We all struggle with change. Most of the time it’s impatience with those around us who aren’t changing. it may be our people, our customers, others in our organization.
They struggle with change, they resist it, they get confused.
Change is always tough, it threatens us, it puts us in unfamiliar situations. We may be uncomfortable, we may not know what to do or how to do it. We want to revert to what we know, we take comfort in the familiar–even though we know these things may be holding us back.
Too often we forget that at the root of any change initiative, we are looking at behavioral change. We think change is about the new initiative, the new training program, the new tools, the new strategy, the new priorities. Those may be what we are trying to achieve, but to do those things, inevitability, we are looking for new behaviors associated with those initiatives.
If we are leaders, initiating the change, we struggle with “them.” Why are they resisting, why can’t they move forward, why aren’t they executing? We focus on thing things we are changing, not the behaviors we need to change. It becomes about the training or the tool, but not the new behaviors or habits we need to adopt to change.
Then, again, one of the biggest challenges is it’s always them.
We forget that we need to change our behaviors, as well.
Ironically, this may be the fastest route to change.
If we change our own behaviors, we change the people around us.
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