Deny, Defend, Defer, Despair, Deal With Change

Change happens in stages. Do these stages sound familiar?

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Soul: Aloha, this is Soul, the Founder of Soul University. Welcome to our eight part series on embracing change. Over the next few minutes, you’ll read a snippet of a conversation that I’ve had with someone I know to be a powerful change agent. Enjoy.

Now we jump over to Tony Reese. Tony, thanks for diving in.

Toni: Thank you for having me, Soul.

Soul: You’re welcome. As you’ve worked with people over the past three decades what do you think is the number one reason folks simply resist change?

Toni: Fear. Think that is it. Just fear.

Soul: Out and Out Fear. Is there a particular flavor of fear that you see more common than the other? Fear of relationships? Fear of failure? Is there any particular strain of fear that is common?

Toni: It depends on the situation that the person is finding themselves in as far as change. And also what type of change. Because it can be two types of change, right? It could be an imposed change, which is something that they had no control over, and it was imposed upon them. Or it was a planned change, where they had a stake in the change and they planned it along the way. But people still resist change because of, I believe it’s a fear of failure. If I walk through this change and it’s a planned change, I may fail.

Or if it’s imposed upon me, now what do I do? I believe whether it is imposed change or planned change, you’ve got that fear of failure and apprehensiveness. It’s the word that’s sticking in the back of your head.

Soul: Ah, that flavor of failure. Yes. I know you’ve been brilliant at helping people resolve that fear. Can you recall a couple of changing the names of course, but is there a particular client or story where you found a very effective way to dissolve that fear?

Toni: It all depends on who you’re working with. And for me, I’ve done a lot of personal coaching as well as inside of a workforce. So the way that I handle it, the dialogue will change. But I really use the same approach. If you let someone know that what they’re going to feel when they’re dealing with change is going to be the same and it’s going to be very normal. Whether it’s imposed upon them or if it’s planned change and that they will go through five cycles of change.

It’s almost like the grief cycle. They’ll go through denial. That’s perfectly normal. They will be denying that change is even going to happen. And imagine particularly in a workplace where you have a business that’s being acquired. There’s new owners that are taking over. Or there’s layoffs that have occurred. Then is my job at risk or have I already been let go?

Or if you’re dealing with a relationship issue and you’re going through divorce, it’s the same, the cycles are the same. It’s how fast you move through them or your own timeline in how slow you go through them. But you will go through the five cycles. And so stage one would be denial. It’s absolutely, I deny that this is even happening to me. It just can’t be. I cannot believe I’m going through this. Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen? And at that moment, your self esteem starts to dip a little bit. And then of course we know that hits your performance a little bit as well. Stage two would be, I’m going to get defensive.

I’ve been let go. How dare you let me go? How dare you lose me? It’s the same with the relationship issue, as the example stated. How dare you lose me as a wife or as a husband? And we get very defensive and come up with a million excuses as to why that shouldn’t have happened. And we also start to feel our performance is going downhill as well as our self esteem. It’s really going along that slippery slope. The two really go hand in hand.

And Stage 3 is when we just begin the process of letting go. We’ve denied it. We’ve become defensive. Now we’re like, okay, alright, I guess I just need to let this go. And there’s even some anger that’s involved in there. You’re hanging on to that defensiveness, but you’re trying desperately to let it go. In Stage 3, your performance, whether it’s in your life or in work is absolutely just at rock bottom, and therefore so is your self esteem, your self belief. Because you’re in that flatline zone. It’s Oh, how did this happen to me? And with coaching, when people are in stage three of change, you really want to recognize when they’re in stage three, because that’s a lot of hard work to get people to move out of stage three into stage four, which is to begin to adapt.

This is, maybe this is what my life looks like now. What am I going to do with this? What job will I go for? How do I look at my strengths and my talents again? What do I need to do? So you start to think about that problem solving and the goal setting again.

Stage five is normalizing. This is The new me. This is my new reality. This is what a great life looks like for me now. Your self esteem starts to come up. Your performance starts to come up because you’re feeling better. You’re normalizing. And this is truly where I want to be because I recognize that this is my new reality. So again, whether I’m working with a team inside an organization or an executive, or I’m working with a person, the change cycle and understanding those five cycles help people to reduce that fear and apprehensive and realize that they will go through these stages, but they’re going to come out of it okay.

Soul: Yum. Well done. I, I never really thought about how the grief cycle is so overlaid in parallel process with the fear cycle. Very interesting point there. Tony, I’m curious, when a person’s going through these five cycles, and obviously everyone around them, their family, their friends, their co workers if they have them. They’re going through these cycles with them, to some degree, because they’re shifting. Things are changing. What happens when you see someone, stuck in Stage 3. And their family really wants them to get to Stage 4, or vice versa? There’s this jet lag going on in a person’s social network. How do we get everyone in alignment?

Toni: First of all, I would encourage communication. Once you bring awareness to what that person is going through as far as change and that fear of change, then they need to communicate that to those around them. Because they’re going to have the key to that information, but the people around them don’t, right? They’re not going to understand where they are. But you also can’t push somebody through that. Someone going through the change cycle can not be pushed through those stages based on anybody else’s timeline but their own.

That would be very dangerous to do. How I deal with change, Soul, is going to be different than how you deal with it. And I have no right to push you through it just because I’m going through it a little faster than you are. However, I might encourage you to use different tools and resources to help pull you out of this just so that your self belief starts to go up. Your self talk is a little bit more on the positive side. But I’m not going to force you or impose a timeline on you. That’s anyone else’s expectations other than your own. So it’s all about communication.

Soul: Especially communicating with oneself. What I just heard you say is, someone helping you through the process really has to be, for lack of better words, a very savvy gardener. I just imagine watching a rose blossom. You can’t peel the leaves down on the rose and make it blossom. And I think to myself, how many different programs have I seen advertised that pretty much do that? It’s okay, you’ve got one week for this. And shame on you if you can’t get it done by this time. And then there’s these programs that make you feel bad. Barrel through things just because that’s the way the program is written. What I’m hearing you say is if you’re in one of those programs, it’s absolutely okay to put on the brakes or step on the gas as you feel it’s needed.

Toni: And it’s very difficult to do this on your own. That’s why to have a mentor, a coach someone that can help you through to recognize the cycles. To become aware of them. To understand how it’s going to impact your performance and your relationships. How it will impact your self esteem. Then you’re going to move through them. But you can’t force them. You cannot force them. And a lot of people inside of businesses, they try to force you. Their employees through change. Just get over it. Move through it. They don’t realize what the impact is of change on people’s performance. If business owners don’t get a clue as far as how the change cycles happen and how that impacts performance, their own productivity and profit could be severely impacted .

Soul: Oh! Completely. I know we could spend the next five hours talking about this. One hour for each stage, easily. But for now, we’re going to bring it to a rap. Toni, thank you so much for adding your wisdom to the mix.

Toni: Thank you very much for having me, Soul.

Soul: Next we get to meet our final expert, Rick Reynolds. Rick is a licensed hypnotherapist. I will give you a heads up. If you can carve out the space to have a little bit of quiet time before you listen to his show it will be well worth it. Have uninterrupted space to listen to the show so that you can get the most out of it.

We offer this series to you for free because we know how important it is to you to set the stage to be able to create the space to make change and then actually follow through with making those changes. Now of course we’d be delighted to receive your attention by sending this series out to all of your family and friends so that you can help them learn how to befriend change with ease and grace.

Thanks again for reading. If you need assistance with embracing change, we’ll see you in class.

Aloha!