the stuff. So thank you so much for being here, Barbara, really, from all my heart. Such wisdom that you bring to us. Thank you. How can we learn more about the CQ assessment, about your trainings, your programs, your research?

Speaker C: Um, very accessible. Sure. So just pop over to our website, change catalyst.com I'm on LinkedIn, so. Yeah, so just reach out. Like I said, there's lots of free resources on the website, too. Video, case studies, research results. So. Yeah, but be in touch at any time. Very accessible.

Speaker B: Well, thank you again.

Speaker A: That's this week's episode of the Mindset Game podcast. Visit us@themindsetgame.com for more. And remember to play the Mindset Game consciously to master your mindset set and transform your life.