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Exploring how humans connect and get stuff done together, with Dan Hammond and Pia Lee from Squadify.
We need groups of humans to help navigate the world of opportunities and challenges, but we don't always work together effectively. This podcast tackles questions such as "What makes a rockstar team?" "How can we work from anywhere?" "What part does connection play in today's world?"
You'll also hear the thoughts and views of those who are running and leading teams across the world.
[00:00:00] Dan: It doesn't need to be said that we are living in times of change and turbulence. Global uncertainty, as it has been dubbed, rolls down into our organizations, communities, families, and teams. But are we leading it and responding to it in the wrong way? Our guest on this episode of We Not Me thinks
[00:00:16] Dan: so.
[00:00:17] Pia: Jeff, weather Hold started out as a behavioral scientist before taking that knowledge into healthcare to support organizations in making change in a refreshingly different and effective way. If you are leading change or feel expected to change, this one's for you. Hello and welcome back to We, not Me, the podcast or we explore how humans connect to get stuff done together. I'm Dan Hammond.
[00:00:43] And I'm Pia Lee.
[00:00:44] Dan: Pia, we are in that time of the year where our seasons are crossing, aren't we?
[00:00:49] Dan: So, um, we are in the northern hemisphere, um, heading into spring and you are heading into winter. So this is one of the, we've talked about this a lot on the, on the potter, how it's sort of have these weird different experiences in our working relationship.
[00:01:04] Pia: very dark and very dark mornings for us. So we change clocks this weekend and then suddenly we get a bit of, we get actually a reprieve for a short period of time with some lighter mornings. Actually, I find that not anyone else is listening to that listening. I, I don't, yes, the days get shorter, but when your mornings are so dark, I find that a really hard way to.
[00:01:25] Pia: Begin your day in the dark. I mean, you, you, you spend half your year in the dark in
[00:01:30] Dan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Both intellectually and physically. yes.
[00:01:36] Pia: Yes, exactly. Uh, but it's, it's, I mean, when, when, you know, it's, I notice here when it's the summer and it's light mornings and it's sort of gets light from, you know, five onwards, you're really quite. For me, I'm quite perky getting up. I don't mind getting up at six. It's like, it's lovely. It's like get going. But it's much harder when it's peach dark.
[00:01:55] Dan: Oh no, it's hard. It's really hard. I went, it's, it was light this morning. I went for a run for the first time in months. 'cause I just, I was full of the joys of spring, literally. Um, obviously I couldn't move through the rest of the day, but,
[00:02:07] Pia: and I think that's almost, quite, uh, quite appropriate in some ways 'cause it's the psychology. Of change? Is it not changing seasons? Oh my God. Did you see that
[00:02:16] Dan: The, the segue
[00:02:17] Dan: was so smooth. Oh, that's
[00:02:19] Pia: is as if we rehearsed it,
[00:02:21] Dan: It,
[00:02:21] Pia: yeah. So let's, so tell us about today's
[00:02:25] Dan: yeah. So we're talking about talking with Jeff Weatherall today, and he has Uh, you know, he, yeah, he has a strong view. I think he has a really strong view about what change is, the fact that we're doing it wrongly and a much better way of doing it. And, and, um, while he has deep lovers of expertise, he's able to share, um, the principles that any.
[00:02:47] Dan: Manager can have. And I think that this conversation just blows up change, um, in a, in a positive way and comes back down again in a way that we can really do something with and reconnect with our humanity through it. So, um, yeah, it's a wonderful conversation. let's head over and hear from Jeff now.
[00:03:04] Pia: welcome to We, not Me, Jeff.
[00:03:09] Jeff: Thank you so much, pian. Thank you, Dan. I'm excited for the conversation. Grateful to be here.
[00:03:13] Pia: We are too. When a world is a wash with change, this is going to be a very rich conversation, I think. And, uh, you probably know that before we, we unleash questions to you, we, we, we throw you into the den with Dan. So, um, I'm gonna hand. Hand over to him now
[00:03:31] Dan: So I've genuine, I've cut the, cut the pack, Jeff, and the card you have and I, I'm giving, it's a, it's a nice, this is giving you a chance to sort of let down probably what is your natural modesty for a few minutes. What the most selfish thing I selfless thing I do? What's the most selfless thing that you do?
[00:03:49] Jeff: What a great question. I think the most selfless thing that I do on a regular basis is to suspend judgment, is to put the natural impulse that we all have to make a quick judgment aside. Regardless of how strong feelings may be in the name of learning more about the person I'm speaking with, and sometimes often enough, having my mind changed in profound ways that I had no way of anticipating.
[00:04:18] Dan: Nice. How, so how do you create that space between the impulse and response? What? What are your personal tips? It's tricky, isn't it?
[00:04:26] Jeff: Well, my, my quick answer to that is practice, because I don't wanna present myself as naturally good at it. I'm not, and I think there's a, there's a risk. For anyone who teaches something to stand, who stands up in front of an audience or speaks to people, a listenership, of coming off like an expert is if, you know, I've got this, I've got this down in every aspect of my life, and that could not be further from the truth, and I don't think that I'm alone in that.
[00:04:50] Jeff: One of the things that I have learned is how important it is to change both the way you listen and the way you speak, and how changing the way you speak. Changes the way you listen and vice versa. So learning to speak to others differently helped me learn to listen differently, which has helped make it easier to continue speaking to them in those ways.
[00:05:11] Dan: and Jeff, to be honest, you're dangling at something in front of us there, so we want to get stuck into it as soon as possible. Um, but before we do that, let's hear a little bit more about Jeff. How did you get to this point today? Give us a bio in a box.
[00:05:22] Jeff: So I started my career in behavioral science research, uh, focused on memory and attention what information we take in and how we retain it. Uh, after a few years, I realized I was much more motivated to be a practitioner than a researcher. I was interested in how we get people to use knowledge rather than generating new knowledge.
[00:05:39] Jeff: So I shifted to professional education and workforce development at the time, and I began to learn about and build my expertise in change management and continuous improvement, which I first had to learn were fields to begin with. I transitioned to healthcare and community health many years ago, which is where I focused for most of my career.
[00:05:57] Jeff: Uh, and then went on my out on my own and started working with clients eight years ago. Um, as the founder and principal first of o he advisors a change management consultancy, and then at MI for Health, which is focused more specifically on helping people have better conversations with one another about change.
[00:06:12] Pia: it was interesting, Dan, I was thinking of that que that answer to that selfless question was not as really as beautifully created. And, uh, and actually sort of like a really well thought response from Jeff mine was I have to generally am the person that picks up the poo from the animals.
[00:06:30] Pia: And if the children vomit. Right?
[00:06:32] Pia: and when I'm doing it, I'm thinking this is my selfless act.
[00:06:35] Dan: I look, I think what you've done there is p shown our listener that, that your selflessness can be very broad, you should be proud, whichever end is the sort of, you know, that sort of behavioral control end of things or at the, at the other end of the elementary canal. So, yeah, very practical. So no, good job pier and well done.
[00:06:56] Dan: Keep going, keep going. 'cause uh, it's good that you have that job. Very grounding that one.
[00:07:01] Pia: So let's dive into this topic then, Jeff. Let's talk about, so I mean, I don't think I've ever seen such a precarious and turbulent. Work environment. As I'm seeing now, you know, the large number of people that I know and have worked with that, um, currently don't have jobs, um, or are looking for jobs, um, organizations that are restructuring, trying to find our way in this hybrid world.
[00:07:28] Pia: Do we, you know, which days are we in the office? and then the advent of ai. So We, we almost don't have any certainty around us. So that therefore means we have to be friends with change. We have to think about it in a different way.
[00:07:46] Jeff: I think it's a double-edged sword how badly this work is needed right now. Because on some level it's gratifying to be able to help people and on another level, wouldn't we all like for it to be a little less needed? one of the things that I really appreciate about this work is how there's always room to find common ground.
[00:08:03] Jeff: With someone I'm speaking with. In any situation where you work with other people, you will at some point find yourself wanting them to change, and that could be peers or staff. It could be your clients, it could be your neighbors or the communities in which you work. And often you're gonna have little, if any, control over whether and how they do change.
[00:08:23] Jeff: You're gonna need them to choose to change in order to achieve your goals. You're gonna have very limited control over it. That's the rub. So change management and continuous improvement as fields, which are both things that, you know, I've worked with and taught for some time, provide us with structures for doing that.
[00:08:40] Jeff: They provide us with what I like to think of as the technical tools and skills for achieving change in a more intentional way. A lot of change management conversations. Stop there. I think they stopped there to the detriment of the learner. As complicated as change is, we're very good at making it look and sound simple.
[00:08:58] Jeff: We reduce it to a technical exercise when in reality it's highly relational. How we speak with one another is at least as important of a part of change as the technical aspects of it. Conversations matter, so that technical guidance. People are more familiar with when they think of change management or continuous improvement.
[00:09:16] Jeff: It is essential, but it is also insufficient. And the evidence that we have on the effectiveness of change management bears that out. It tells us we need relational tools and skills to translate our plans into results, and also to distribute the work of change so that we don't leave it all on leadership.
[00:09:32] Dan: Jeff, just dive into that a little bit. The, the what, not what, what's the name? Describe a sort of change initiative, where it's purely the technical side that's looked at. What does that look like when we're missing this other part?
[00:09:45] Jeff: So when we think about technical change management, what we often think about is a long-term planning process, What will the stages of change look like? What are our roles in change? Who are our sponsors? Who are our managers, who are departmental leaders? Who. Who is action required from? What are the measures that are gonna tell us if we've achieved our ultimate goal, but also if we've achieved the interim goals that we know are important?
[00:10:06] Jeff: Those also function as diagnostics, so when change doesn't go as anticipated and full disclosure, I've never been part of a change that went as anticipated. That's part of the work, Measures. Help us understand where it went wrong. Where we can intervene and where we may need to think differently than we anticipated.
[00:10:24] Jeff: So that process of establishing a plan and a calendar and roles and measures and ways of communicating and meeting the structures that support change, they're really important. I continue to teach those and work with clients on those on a daily basis. I'm grateful for them. But if we stopped there.
[00:10:41] Jeff: We see very limited results and we've got good research to back up where those limitations are and, and why those, why those limitations come about.
[00:10:49] Pia: And I think that then helps to, understanding those limitations helps to bit, bring greater empathy and I, and I'm assuming that that's a big part of change of really trying to put yourself into somebody else's. Position. I mean, I was working with the team yesterday and, and they were talking about how direction, lots of chaotic change happens with no why or context. It's just that's what's happening. So it's almost like change is weaponized at that point a little bit.
[00:11:21] Jeff: Weaponize is an interesting word to use and I, It resonates with me. I think I've worked with a lot of people who feel as if change has been weaponized. What I hear when, when you share that with me, Pia, is that, um, their needs haven't been heard or acknowledged. And in the case that you just shared, their need is to understand why in the world we're making this change to begin with. So when we think about the barriers to change. The most fundamental barrier, and honestly the most common one that we encounter in organizational change is that people don't know what's happening or why it's happening. Right? There's a famous George Bernard Shaw quote that I'm gonna butcher. That's something to the effect of the biggest mistake we make in communication is assuming that we've, we've, we've communicated
[00:12:02] Dan: That it's happened. Yeah.
[00:12:04] Jeff: so that's, that's the most fundamental barrier that we encounter and also the most common, and what we know is that if we don't intervene at that level, what we do further down the process doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how well-trained a team is in change and how to make it, and how confident they can be in their role to do it if they don't understand why it's happening.
[00:12:26] Jeff: All of that intervention is for N because we haven't addressed a need that's frankly more fundamental for them.
[00:12:32] Dan: So P as, as Peter said, we're working with all the clients at the moment to whom change is happening. and. Without a date, they have not been consulted. Um, they are just expected to do things. What would you say to someone at the top of one of these organizations, or dare I mentioned it, a private equity company that's bought an organization who's just saying.
[00:12:52] Dan: That's all nice for you guys, but I, they just need to do this thing and, and actually yes, I can. I'm sure it, you know, it'd be nice if we did the relationship stuff, but actually I can, why do I need to bother? I can just tell them to do it.
[00:13:04] Jeff: The best surveys that we have on this, to my knowledge, come from a company called Prosci, which is a change management organization here in the US when they report the most commonly experienced barriers to change for employees.
[00:13:16] Jeff: The first one is a lack of awareness of the reason for change, but they also talk about fear. They talk about support and trust in management. They talk about inclusion. When we switch to managers, they talk about organizational culture. They also talk about a lack of awareness, so that's a commonly held barrier.
[00:13:31] Jeff: They talk about buy-in. They talk about a lack of confidence in their ability to manage the people side of change. These are all very relational obstacles. So the things that are keeping us from realizing the investment we make in a more technical and top down, for lack of a better term, approach to change.
[00:13:49] Jeff: Are by and large relational, and they're a product of the fact that in most cases we don't even attempt to teach people how to get better at this. We teach people how to think about change without teaching them how to speak to it, and this limits the impact of our changes in profound ways.
[00:14:07] Jeff: So creating change requires learning how to speak to others who have different perspectives on it. And I try to keep it as different perspectives. I don't talk about people as being resistant or averse ' cause that doesn't apply to their attitude toward every change. And often when we refer to people as averse or resistant, it's a result of things that are not within their control and they don't particularly appreciate being considered that way.
[00:14:27] Jeff: I certainly wouldn't. So having those conversations is not something that most people get good at by accident. Many of us struggle with having conversations about change. It takes skill and practice to have product productive conversations that balance our desire to see change, our respect for others' decisions, hopefully, and our own wellbeing.
[00:14:48] Jeff: How often are we having these conversations? The good news is there's decades of evidence. Help us understand what works and what doesn't work in helping others change on their own terms. The bad news is that in my experience, most people use very little of this knowledge if they're aware of it at all.
[00:15:05] Jeff: So I ground the work that I do in motivational interviewing. Uh, also known as mi. So MI was developed a little more than 40 years ago by William Miller and Steven Rolnick to enable helping professionals in recovery and mental health settings. To have better conversations with their patients and clients. So MI was initially seen as a client facing intervention in specific settings because that's where it started.
[00:15:27] Jeff: That's where it began to work. Some people continue to see it that way, but in the decade since we have accumulated a substantial body of evidence, more than 2,500 randomized control trials and counted to. The MI is helpful across a broad range of fields from health to athletics, coaching to law enforcement, to career advisement, to organizational change.
[00:15:50] Jeff: And we know now that the skills of MI are helpful across any conversation we can have about change, particularly for leaders and managers. We know that the structure of an MI conversation is helpful in certain kinds of settings and that there are other structures and approaches. Which can be leveraged to use these skills in different settings.
[00:16:07] Jeff: But unfortunately, our reach as practitioners of MI and other conversational approaches has not kept pace with the breadth of this evidence. We still largely teach these skills to helping professionals, and we fail to reach a broader audience, and that's a gap that I am particularly motivated to help fill.
[00:16:23] Pia: it's an interesting one, isn't it? That we, conversation is the key part of our connection as human beings, but the quality of it can be very dubious at times. And we can become we take shortcuts. It's almost like we can't, we can't be quite bothered with the psychology of it.
[00:16:38] Pia: We just tell people, and, and you know, as we talked about before, the show went on air, you know, and we're not seeing probably the best evidence of leadership around us. and, and, good, motivational understanding and interviewing going on. In terms of, uh, uh, our, our world leaders.
[00:16:57] Pia: so I'd like to take a couple of, a couple of, to use your words perspective, I'd like to think about a team member and how they can use this when change is being given to them. So they're, they're at the end of it. And then I'd like to think about. A leader of a team that has to help their team get through this.
[00:17:17] Pia: And then there'll also be executives listening to this that know that they have to create a big organizational change that is going to be painful for the org for the whole organization. I'd love to think about it from these, 'cause I think that covers a lot of our. Our, our listeners who are in one of those, one of those spots, either having it done to them, either having to lead that with their team or having to think, gosh, we've gotta do a big organizational change here. How are we going to do it?
[00:17:47] Jeff: maybe we'll start with the exec who's frustrated that they aren't seeing change, that they expect to see. Yeah. I think the first thing that I do is I try and make that distinction that we already discussed between technical and relational change management, clear they need to.
[00:18:01] Jeff: Those relational skills and conversation as a skillset and understand that this is a thing that they can learn and get better at. And from there I talk with leaders and executives about ambivalence as a foundation for their approach to change. So we often assume that people have fixed attitudes toward change, and that our work is to convince them to let go of their attitudes and embrace our, this is wholly unrealistic and also wholly unnecessary. People don't have fixed attitudes toward change. By and large, we are ambivalent about change. We have reasons that we want to consider change, and we have reasons that we don't.
[00:18:34] Jeff: If I won the lottery tomorrow, I would have reasons to be reluctant to accept the money. They wouldn't be strong enough to keep me from taking it.
[00:18:41] Jeff: Mind you, but How will this impact my relationships? Who do I tell? How is this gonna change my life? Do I have worries for my safety? I don't think anybody is gonna. Take these as a reason not to take the money, but it's important to acknowledge our feelings about change are not uniform, right?
[00:18:59] Jeff: We are all ambivalent about change. So approaching change from this perspective greatly clarifies and simplifies our work as leaders. So we hear ambivalence in conversation with people expressed as change talk and sustained talk. This is some of the jargon for motivational interviewing. Some of the terminology change talk is simply.
[00:19:17] Jeff: Somebody's own language for change and sustained talk is their own language for the current state. And we hear both of these in conversations about change often in the same sentence from people who we speak with. So we learn what we think as we hear ourselves speak. We don't have fixed attitudes about change.
[00:19:35] Jeff: MI provides us with an opportunity to hear ourselves speak. That's the first step toward change. People don't change when they let go of their beliefs wholesale. They change when their existing reasons to change get a little stronger, or when their existing reasons for the current state get a little weaker. And that opens up a world of possibilities for leaders and executives. They can let go of the unreasonable expectation that they're gonna convince someone. We're not gonna wholly convince anyone of anything, and we don't have to. They can acknowledge there's multiple paths forward if it's not a single act of convincing someone to adopt my perspective.
[00:20:11] Jeff: There are lots of ways in which to increase the volume on change talk or decrease the volume on sustained talk. And if some of those are harder or out of reach, then there are other ways that we can move forward. It takes our egos out of it. Nobody's gonna tell you how right you are. Nobody's gonna tell you how wrong they were.
[00:20:29] Jeff: If we're counting on those moments, I'm, I'm here to break your heart, they're not gonna happen. But small actions have a big impact and accrue. And often the things that drive people to accept change, they seem very small, but in context you can understand how they've added up. This also creates less work.
[00:20:46] Jeff: It turns out that people are much more likely to accept and sustain changes they make for their own reasons. This is way less exhausting than trying to compel everyone to change, and we ignore those reasons to our own detriment. So when people are intrinsically motivated, when they're motivated from within and we attempt to motivate them extrinsically, we make it less likely that they will change.
[00:21:06] Jeff: If you have intrinsic motivation, and I as a supervisor and executive don't use it, I instead attempt to extrinsically motivate you, you are less likely to change that intrinsic motivation has been violated and people don't let go of that lightly.
[00:21:21] Jeff: So what I would say to those executives and leaders is that intrinsic motivation exists for any change, and as a leader, you're either working with it or against it. You're either navigating it intentionally or you're navigating it blindly, and I would vastly prefer to help you navigate it intentionally.
[00:21:37] Dan: That is a fascinating one, Jeff, and it ties completely with my own experience. Uh, probably both as a not very good manager, but also as a managed person. Um, in change where. My intrinsic motivation, ha, and I've seen it on across a whole team, actually has been extinguished by a leader, who have intrinsic motivation.
[00:21:58] Dan: They, they was great just seeing it extinguished with that Dr. That extrinsic drive. So, but I ha I wasn't, uh, I've observed it, but I didn't know that that was the supported by the research and the, and the thinking, but it so totally, totally holds water.
[00:22:12] Pia: so let's paint a scenario, which Dan and I have come across a lot in the last, uh, particular last couple of years. So there's a restructure. Um, the organization needs to be changed. Um, it's quite dramatic and. A team leader of, of any level, whether they're a senior leader or a middle manager or um, or, or frontline leader, they're tasked with managing themselves and managing their team through this process. and. They may be privy, to information, way before the team knows what's happening. That's another one. I'm sure you've had this one, Dan, you know, where you know what is coming and then you've gotta somehow create that sense of security.
[00:22:58] Pia: No one else knows it's coming, but you've also don't, and you, and you're trying to manage. I guess the sort of inauthenticity, 'cause you've been quite open with your team and then all of a sudden you have to manage those different, pieces of information.
[00:23:12] Jeff: we're caught in the middle and that that weight always, in my experience, rests heaviest on middle management. They have both of those responsibilities, right? I don't feel like there's anything unethical about having to work within limitations on what you can and can't share. And I don't feel like that's disingenuous.
[00:23:30] Jeff: I feel like that's honest. So, you know, there's a number of things that I coach managers to do before any change conversation, but one of them is to understand what are the ethical limitations? Where are you constrained in your actions? Where do you know things? They don't. And that for me is really important.
[00:23:47] Jeff: I think it's easy as a manager to carry a lot of guilt and a lot of weight as a result of those constraints. Those constraints are not your decision, and I do think some of that involves as a staff member, as hard as this is su suspending disbelief for long enough to extend some empathy to your manager.
[00:24:04] Jeff: Your leaders, all of the decisions that are being communicated to you aren't their decisions. Even if you're the CEO of an organization, you've got a board to answer to. And if you are a good leader or a good manager, if you're at the top of your game that day, your people will never know. They'll never know whether it was you or whether it was the organization.
[00:24:22] Jeff: So If I'm speaking with a manager who's feeling weight from that, who feels like that's inauthentic or that's burdensome to them, I wanna do whatever I can to relieve that burden. That is your role as a manager, and it is challenging, and you have every right to struggle with it, and you deserve help in working through it.
[00:24:39] Jeff: But I hope at the end of the day that you don't feel inauthentic authentic by having to work within the constraints of your role, because that's just part of the reality of, of working together.
[00:24:49] Dan: someone pier you and I know Ellen Fredericks, um, is a, um, a very experienced leader. She was leading some change in an organization in New York and um, she'd have these regular meetings with her teams. And I think this is just. Class she'd say, you can ask me anything and I'm gonna have one or three answers.
[00:25:06] Dan: I'll, I'll answer it. I'll tell you. I don't know. Or I'll tell you, I know, but I can't tell you. And she just came. And I think that sort of level of transparency is such a simple thing, isn't it? These three categories and I that really stayed with me. And Ellen's a very, very smart leader.
[00:25:21] Jeff: or even back it up a step from that. We that can't be in bounds right now.
[00:25:25] Dan: Right. We can't talk about that topic right now. You don't have to acknowledge, you don't, that you know, right. If you're a secure enough leader to be able to acknowledge that, that's great. Good for them. But if you're not, we can't talk about that right now. I look forward to having that conversation and we will have it. When I'm able to have it.
[00:25:43] Pia: Okay. The la last one, team member having the change. so how do you manage yourself, I guess, in that situation? Um, because the brain runs wild, the amygdala has a response, and it stirs up a lot of emotion and it's sort of quite easy to sort of get chaos in the crowd.
[00:26:02] Pia: Brewing, you know, when you're, when you're part of that. So, yeah, a couple of quick tips. How, how do we, how do we manage that as individuals?
[00:26:09] Jeff: I think peer support goes a long way, so I don't wanna pretend that that's an answer, but I think it's very important to have positive and constructive peer support and to not feel like you're worrying or suffering alone through change. Change is hard. Having to resolve those feelings of ambivalence.
[00:26:25] Jeff: You know, something else we know from the research, people generally don't like ambivalence. Yes, we're all ambivalent about change. We generally don't like it. Right. That's cognitive dissonance theory in a nutshell. Some people are more inclined to accept ambivalence. Most aren't. Generally it's an undesirable feeling that we have to help.
[00:26:44] Jeff: One another resolve. So I don't wanna talk about ambivalence as if it's something inert where we can just say, oh, I'm ambivalent. You're ambivalent. Everything's fine. It's not fine. It's a challenging feeling to resolve and understanding that, that it's not just you that we all struggle with. Having those feelings about change is important.
[00:27:01] Jeff: I also think it's important to understand the hierarchy of of needs when it comes to accepting change. And that starts with awareness, right? That it's happening and why it's happening. That can be the value to you, to your clients, to your organization.
[00:27:14] Jeff: If you're not clear on that, you deserve to be clear on that, and that doesn't mean you'll necessarily like the answer, but it does mean that you deserve an answer as a staff member. From there, we can start to think about more personal needs, like how does this impact my role? How does this impact my relationships with others? Is there room in this change for me to have agency? For me to make decisions that impact my work, and the answer is always that there's room somewhere. So those things are very important. We think about those sometimes as the desire components of change. If those needs aren't met, then we're not gonna be very successful.
[00:27:48] Jeff: Moving on to how we actually carry that out. From there, we can think about do we know how to make the change? Are we confident in doing that in the course of day-to-day work, which is very different. We can understand how something works in theory, but not be confident in practice. And the interventions for those are very different, right?
[00:28:05] Jeff: One benefits from instruction and one from coaching. And then finally, if we're successful, we can think about how this is reinforced over time and how we transition change from being changed to being how we work. But understanding something about those needs I find important. Because it enables staff members to legitimize things that often they're already feeling.
[00:28:25] Jeff: I don't understand what we're doing, why we're doing this. I don't understand why this is necessary. Now, I don't understand how this helps clients, but I get the gist that. it's supposed to.
[00:28:34] Pia: That legitimizing is a really key part of it. because that, there's like a, there's a cognitive process that has to happen where you, you're taking that information, you're having an emotional response to it, which I think is also authentic and I think that, I think, I think legitimizing that.
[00:28:54] Pia: Emotional response is a key part of It. too, rather than actually trying to think, well, that's separate, that's work. And of course, you, people invest themselves in their work, in their career and quite often in the organization. And so that feels a bit like a breach of trust in some ways that, that emotionally you have to process.
[00:29:15] Jeff: It is a breach of trust. I work with a lot of mission-driven organizations and we ask people to invest themselves personally in their work right up until it's inconvenient. Unfortunately, we have to deal with it when it's inconvenient too. So that's something that we have to be prepared as managers and leaders to deal with, but also as staff members, you know, I would coach folks to think about how to be constructive with that feedback that they share.
[00:29:40] Jeff: You know, they're constructive and positive ways to say, I know you think we're clear on why we're doing this, but actually we're not. Or I'm not sure how this is going to impact my role, and it's tough for me to get past that.
[00:29:52] Dan: motivational interviewing sounds, it is obviously a very deep practice and um, requires some, and you've said that it's, it's sort of mostly in the hands of sort of practitioners, people outside organizations trying to support, um, managers and leaders, or, or team members for that matter going through change. What could our listener do to make a step into this world though?
[00:30:16] Jeff: This work should be more accessible and, and I'm not alone in being driven to make this work more accessible. So, you know, I would legitimize that need. It shouldn't be in the hand of a few practitioners. I think anybody can hear this and benefit from it. There's two, two baby steps I would call out.
[00:30:30] Jeff: One is to start listening for ambivalence. Start listening for change and sustained talk and see what you hear. See how that changes your perception of people's attitudes toward change. And another thing that I coach people to do early on is to start asking fewer questions and offering more reflections in conversations about change.
[00:30:51] Jeff: So instead of relying on questions where you need questions, make them more open if you can, but rely more on reflections, reflecting back the meaning, the emotion, the values, or the ambivalence that you hear in other people's speech. This leads to much more productive and meaningful conversations about change than relying solely on questions and frankly shares power.
[00:31:15] Jeff: The person that you're having a conversation with in ways the questions can't.
[00:31:18] Dan: that's really powerful, Jeff. I think this is a hundred, hundred and 20th episodes, something like that. And no one has ever said ask fewer questions, uh, on the show, but that is a really legitimate reason to do so. I can, yeah. That, that really lands, and I'm guessing the reflection, if I could sort of interpret in my own sort of terms, would be it.
[00:31:37] Dan: It shows people that they're heard. So you're not just asking a series of questions, I'll absorb that. It's it is reflecting it back so they hear it back and you can check for understanding, but fundamentally that you are deepening the conversation by ensuring that they've, that they know that that's been taken on board.
[00:31:54] Jeff: that's right. So if somebody had feedback to share with me that, you know what, this session, this session stinks,
[00:32:00] Dan: Yeah.
[00:32:00] Jeff: I, I could reflect back, meaning you're not getting enough out of this. I could reflect their emotions. You're frustrated by what you've heard so far. I could reflect their values. It's important to you to use your time well. All of those are things that'll prompt a deeper conversation that they're differently invested in than a question might.
[00:32:18] Dan: that's excellent. Alright. Top tip. That one. That's a, that's, that's a, that's a golden nugget for our listener there. Um, so Jeff, thank you so much for these insights and, um, it's, it's such a timely, uh, timely podcast. This one, as Pierre said, could you just, just final question, what is your. Media recommendation, as we call it. A book. TV series. TV show, a, a podcast. What's, what are your, what's your recommendation for our listener?
[00:32:44] Jeff: I will start with a book, um, how Minds Change by David McCraney. This was published two or three years ago at this point. it is a great read and a really thoughtful examination of some of the approaches that I draw on in my work. It doesn't focus as much on motivational interviewing, but that's okay.
[00:33:02] Jeff: There's a lot else out there to offer. Um, and David McCraney is an exceptional writer and I think does a great job covering those topics. The other thing I would offer, which is a bit of a risk, is an email newsletter. If anybody thinks they need one more email newsletter, you may actually want this one.
[00:33:20] Jeff: So Melissa and Jonathan Nightingale. We run a consultancy based in Toronto, Ontario called the Raw Signal Group, and they focus on helping people be better managers. They are as thoughtful and engaging and have as great a sense of humor as anyone who I know that are doing this work, they publish a newsletter every other week that is required reading from me, and as proof of their sense of humor. You can sign up for the newsletter by going to world's best newsletter.com.
[00:33:48] Dan: Perfect. Perfect. Thank you, Jeff. Well, that link and links to the many mold, many, other piece of research and resources, um, et cetera, that you've, uh, you've shared Jeff, that'll all be in the show notes. So, but for now, it just remains for us to say a huge thank you, uh, to you for joining us all the way from Maine and, uh, for, for just a, a really.
[00:34:09] Dan: Powerful conversation and I'm hoping that when we'll also put a link of, and we'll put a link so that people can get in touch with you as well in the show notes. Thank you, Jeff.
[00:34:17] Jeff: Always happy to answer questions. Thank you, Dan. I really enjoyed
[00:34:23] Dan: Yeah. Whenever I think of change, and I, I think this might be true for a lot of people, you think about these change initiatives, you know, we've got a reorg or we've got a, um, or we're going to have a change of culture, or we're going to do whatever in an organization. But actually the way that, uh, Jeff framed it was that change is what leaders do all the time actually.
[00:34:43] Dan: And we're, we're always trying to. Help people to change. I mean, that's, that's sort of a bit of leadership really. so it sort of, it changed my view really. And then it brings it down to those everyday habits of how you do that. Are you coercing people or just saying, this is the best way and how do I talk you into it?
[00:35:01] Dan: And I think people often see leadership by that. and people talk about influence? I'm very suspicious of that word because it's sort of, I've got the answer and I can influence you to do it. And I think Jeff really blew that up. and said, no, it's not that. It's about a, it's a team sport actually. It's the two of you, um, engaging around, around this change. And, and yes, you might have some ideas about sort of what the change is, but you have to do that together.
[00:35:26] Pia: And so that. Then makes change, as Jeff said, relational and conversations matter. So the co the conversation that you are having, what did you think about his, his view on ambivalence?
[00:35:39] Dan: So that, that was actually made me have a little chuckle because I sort of, that word is so, well, it's sort of ambivalent in itself, isn't it? It's sort of that he, what he said was, People assume that people are ne that people in organizations are negative about change, whereas they're mostly ambivalent.
[00:35:56] Dan: Thought. That's a brilliant insight. They're actually, they're just sort of sitting there. They're static, they're not, not trying to, they're not particularly. Trying to push one way or the other. They're not being a break and they're not driving forward. So, I dunno why I found a music, but I thought it's just as truth that, that people are just there and those reasons for their ambivalence, it's just almost one thing is that you have to help people to move outta that space and explore the sustain and change, but at the same time, ideally help 'em to move, move on through. But they're starting in, in neutral gear, not in reverse.
[00:36:30] Pia: I think that might be impacted too by the level. The intensity of change. So I think there's sometimes a coping mechanism, you know, and if you look at the sort of psychology of behavioral change, the, the Kubler Ross and the, and the bridges sort of, you know, you're going through that, through the, the valley of, valley of Despair.
[00:36:49] Pia: Um, in, in change there, there is that denial element. I think that as a humans we're quite sophisticated about the way that we do that. And, and sometimes that ambivalence is a bit like, well, we'll wait and see. We'll wait and see whether this one is a real change or whether this is really going to, so I think there's a sometimes self preservation, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're going through stress in the whole.
[00:37:11] Pia: Process. So there's that denial helps to create a bit of a bubble. and I see that, and I, and then I see that because we've got some really clever people in these roles, that level of ambivalence, they, they don't even know they're in ambivalence. It's just a, I'm busy, it's another one. I'm busy doing what I'm
[00:37:29] Dan: absolutely right. And people are sort of, I think sometimes these change initiatives happen. It's almost something, oh, they're doing this now. They're, they're doing a, they're doing a thing about culture or they're, yes, they're reorganizing the business units and that, and that point where it comes down to you, 'cause no one's actually sat down and talked to you about it.
[00:37:47] Dan: So maybe the ambivalence. Probably also comes from just the lack of information or the sense that you are, yeah, you're right, denial, all kinds of, but you are, but you're just not involved in it. It's something, you know, like a wave, you duck down, it'll go over your head and then see what happens next. Um, but until that, as you say, that conversation happens and people start to ask you questions, and as Jess said, ref, have that reflected back to you to explore the impact on you and how you can.
[00:38:14] Dan: Contribute to the change or your doubts about it. It, it doesn't land on you really. I think the idea that people read, uh, the CEO's message and sort of translates it down to them, that's, it's, it's just not happening really. So loads of reasons for the ambivalence. I think it would be a good second potter to talk to Jeff and really unpick that, uh, unpick that for us.
[00:38:35] Pia: I think so. I think because of the nature of the, the context people are working at is so complex and the of change. you know, we're having it on the way that we work. We're having it relationship to the work. We're having it with ai, we're having it in, you know, in the, in the economy.
[00:38:51] Pia: I think it's also good to explore that. Is it a defense mechanism just to pre preserve our poor brains that are feeling a bit fried by this
[00:38:59] Pia: whole, whole experience?
[00:39:01] Dan: he did say that we are not comfortable in ambivalence, so I think that sort of makes sense as well. So it's not a comfortable place to be. It's not sort of Oh, great. This is great. I can just hide in that. No, it's, it's something. And there, so I'm sure that those conversations are, um, are really welcomed.
[00:39:15] Dan: And at the heart of this, and I know this is really close to Jeff's heart, is un understanding different people's perspectives. So as a leader, not to go into these meetings and. Yeah. To have that sense, you have to influence people, but to go in and understand people's perspectives is a completely different thing and potentially releases you from that sort of burden of having to be this, having to yeah, move people along, um, or at least may help 'em to, you know, force them to pretend to be moved along.
[00:39:44] Pia: think definitely a part two is required.
[00:39:46] Dan: Yeah, indeed, indeed, indeed. But that is it for this episode of We not Me. We Not Me is supported by Squadify. Squadify helps any team to build engagement and drive performance. You can find show notes where you are listening and also at squadify.net. If you've enjoyed the show, please do share the love and recommend it to your friends. We, not Me, is produced by Mark Steadman. Thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye from me.
[00:40:11] Pia: And it's goodbye from me.