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At some point in our lives we all get scared – of making the wrong decision, of not being a good parent, or that everyone will figure out we’re just making it up as we go.
I’ve spent years helping leaders work through fear, stress, and uncertainty. Now I’m making a podcast about how they face their fears and come out stronger.
It’s for founders, leaders, and business owners who feel like they’re constantly fighting uphill and not finding the balance they need to be effective at work and present at home.
00:00:00 Sally-Anne:
Imagine being asked to sit in silence for just one minute.
00:00:04 Sally-Anne:
No phone, no talking, nothing.
00:00:08 Sally-Anne:
When my guest today tried this with a room full of professionals, half of them couldn't last 30 seconds.
00:00:14 Sally-Anne:
So what does that tell us about how we handle change?
00:00:18 Sally-Anne:
I'm Sally Aneri and welcome to Fearless Forward, the podcast that asks leaders how they face their fears.
00:00:26 Sally-Anne:
Today I'm in conversation with a woman who's changed the narrative around one of the most destabilizing experiences of working life, losing your job.
00:00:36 Sally-Anne:
Eleanor Tweddle is a change consultant, facilitator, coach, speaker and author whose two books, Why Losing Your Job Could Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You and Another Door Opens and her business, Another Door, sum up her creative approach to seeing change as an opportunity.
00:00:54 Sally-Anne:
You're more than your job title, she says.
00:00:56 Sally-Anne:
Change, however unwelcome, is an opportunity to reimagine your future.
00:01:02 Sally-Anne:
Before her highly successful portfolio career, Eleanor was an executive in a succession of big companies over a 23-year period.
00:01:11 Sally-Anne:
She headed internal communications for the RAC, Virgin Atlantic, and Vodafone.
00:01:16 Sally-Anne:
And she was made redundant twice.
00:01:19 Sally-Anne:
The first, she took in her stride as temporary disruption.
00:01:23 Sally-Anne:
When the next one came, after years in senior global roles, she decided it was time for something new.
00:01:30 Sally-Anne:
So she started a blog about being made redundant.
00:01:33 Sally-Anne:
That generated a community, then a podcast, then the blog became a book, and the book turned into a business.
00:01:41 Sally-Anne:
Through workshops, programs, corporate partnerships, and one-to-one coaching, Eleanor helps individuals and organizations handle the messiness of change in a human, constructive way, using a five-step framework she's developed for this purpose, something she calls change mastery.
00:02:05 Sally-Anne:
Eleanor, tell us why might difficult change be a good thing?
00:02:10 Eleanor:
Oh, Sally-Anne, where do we start?
00:02:12 Eleanor:
Where do we start?
00:02:14 Eleanor:
Change.
00:02:15 Eleanor:
Sometimes when I do a talk, it depends on the audience, but I just start and say, so anyone going through change today?
00:02:23 Eleanor:
But it kind of makes me laugh because it sounds like I'm about to start talking about the change.
00:02:27 Eleanor:
Oh my God, there's a 50 year old woman on the stage and she's asking who's going to change?
00:02:31 Eleanor:
Where's she going with this?
00:02:32 Eleanor:
So it kind of makes me laugh about that question.
00:02:35 Eleanor:
But it's a funny thing, isn't it, change?
00:02:37 Eleanor:
Because it's everywhere and we go through it every day.
00:02:40 Eleanor:
As you just said, some stuff is more difficult than others, but it's all personal as well.
00:02:47 Eleanor:
So how to answer that question very directly
00:02:51 Eleanor:
is I think difficult change is a very personal thing.
00:02:55 Eleanor:
You could be sitting next to someone and they're having a ball at the same time as you're struggling with this change that you're both navigating.
00:03:02 Eleanor:
But the point is that if we take a little bit of time to just step out and think and slow down, then I think everyone can just find a way through.
00:03:13 Eleanor:
It's not that I'm saying we can all become sort of multimillionaires or get a success story out of change.
00:03:20 Eleanor:
But I think we can learn things.
00:03:22 Eleanor:
We can have a better day than perhaps we would have if we hadn't just done the thinking.
00:03:27 Eleanor:
And that's what my philosophy is all around.
00:03:29 Eleanor:
So that's what that's all about.
00:03:31 Eleanor:
That's sort of the another door opens philosophy is about how can we do change better and just sit with that question.
00:03:39 Sally-Anne:
And what I'm hearing there is not to fear it.
00:03:43 Sally-Anne:
Yeah.
00:03:44 Sally-Anne:
Given that our work often comes from a need to meet our own personal needs, right?
00:03:50 Sally-Anne:
What is it that drew you into this area of change and supporting people through change?
00:03:57 Eleanor:
Well, I almost had to do the sitting and thinking myself in terms of what next at various stages in life.
00:04:07 Eleanor:
So I guess the first disruption, we'll call it, that came along was a redundancy.
00:04:14 Eleanor:
So I'd done corporate life for over 20 years in senior positions in great brands.
00:04:20 Eleanor:
probably thought of myself as a corporate person and was doing fine.
00:04:24 Eleanor:
When I got made redundant, I just had one of those moments where you're getting an interview conversation going, feeling good about it, loved the guy that was asking questions.
00:04:33 Eleanor:
So why do you want this job?
00:04:36 Eleanor:
And something just made me want to say, oh, I don't.
00:04:38 Eleanor:
know what I'm doing here.
00:04:41 Eleanor:
What is going through my head?
00:04:43 Eleanor:
I obviously didn't do that because that would be weird.
00:04:46 Eleanor:
I carried on, but on the way home I remember driving back down the M5.
00:04:50 Eleanor:
We were at Bristol at the time, back down to Bristol, and I was thinking, what happened?
00:04:56 Eleanor:
What is that about?
00:04:58 Eleanor:
So actually from my perspective, it started to unruffle thoughts, but I didn't understand them.
00:05:03 Eleanor:
I thought it was just corporate.
00:05:05 Eleanor:
I thought that's all I would do and I did it okay and did it well.
00:05:09 Eleanor:
But something said, no, I think you maybe want something else.
00:05:12 Eleanor:
So that's where it all started for me, this sort of exploration of, well, what if you don't want to do what you do?
00:05:17 Eleanor:
So it was a very
00:05:18 Eleanor:
career change point of view at the beginning, but then it opened me up to all sorts of different explorations of change and understanding that actually I'm a change and comes.
00:05:30 Eleanor:
consultant by trade.
00:05:31 Eleanor:
I mean, that's what I've done.
00:05:32 Eleanor:
I've been head of comms and navigated change and transformation in organizations for 20 years.
00:05:37 Eleanor:
And yet I would never associate myself with that.
00:05:40 Eleanor:
It's more technical for me.
00:05:41 Eleanor:
And then starting to read more and listen more to change and how we get messy as humans just really started to fascinate me.
00:05:49 Eleanor:
And I started A blog about what do you do if you want to change who you are?
00:05:54 Eleanor:
Where do you start?
00:05:54 Eleanor:
And this was kind of 10 years ago, maybe when there wasn't as much talk about it as there is now.
00:05:59 Eleanor:
That's where it started.
00:06:01 Sally-Anne:
And I love that question, if you don't want to do what you do.
00:06:05 Sally-Anne:
And listening to that took a bit of courage, did it?
00:06:08 Sally-Anne:
Oh, courage is a good word, isn't it, Sally-Ann?
00:06:10 Eleanor:
Oh, courage.
00:06:12 Eleanor:
I kind of struggle with the courage thing.
00:06:14 Eleanor:
I've had to really dig deep into my Brene Brown to kind of go, what's courage when you're not doing something like saving lives?
00:06:21 Eleanor:
It's a weird thing, isn't it?
00:06:23 Eleanor:
Courage.
00:06:23 Eleanor:
I think I took a sort of a mad leap, is what I would call it, into this unknown world and think, well, what if I can start a business?
00:06:33 Eleanor:
That had never been on my radar.
00:06:35 Eleanor:
I don't think I would have ever thought that.
00:06:37 Eleanor:
And yet I had worked with business plans
00:06:40 Eleanor:
for 20 years, I understood what a good strategy looks like.
00:06:44 Eleanor:
I've helped create all sorts of products that are very well known on the high street and in our shops today.
00:06:51 Eleanor:
Why do I think that I can't run my own business?
00:06:54 Eleanor:
So I think it was more like an identity thing than a what do I do?
00:06:58 Eleanor:
It was more like, who am I in this space, which was kind of a more challenging thing to explore.
00:07:04 Eleanor:
What do I do?
00:07:05 Eleanor:
It was more like, who am I?
00:07:08 Sally-Anne:
So in the work that you're doing today, when
00:07:10 Sally-Anne:
you're helping people through change.
00:07:13 Sally-Anne:
Is that some of the exploration that you support them with, figuring out who they are?
00:07:19 Eleanor:
I think that one is for them to decide.
00:07:22 Eleanor:
I don't think you can come to somebody and say, oh, do you know what you need to do?
00:07:26 Eleanor:
You need to rethink who you are.
00:07:27 Eleanor:
I don't think that's quite where it comes from.
00:07:30 Eleanor:
I think it's more people start in their own space.
00:07:34 Eleanor:
They might start with their why.
00:07:36 Eleanor:
What am I doing?
00:07:36 Eleanor:
Why am I here?
00:07:37 Eleanor:
What's my purpose?
00:07:38 Eleanor:
Or that kind of question.
00:07:40 Eleanor:
And then they have to explore consequences of that thought.
00:07:45 Eleanor:
And that's more what I see.
00:07:46 Eleanor:
That's why it's messy, I think.
00:07:48 Sally-Anne:
So when you're working with them,
00:07:50 Sally-Anne:
How are you helping them?
00:07:52 Sally-Anne:
Through asking questions, I imagine, through supporting, as you say, them to figure out who they are and what they need and what their next steps might be.
00:08:00 Sally-Anne:
So you're supporting them to do that.
00:08:02 Sally-Anne:
Can you tell us a little bit about how you do that?
00:08:05 Eleanor:
I don't do a lot of coaching.
00:08:06 Eleanor:
That's a small part of what I do.
00:08:08 Eleanor:
And I tend to coach people who are through the exploration part and maybe they've got to, right, I need to now go and create or I want to do something completely different.
00:08:19 Eleanor:
So in that terminology, in that way of coaching, I think that's kind of perhaps a different relationship with that and holding space for people to get messy and talk out loud and see what happens.
00:08:29 Eleanor:
But in a more corporate environment, it's more around what does corporate change mean for
00:08:35 Eleanor:
And my interest, especially with teams, and I'd love your view on this, Sian, I know this is what you do as well.
00:08:41 Eleanor:
I feel like teams start from a point of thinking that they're going through change together in the same way, and then they think they're supporting each other through the same language.
00:08:53 Eleanor:
And unless they've taken a step back and understood that they all have their own personal change mastery, and they're all doing change very differently, you can't really move on as smoothly as we think
00:09:05 Eleanor:
The good old beautiful change curve, which we know and love, Elizabeth Kuber-Ross, we love that.
00:09:11 Eleanor:
It's a very messy curve if we talk about it in the reality sense.
00:09:15 Eleanor:
People are loop-de-looping.
00:09:17 Eleanor:
They're going backwards and forwards.
00:09:20 Eleanor:
They're having great days.
00:09:21 Eleanor:
They're having bad hours.
00:09:23 Eleanor:
It's really messy.
00:09:24 Eleanor:
So my work is more around helping people to understand their own change mastery.
00:09:29 Eleanor:
I call it their change story, just what's going on for them and how they're processing change so they can have better confidence
00:09:35 Eleanor:
in the workplace and then that's where I find that you get more solid foundations to move on to where you want to get to.
00:09:42 Eleanor:
So it comes from my background of internal comms where corporations do big change.
00:09:48 Eleanor:
They say, Eleanor, we need some great comms.
00:09:51 Eleanor:
The comms isn't working, we need more comms.
00:09:54 Eleanor:
People aren't changing, they're resisting, they're moaning, they're not doing what we want them to do.
00:09:58 Eleanor:
Use capital letters in the next comms.
00:10:01 Eleanor:
You know, it was all that kind of thing.
00:10:02 Eleanor:
Yeah, we're probably messing something.
00:10:04 Eleanor:
So now it's about these messy conversations about change, which acknowledge we're all going through change in a very different way.
00:10:10 Eleanor:
Might be sitting in the same room, might be sitting with the same change, but we're all navigating it differently and just opening up to conversation
00:10:18 Eleanor:
about that is a huge breakthrough for people.
00:10:21 Eleanor:
So that's two ways that it shows up in my work.
00:10:23 Eleanor:
One is a bit different for an individual in a coaching environment where they're getting a bit deeper, but in the other sense of teams going through it, it's activating conversation to understand we're all different.
00:10:36 Sally-Anne:
And I imagine in doing that, you're avoiding or at least limiting the number of assumptions we might make about that, right?
00:10:44 Sally-Anne:
You're getting people to listen to each other, to have an open mind.
00:10:48 Sally-Anne:
Sounds really helpful.
00:10:49 Sally-Anne:
And you use the phrase change mastery.
00:10:53 Sally-Anne:
Tell us more about that.
00:10:55 Eleanor:
Yes, I do like making things up.
00:10:58 Eleanor:
It's surprising to me that that isn't actually a thing.
00:11:01 Eleanor:
I sort of scribbled it down a couple of years ago.
00:11:04 Eleanor:
When I was writing my second book, I scribbled it down as a thing that I thought, oh, we just need to get better at change, don't we?
00:11:10 Eleanor:
I just kept witnessing.
00:11:12 Eleanor:
I'll give you an example.
00:11:14 Eleanor:
IT project comes into the work environment.
00:11:17 Eleanor:
It feels like
00:11:18 Eleanor:
okay, we do this way and now we're going to do it that way.
00:11:22 Eleanor:
And that's the change.
00:11:23 Eleanor:
People's reactions to that are incredible.
00:11:26 Eleanor:
When you take a step back and look at the resistance, how we avoid it, how we can get angry about things, how we waste energy on something that doesn't matter or we don't control.
00:11:37 Eleanor:
When I'm in a position I can observe all of that stuff, I just think, wow, we just don't know how to do change well for ourselves.
00:11:44 Eleanor:
So how can we lead in this space if we're not doing it well ourselves?
00:11:48 Eleanor:
So change mastery was scribbled on a bit of a post-it note and I started thinking,
00:11:53 Eleanor:
Surely it's a skill set.
00:11:54 Eleanor:
And when I started digging around, of course there's Kota, of course there's these big organisations that do change and change training.
00:12:02 Eleanor:
But when I was digging into this, I found it was more about how you lead change, how you process change.
00:12:09 Eleanor:
And nothing really addressed the messiness and the recognition of human change.
00:12:14 Eleanor:
Obviously you've got resilience and we've got being more adaptive and you've got all the elements of that.
00:12:19 Eleanor:
But I kind of just wanted something more simple just to help someone.
00:12:23 Eleanor:
You're going through change.
00:12:24 Eleanor:
Here's a little framework to just help you to slow down and get to a better place.
00:12:29 Eleanor:
Simple as that.
00:12:31 Eleanor:
That was where my intrigue came from.
00:12:33 Sally-Anne:
From the question, from the noticing, the observation of people's struggle, right?
00:12:37 Sally-Anne:
And wanting to help people with that, I guess, make it easier.
00:12:40 Sally-Anne:
Yeah.
00:12:41 Sally-Anne:
So what's the framework?
00:12:44 Sally-Anne:
Imagine for a moment that I'm sitting in a room with you, with all my team members, we're going through a merger, huge change transformation.
00:12:52 Sally-Anne:
We're all a bit nervous.
00:12:53 Sally-Anne:
We don't know you from Adam.
00:12:54 Sally-Anne:
You come into the room and you're there to help us.
00:12:56 Sally-Anne:
We're not quite sure what's going to happen.
00:12:58 Sally-Anne:
How do you approach that?
00:12:59 Eleanor:
Well, I'm going to do something that nobody wants.
00:13:04 Eleanor:
And again, Sally Ann, I know that this is what you do incredibly well.
00:13:08 Eleanor:
So I'm hoping you're going to be on my side here.
00:13:11 Eleanor:
I say to people, okay, what we're going to have to do is stop.
00:13:15 Eleanor:
It's interesting because sometimes I don't even win the gig because of this.
00:13:19 Eleanor:
Sometimes I will get conversations from corporate saying, we can miss the pause bit and we can miss the messy bit because we're kind of into the innovation creative play bit.
00:13:28 Eleanor:
So miss that bit.
00:13:30 Eleanor:
Yes, exactly.
00:13:32 Eleanor:
No is the answer.
00:13:33 Eleanor:
No.
00:13:34 Eleanor:
All of my research, all of my observations, you have to stop.
00:13:39 Eleanor:
And you have to understand what stopping looks like for you personally.
00:13:43 Eleanor:
You have to understand what it looks like in a corporate sense, in a team sense, in a leadership sense.
00:13:48 Eleanor:
It can have very different meanings.
00:13:50 Eleanor:
I completely accept that.
00:13:51 Eleanor:
If you've read my book, Another Door Opens, you'll know that I write loads about pause.
00:13:57 Eleanor:
being very different for people and that's fine.
00:13:59 Eleanor:
I mean, I'm crap at pausing.
00:14:01 Eleanor:
I discovered terrible, terrible person.
00:14:03 Eleanor:
So I did a lot of research on this.
00:14:05 Eleanor:
Like I'm telling people to stop, but I'm bad at it.
00:14:08 Eleanor:
So it can be in all sorts of different ways.
00:14:10 Eleanor:
I did like a little quadrant that helps people to think about this.
00:14:13 Eleanor:
You know, what do I need?
00:14:15 Eleanor:
Do I need rest?
00:14:17 Eleanor:
Do I need stimulation?
00:14:19 Eleanor:
Do I need something that just takes me away, a distraction?
00:14:22 Eleanor:
and then I could come back renewed.
00:14:24 Eleanor:
Do I need prompting?
00:14:25 Eleanor:
Do I need some inspiration?
00:14:26 Eleanor:
That's what pause is about.
00:14:28 Eleanor:
And it can be as simple as just a one minute get up from your desk, walk off, look out the window, stare, reset.
00:14:36 Eleanor:
But that's all you needed.
00:14:38 Eleanor:
Go back.
00:14:38 Eleanor:
Oh yeah, I feel a little bit better.
00:14:40 Eleanor:
Or it can be like, actually, this is really bad.
00:14:42 Eleanor:
I need a holiday.
00:14:43 Eleanor:
I need time out.
00:14:44 Eleanor:
I need to shut down.
00:14:46 Eleanor:
Or you could need inspiration, like I'm completely stuck.
00:14:49 Eleanor:
I need just somebody to come and make me feel inspired.
00:14:52 Eleanor:
So the whole thing starts with us understanding how to stop and do it well.
00:14:58 Eleanor:
So that's what it's about.
00:14:59 Sally-Anne:
That's, if you like, step one.
00:15:00 Sally-Anne:
So I'm going to be sitting in the room going, stop.
00:15:04 Sally-Anne:
And in the room, when you're working with a team,
00:15:07 Sally-Anne:
It's not as if they can get up and walk out, right?
00:15:10 Sally-Anne:
Or can they?
00:15:11 Sally-Anne:
Presumably not.
00:15:11 Sally-Anne:
I'm making an assumption here.
00:15:13 Sally-Anne:
Tell me if I'm wrong.
00:15:14 Sally-Anne:
So they're in the room, they stay in the room, but what you're inviting them to do is play with the idea of what pausing or stopping means for them.
00:15:22 Sally-Anne:
And in an ideal world, what they would do with that.
00:15:26 Sally-Anne:
Because I guess I say ideal world because there's still a team trying to move forward together.
00:15:32 Sally-Anne:
Hopefully, right?
00:15:33 Sally-Anne:
In practical terms, how do you move through that?
00:15:36 Sally-Anne:
Because if for some of the people in the room, it is about going away and doing something completely different, that they need a complete break.
00:15:42 Sally-Anne:
How does that go?
00:15:43 Eleanor:
Well, from a very practical sense, if it's an actual physical, like a team day, yes, it's a discussion about pause.
00:15:51 Eleanor:
And the aim is to just get people realizing, oh, it can be so many different things.
00:15:55 Eleanor:
We do things like, I mean, I've run a workshop where all I wanted people to do was for one minute, just one minute,
00:16:02 Eleanor:
Let's just be quiet.
00:16:04 Eleanor:
Nothing.
00:16:05 Eleanor:
Just do nothing.
00:16:06 Eleanor:
Just sit.
00:16:08 Eleanor:
And half the room couldn't do it.
00:16:10 Eleanor:
Yeah, exactly.
00:16:11 Eleanor:
What happened?
00:16:12 Eleanor:
30 seconds.
00:16:13 Eleanor:
You've probably seen this.
00:16:15 Eleanor:
People get restless.
00:16:16 Eleanor:
They go to the toilet.
00:16:17 Eleanor:
They go make a coffee.
00:16:19 Eleanor:
They sneak a look on the phone, even though I said like, don't do it.
00:16:22 Eleanor:
They start whispering.
00:16:23 Eleanor:
And then as it goes towards the end, they start whispering to next door.
00:16:28 Eleanor:
And then you just lost it.
00:16:29 Eleanor:
People cannot sit still.
00:16:31 Eleanor:
They don't see the
00:16:32 Eleanor:
value.
00:16:33 Eleanor:
When we discussed afterwards, like what happened there for people that were like, well, what was the point of that?
00:16:38 Eleanor:
This is what has to happen in this session.
00:16:40 Eleanor:
It has to be a messy conversation where people are honest and talk out loud because otherwise you don't get anywhere with it.
00:16:45 Eleanor:
So yeah, some people are like, well, I just don't see the point.
00:16:48 Eleanor:
So we have to do a bit of the sciencey stuff around actually this is proven.
00:16:52 Eleanor:
It's not a made-up thing.
00:16:54 Eleanor:
There's a lot of work on the default mode network that comes from the Health Institute about how you can tip
00:17:02 Eleanor:
very quickly into peak performance.
00:17:05 Eleanor:
But the other side of the bell curve is anxiety and stress.
00:17:09 Eleanor:
And if you don't manage that with pausing, then you're always going to be in the actual anxiety piece, not in the kind of peak optimum space.
00:17:18 Eleanor:
So if you relate it to performance, people can kind of get a bit more of an understanding.
00:17:22 Eleanor:
That's what the pause messy is.
00:17:25 Eleanor:
But it helps to get into the second part, which is when you do pause, if you answer that question, what was the point of that, it starts
00:17:32 Eleanor:
That's opening up different channels to sense making, to what am I observing?
00:17:37 Eleanor:
What am I actually doing?
00:17:38 Eleanor:
Where am I spending time?
00:17:39 Eleanor:
And the messy bit.
00:17:41 Eleanor:
So step two is the messy bit.
00:17:42 Eleanor:
And it's about what am I learning?
00:17:44 Eleanor:
What are all these emotions?
00:17:46 Eleanor:
Why did I react like that?
00:17:49 Eleanor:
I do an exercise where you're allowed to draw your own change curve.
00:17:53 Eleanor:
So it doesn't look like a beautiful, smooth curve.
00:17:56 Eleanor:
It looks a bit messy.
00:17:57 Eleanor:
And then if you put all of those curves on top of each other, you see the team profile of what people feel and it's a mess.
00:18:06 Eleanor:
One person's excited, one person's scared.
00:18:08 Eleanor:
And then there's me, comms person being told to do comms.
00:18:12 Eleanor:
And you know, you imagine that comms landing in amongst all of this mess, confusing and shifting and changing things.
00:18:19 Eleanor:
So that's what we talk about in the mess.
00:18:21 Eleanor:
It's like you're allowed emotions, we're allowed to all think different things.
00:18:25 Eleanor:
That's the challenge of leadership, to understand that just because someone's disagreeing with you in a moment of change doesn't mean they're wrong.
00:18:32 Eleanor:
They're just in a different space.
00:18:34 Eleanor:
So as a leader, you have to understand you've got to shift your own personal change story to maybe tell, to more listen.
00:18:41 Eleanor:
So that's what mess is.
00:18:43 Eleanor:
But you can only do that if you've done good pausing.
00:18:46 Sally-Anne:
Because you're creating a bit of space to think, right?
00:18:48 Sally-Anne:
That's it, yeah.
00:18:50 Sally-Anne:
And I'm imagining questions around, you know, where am I today?
00:18:53 Sally-Anne:
Where are you today?
00:18:55 Sally-Anne:
These sort of fundamental questions before you even begin to think about anything else or talk about anything else, right, is establishing where you are in all of that mess, right?
00:19:04 Sally-Anne:
Yeah.
00:19:05 Sally-Anne:
Wonderful.
00:19:06 Sally-Anne:
I mean, I can imagine how immensely sitting in the room with my team going through this thing, I can imagine how immensely helpful that is.
00:19:13 Sally-Anne:
So what happens next?
00:19:15 Eleanor:
Sometimes there's resistance at that point.
00:19:17 Eleanor:
I mean, I don't think that this is particularly a one day a thing and we're all done.
00:19:22 Eleanor:
It's giving people tools to understand what the next week, month, year life is gonna look like.
00:19:30 Eleanor:
I think it is a bit of a tool for life because it always comes back to you.
00:19:34 Eleanor:
always need now to know that, okay, I might need a pause.
00:19:38 Eleanor:
So that's never gonna go away.
00:19:40 Eleanor:
Okay, I need to get a bit more messy on this.
00:19:42 Eleanor:
What's going on here?
00:19:44 Eleanor:
We build on the
00:19:45 Eleanor:
So when the messiness is started to be talked about, it's not that everybody has to suddenly hold hands and get messy and talk out loud.
00:19:51 Eleanor:
That's not what it is and sometimes that's really inappropriate.
00:19:55 Eleanor:
That's just not the space that that's about.
00:19:57 Eleanor:
All it is saying that everybody has different points of view.
00:20:02 Eleanor:
To use the example of a day experience, that's really inappropriate to start telling people, come on, tell me how you're feeling, talk out loud, let's do this.
00:20:09 Eleanor:
And I've seen some people do that.
00:20:10 Eleanor:
I find that really inappropriate.
00:20:12 Eleanor:
So it's another kind of skill set to try and help people to actually just understand they could go away and figure out and then they've got the tools to reconnect when they're ready.
00:20:22 Eleanor:
Not that we're forcing people to do this weird sort of talk out
00:20:27 Sally-Anne:
No, no, because it won't work, will it?
00:20:29 Sally-Anne:
As you said right at the beginning, you know, this is about people on their own journey.
00:20:34 Sally-Anne:
And I guess you're supporting them to get through it, move through it, hopefully with a little more ease, right?
00:20:41 Sally-Anne:
This is not a quick fix.
00:20:43 Sally-Anne:
But what I guess I was getting at is, because I know you have a five-step framework, and so if I've understood correctly, we've looked at the first couple of steps.
00:20:51 Sally-Anne:
Yeah.
00:20:52 Sally-Anne:
I'm curious about the rest.
00:20:53 Eleanor:
So messy always leads to nice conversations, usually, as I say, it doesn't need to be like a big opening up session.
00:21:02 Eleanor:
The next part, once you get messy, how our brains work, especially if we've gone through pause and we've activated
00:21:10 Eleanor:
a default mode network and then we kind of start getting messy.
00:21:14 Eleanor:
It starts to create ideas because we say, okay, right, okay, I understand all of this now.
00:21:19 Eleanor:
Like I'm observing, I'm thinking, I'm learning.
00:21:23 Eleanor:
Now what?
00:21:24 Eleanor:
So you sit at a question of now what?
00:21:26 Eleanor:
And that's where now what is sometimes if I get asked to come in at now what?
00:21:32 Eleanor:
I have to make sure that we haven't missed the two steps before because the next step is play.
00:21:37 Eleanor:
I call it play.
00:21:39 Eleanor:
Sometimes I have to
00:21:40 Eleanor:
rename that creativity, innovation, possibility.
00:21:44 Eleanor:
But it's the question that we started with at the very beginning of the podcast.
00:21:47 Eleanor:
How can we create good things out of this change?
00:21:51 Eleanor:
And it's not that we're going to create a new product.
00:21:54 Eleanor:
It can be that, but it's more like, how can I just be well in this change?
00:21:59 Eleanor:
It could be a very personal thing.
00:22:00 Eleanor:
How can I stay sane?
00:22:02 Eleanor:
How can I not lose my mind because this is really stressful?
00:22:05 Eleanor:
That's what play is doing.
00:22:06 Eleanor:
It's poking around with what's mattering to you because you've done that in the messy part.
00:22:11 Eleanor:
Okay, so what's the possibility here?
00:22:13 Eleanor:
I can approach this differently.
00:22:15 Sally-Anne:
Perhaps.
00:22:16 Eleanor:
I can work on something that will make me feel better.
00:22:19 Eleanor:
Or it can be, I can create something that will be really exciting and that's energising.
00:22:25 Eleanor:
So play comes from a micro perspective and a macro perspective.
00:22:29 Eleanor:
It can be all sorts.
00:22:30 Eleanor:
So that's the conversation shift.
00:22:33 Eleanor:
It's about understanding what play is, that we all play in some part.
00:22:37 Eleanor:
You know, the Institute of Play, which I discovered in my research.
00:22:41 Eleanor:
Yes, exactly.
00:22:41 Eleanor:
Institute of Play has eight different types of play that we
00:22:46 Eleanor:
We all do.
00:22:47 Eleanor:
And so for even the people with most resistance that say, I don't play, I'm serious, I've got a very serious job, they do.
00:22:55 Eleanor:
We have to play as a human in some form.
00:22:58 Eleanor:
So again, it's just having that different relationship with play.
00:23:02 Eleanor:
That's what this system's around so that you know you can activate it when you need it, when you feel stuck, when you're feeling fed up, when you've done the messy bit and you go, right, okay, I don't want to feel like this now.
00:23:12 Eleanor:
You play.
00:23:13 Eleanor:
So that's the third step.
00:23:15 Sally-Anne:
Also what I'm hearing is when you've been through the messy, the difficult, you've realized you've been making assumptions, you start being more curious about where you're at, where other people are at, and you move into, okay, what are the possibilities?
00:23:29 Sally-Anne:
So you're playing with ideas at that point, right?
00:23:31 Sally-Anne:
You mentioned it yourself, you know, now what?
00:23:33 Sally-Anne:
This is the ideas phase.
00:23:35 Sally-Anne:
So you want to hold that lightly out of thought at that point, which is my interpretation of what you're telling us, because these are just ideas, nothing fixed.
00:23:43 Sally-Anne:
Let's have a play around.
00:23:44 Sally-Anne:
Let's see what feels right.
00:23:46 Sally-Anne:
Is that what this is about?
00:23:47 Eleanor:
Yeah.
00:23:48 Eleanor:
When I was writing the book, it came about from some notes.
00:23:51 Eleanor:
I had hundreds of notebooks on just mapping how people are navigating different kinds of change.
00:23:58 Eleanor:
And it came about because I realized that I kept saying,
00:24:03 Eleanor:
to people when they got to a certain point in their change experience.
00:24:07 Eleanor:
Look, step back and just play with a couple of thoughts.
00:24:12 Eleanor:
Don't make decisions.
00:24:13 Eleanor:
Don't put stress on yourself.
00:24:15 Eleanor:
Just play with some ideas.
00:24:17 Eleanor:
Cost you nothing.
00:24:18 Eleanor:
I'm not saying go and play with a big idea.
00:24:20 Eleanor:
You just put the idea that you're just playing with thoughts with no pressure and no consequence.
00:24:27 Eleanor:
Just as you said, curiosity.
00:24:29 Eleanor:
Just gather stuff for no reason.
00:24:32 Eleanor:
I found a quote by David Lynch, the film director, Twin Peaks.
00:24:37 Eleanor:
He has a great book called Catching Fish, which I love.
00:24:41 Eleanor:
And it's all about collecting and gathering for no reason.
00:24:45 Eleanor:
He used to like sound.
00:24:46 Eleanor:
So he used to go around and collect sound.
00:24:48 Eleanor:
But he also said he has a scrapbook of like, oh, that's interesting.
00:24:52 Eleanor:
I don't know why.
00:24:52 Eleanor:
There's no purpose for it.
00:24:54 Eleanor:
I'm just going to put this in a box.
00:24:56 Eleanor:
Like it could be a ticket or a picture that he's taken and nothing to do with anything.
00:25:01 Eleanor:
It's just a thing.
00:25:02 Eleanor:
He talks about collecting and gathering for no reason.
00:25:05 Eleanor:
But when you're ready in the next two steps, the try and the start, when you're really activating something, that play part comes into its own because you've probably got something you can draw on because you're like, oh, now I'm in this space of creating.
00:25:19 Eleanor:
I did it right in the book.
00:25:20 Eleanor:
I was just gathering all these random comments and stuff for five years.
00:25:25 Eleanor:
And then when I started writing the book, I thought, oh, I remember something that could fit there.
00:25:29 Eleanor:
So I was actually living what he preached and we can all do that.
00:25:33 Eleanor:
Just gather things, see what's grabbing our attention.
00:25:37 Eleanor:
And that's what play is about.
00:25:39 Eleanor:
There's not particularly any purpose right now.
00:25:41 Eleanor:
You're just going with it.
00:25:42 Eleanor:
And again, I get a lot of resistance in corporate.
00:25:45 Eleanor:
We don't have time for this.
00:25:46 Eleanor:
We've got deadlines, we've got budgets, we've got stakeholders, shareholders, blah, blah, blah.
00:25:51 Eleanor:
However, again, it's a very known way of innovation and creativity, and therefore you get to solve your problem quicker because
00:25:59 Eleanor:
you've just got this kind of innate way of going around and being more curious about things.
00:26:05 Eleanor:
So you're almost building up your reserves to the point where once a problem is identified, you can go, yeah, I've got something to not start with backpage.
00:26:14 Eleanor:
So it's kind of an interesting relationship and that's what I like to have conversations with people about play, the relationship of play.
00:26:20 Eleanor:
How does it show up in your work?
00:26:23 Eleanor:
What's the tools?
00:26:25 Sally-Anne:
I imagine quite often people might look at you quite blankly around that until you reframe it in the way you have.
00:26:32 Sally-Anne:
And I love that permission just to throw around some ideas for no particular reason.
00:26:39 Sally-Anne:
I mean, there's a freedom in that, isn't there?
00:26:41 Sally-Anne:
Which is going to open up individuals' minds, which will lead to more creative thinking.
00:26:46 Sally-Anne:
So I can see the process you take people through and how wonderful that even if there is cultural resistance, at least in some organizations, they're giving it a go.
00:26:58 Eleanor:
Oh yeah.
00:26:58 Sally-Anne:
You're doing this work, right?
00:27:00 Sally-Anne:
Yeah.
00:27:00 Sally-Anne:
It's bringing benefit.
00:27:02 Sally-Anne:
Fabulous.
00:27:03 Sally-Anne:
And you mentioned steps four and five.
00:27:05 Sally-Anne:
I wrote down what I heard, try and start, the sort of activation part that comes from a place of having freed up the mind a bit.
00:27:14 Sally-Anne:
Do you take people through that in a practical way?
00:27:17 Sally-Anne:
Tell us what you do.
00:27:18 Eleanor:
So when you got your play and you've discussed what that looks like, quite often in the resistant conversations, it's like, well, what happens next?
00:27:26 Eleanor:
And so that's why I added the fourth step, which is try.
00:27:30 Eleanor:
I could have just jumped to the end and like, okay, off we go.
00:27:33 Eleanor:
But I think try is maybe one of the most important things to get across because we have a really weird relationship with try.
00:27:41 Eleanor:
You know, at least you tried.
00:27:43 Eleanor:
It kind of sounds like a consolation prize when somebody says that, but in fact, it should be a celebration.
00:27:49 Eleanor:
Like as we're speaking at the moment, we've just had the Winter Olympics, we just had the Para Winter Olympics.
00:27:54 Eleanor:
All of those people showed up and tried and give it the best chance possible.
00:28:00 Eleanor:
Only a few won gold.
00:28:01 Eleanor:
But what a celebration of human achievement.
00:28:05 Eleanor:
Some of the Winter Olympic stuff, I got completely addicted to watching people fly down a pipeline.
00:28:10 Eleanor:
That's incredible and should be celebrated.
00:28:13 Eleanor:
That's just in a sporting lens.
00:28:15 Eleanor:
We have to have a better relationship with try.
00:28:17 Eleanor:
So when you play, you start to get ideas.
00:28:20 Eleanor:
Of course, the chatter comes, oh, you can't do this and you can't do that.
00:28:24 Eleanor:
But you've done the work already because you started that in mess.
00:28:27 Eleanor:
So you can try.
00:28:29 Eleanor:
by doing very small steps, by experimenting.
00:28:32 Eleanor:
In this chapter, in this phrase in the book and in some of the work, this is where I introduce things like design thinking, scamper thinking.
00:28:40 Eleanor:
This is where these frameworks are really useful and we know that they're used in corporate life because they help us put these things through a framework which helps test.
00:28:50 Eleanor:
So like design thinking, for example, you've played, an idea keeps coming back to say hello and you're like, you know what?
00:28:56 Eleanor:
I need to take this to the next level.
00:28:58 Eleanor:
Why don't I try a little bit of design thinking?
00:29:00 Eleanor:
Or I came across a concept called MAYA, Most Advanced Yet Acceptable, which was created by a guy, Raymond Lowy, who was the industrial designer.
00:29:11 Eleanor:
And I love that if an idea keeps coming to say hello and you're like, you know what, we need to maybe look into this more, what's the most advanced yet acceptable
00:29:20 Eleanor:
form of that we can try, that we can test, that we can experiment.
00:29:25 Eleanor:
And that just helps people to step into that next space without the overwhelm, without feeling like I'm committing, I'm all in, I have to give this huge big yes, which sometimes makes people freeze.
00:29:36 Eleanor:
It eases you into that space.
00:29:38 Eleanor:
So trying is hugely important.
00:29:41 Eleanor:
Enjoying that process is hugely important.
00:29:44 Eleanor:
And you just start to gather more research, more data, more insights when you do the try space.
00:29:50 Eleanor:
And then you can get into the final part, which is restart, which is ownership, being more intentional, saying, right, yes, this is the direction we're all going as a team, as an individual.
00:30:01 Eleanor:
This is what I'm owning.
00:30:02 Eleanor:
This is what it looks like.
00:30:04 Eleanor:
So that's the process.
00:30:05 Eleanor:
It's just slowing the whole change, thinking process down that helps you to almost change without knowing it, because that's what I observed, the most
00:30:14 Eleanor:
scariest thing in change environment is people feeling like they suddenly have to leap from the known into the unknown in one big leap.
00:30:24 Eleanor:
And that's what terrifies and scares people.
00:30:27 Eleanor:
So if you can do it with ease through these five steps, you can do it by barely noticing is the idea.
00:30:35 Sally-Anne:
Barely noticing, barely noticing what?
00:30:37 Sally-Anne:
Barely noticing the difficult part.
00:30:39 Sally-Anne:
That's it.
00:30:40 Sally-Anne:
Because it becomes more fun.
00:30:42 Sally-Anne:
Yeah.
00:30:43 Sally-Anne:
We haven't used that word fun, I don't think yet, but it sounds like a lot more fun to me than being shoehorned into something that you don't necessarily fully understand and therefore not ready to accept.
00:30:53 Sally-Anne:
This sounds more participative or participatory, you know, whichever is the right word.
00:30:58 Sally-Anne:
It sounds more as if you've got the opportunity to join in, share your ideas.
00:31:02 Sally-Anne:
And I love the try.
00:31:03 Sally-Anne:
I mean, what I heard there was try out.
00:31:05 Sally-Anne:
It's like, I'm trying this on, I'm trying it out, I'm experimenting, I'm testing.
00:31:09 Sally-Anne:
putting a bit of effort in to do that, but not yet deciding which way we're going until we've given it a fair shot, given all of those things a fair shot.
00:31:18 Sally-Anne:
So yeah, it makes a lot of sense, Anna, certainly to me listening to you, and I'm pretty sure to everyone else listening in too.
00:31:24 Sally-Anne:
So this is what your most recent book is all about then, is it?
00:31:28 Sally-Anne:
It's sharing the framework, sharing the idea, sharing what you've learned from it, from all of those years of gathering notes.
00:31:35 Sally-Anne:
I have to say it sounds brilliant.
00:31:37 Sally-Anne:
And what are you finding as you continue to bring this work to teams and organisations?
00:31:44 Sally-Anne:
What are you noticing in that process?
00:31:47 Eleanor:
Oh yes, well, gosh, again, more notes, post-it notes, flip chat.
00:31:52 Eleanor:
I'm finding I'm getting through a lot of post-it notes.
00:31:54 Eleanor:
That's what I'm finding.
00:31:56 Eleanor:
So I think there's a kind of interesting one.
00:31:58 Eleanor:
I mean, my book's called Another Door Opens and it's around when one door closes and then what happens and then we use the framework to
00:32:05 Eleanor:
help people to go through that.
00:32:07 Eleanor:
But what I'm finding is you don't need to wait until a door closes in your life to get better at change.
00:32:14 Eleanor:
And in fact, you shouldn't.
00:32:16 Eleanor:
Why are we waiting to hit rock bottom?
00:32:18 Eleanor:
Why are we waiting until catastrophe comes along or crisis or chaos or disruption comes along and then we go, oh, right, I need to activate change now.
00:32:27 Eleanor:
For the last couple of years, I've had that conversation with corporates when I've said, oh, I do this workshop and training work and they say, oh, we're not really going
00:32:35 Eleanor:
through change at the moment.
00:32:36 Eleanor:
That's why it's funny, like right at the beginning of the podcast when I said, you know, sometimes I go on the stage and I'll go like, anyone going through change?
00:32:43 Eleanor:
And it gets funny to me because we're all going through change all the time.
00:32:47 Eleanor:
We can work on this and yet it's not really recognized as a skill.
00:32:51 Eleanor:
If I called some of my workshops resilient workshops, I'd get booked.
00:32:56 Eleanor:
People say, yes, we need more resilience.
00:32:58 Eleanor:
It's just a word shift and yet change is like, oh, we're not really doing change at the moment.
00:33:03 Eleanor:
We still think it's something, it's a project.
00:33:06 Eleanor:
But I really believe it's a life skill that we have to get better at.
00:33:10 Eleanor:
We change every single day or we come across some change every single day.
00:33:14 Eleanor:
Whether it's just on your way to work, suddenly the road's closed, you've got to go a different route.
00:33:20 Eleanor:
How do you respond?
00:33:21 Eleanor:
And I kind of think if you know the five steps, you can respond better, like stop,
00:33:26 Eleanor:
Take a moment.
00:33:28 Eleanor:
Just have, oh, how are you feeling?
00:33:29 Eleanor:
Angry.
00:33:30 Eleanor:
Okay, that's all right.
00:33:31 Eleanor:
You can feel angry.
00:33:32 Eleanor:
Okay, have a little play.
00:33:33 Eleanor:
What can we do?
00:33:33 Eleanor:
We can go home.
00:33:34 Eleanor:
We can go a different route.
00:33:35 Eleanor:
You know, that's fine.
00:33:37 Eleanor:
Okay, try.
00:33:38 Eleanor:
Why don't you just turn right, go down a different route and then press restart and off we go.
00:33:43 Eleanor:
What we tend to do is just go straight into whatever comes up.
00:33:47 Eleanor:
Anger, like, blaming council, potholes, get to the office an hour late.
00:33:53 Eleanor:
We spread our anger to the team, to anyone that we see.
00:33:56 Eleanor:
we moan about the council for seven hours.
00:33:59 Eleanor:
And all because we just didn't stop for a minute.
00:34:02 Eleanor:
Take a breath.
00:34:03 Eleanor:
Like, are you really going to let this change your day?
00:34:06 Eleanor:
Or are you going to own your change a bit better?
00:34:08 Eleanor:
So even that in micro changes in our life, I think that this kind of philosophy on change mastery and you don't have to use my framework if you don't like the terminology and the way I think, but definitely work on your change mastery.
00:34:21 Eleanor:
Like how do you do change?
00:34:22 Eleanor:
How can you do it better?
00:34:23 Eleanor:
Micro and macro and serve yourself better and everyone around you better.
00:34:29 Sally-Anne:
And I love that phrase, own your change.
00:34:32 Sally-Anne:
I guess that must be at the heart of change mastery, right?
00:34:35 Sally-Anne:
Yeah.
00:34:36 Sally-Anne:
Owning it.
00:34:37 Sally-Anne:
Not letting it drive you.
00:34:39 Sally-Anne:
Yeah.
00:34:40 Sally-Anne:
Beautiful.
00:34:41 Sally-Anne:
Eleanor, along this journey, you know, and it's been a few years, hasn't it?
00:34:44 Sally-Anne:
This work has evolved.
00:34:46 Sally-Anne:
What's been scary for you?
00:34:48 Sally-Anne:
Have you had moments, scary moments?
00:34:50 Sally-Anne:
Do you feel fear in all of this?
00:34:52 Eleanor:
I was thinking about this because obviously I've listened to your podcast, Sayan.
00:34:56 Eleanor:
I know that you talk about this topic, your fearless topic.
00:35:00 Eleanor:
It's kind of interesting what came up for me.
00:35:02 Eleanor:
I actually took a pause and just thought, right, okay, let's just sit with what does fear look like for me.
00:35:08 Eleanor:
I actually came to this kind of sense of feeling like actually my fear is not being able to reach potential.
00:35:17 Eleanor:
That's what came to me.
00:35:18 Eleanor:
So I just thought I would share that with you because that's what kept coming.
00:35:22 Eleanor:
Like, what if this goes nowhere?
00:35:24 Eleanor:
What if this is just nonsense that you've made-up, that you find really interesting and nobody else does?
00:35:31 Eleanor:
When I started thinking about this, that kind of fear has been with me forever.
00:35:35 Eleanor:
I can remember feeling that at school.
00:35:37 Eleanor:
Like, what if you don't get to your potential?
00:35:40 Eleanor:
I don't even know what I thought that looked like.
00:35:42 Eleanor:
I didn't have an end goal.
00:35:43 Eleanor:
I wasn't like, oh, I wanted to be a doctor.
00:35:45 Eleanor:
Absolutely not.
00:35:46 Eleanor:
That wasn't it.
00:35:47 Eleanor:
But I always had a sense of, I can think, I can do, I can act.
00:35:51 Eleanor:
I don't have fear.
00:35:52 Eleanor:
I'm not somebody who kind of goes, oh, no, I shouldn't be in that room.
00:35:55 Eleanor:
Even though probably sometimes maybe I should think that.
00:35:59 Eleanor:
But, you know, I haven't had that.
00:36:00 Eleanor:
I'm from a farm in Cumbria.
00:36:02 Eleanor:
That's what I've been brought up.
00:36:03 Eleanor:
I don't have that environment of corporate, but I always felt like, yeah, I can sit in this room and do this.
00:36:09 Eleanor:
But what if other people don't feel like I can?
00:36:12 Eleanor:
So all sorts of things came up when I started sitting with your question of what makes you afraid?
00:36:17 Eleanor:
What are you scared of?
00:36:18 Eleanor:
I think it's potential.
00:36:19 Eleanor:
What if this goes nowhere?
00:36:20 Eleanor:
So I think that's some work that I'm going to sit with and go, well, that's okay.
00:36:25 Eleanor:
What if it does fail?
00:36:27 Eleanor:
Whatever that means.
00:36:28 Eleanor:
At least you tried.
00:36:29 Eleanor:
You see, I'm using my own system there to navigate through it.
00:36:34 Sally-Anne:
You gave it a fair shot, right?
00:36:35 Eleanor:
Yeah, that's the work, isn't it?
00:36:37 Eleanor:
In the try section, I wrote about all we owe ourselves is to give ourselves the best chance possible on something that really matters to us.
00:36:49 Eleanor:
Even though I have that fear of like, yeah, but what if I don't reach, I don't actually know what that means.
00:36:55 Eleanor:
So therefore I am sort of okay with, look, you are doing all you can.
00:37:00 Eleanor:
You are giving yourself, but it's a wrestle.
00:37:02 Eleanor:
So the fear is still kind of there.
00:37:04 Sally-Anne:
Oh, that's so interesting.
00:37:06 Sally-Anne:
And how that fear is feeding very positively the actions that you're taking.
00:37:12 Sally-Anne:
That's absolutely fascinating.
00:37:14 Sally-Anne:
What I'm hearing is for you, as long as you can say to yourself, you look in the mirror and you say to yourself, you did everything you could.
00:37:22 Sally-Anne:
And so it's as if your work is propelled by the need to make sure that you leave no stone unturned, which I guess fuels your curiosity, all the post-it notes, the ideas, all of that.
00:37:35 Sally-Anne:
What if, what if?
00:37:37 Sally-Anne:
So with all of that in mind, if I may, Eleanor, when you look to the future,
00:37:42 Sally-Anne:
With everything you've achieved and where you are now, what does fearless forward mean to you?
00:37:48 Eleanor:
That's almost like we practiced and we really haven't.
00:37:51 Eleanor:
So this is like a proper flowing conversation, isn't it?
00:37:55 Eleanor:
I feel like fearless forward is that moment you can say, I tried.
00:38:02 Eleanor:
And I'm happy with that.
00:38:04 Eleanor:
I think that's where I've got to with it.
00:38:07 Eleanor:
I mean, you just said there around taking positive action to keep driving forward, but it can also be negative action if you don't stop yourself and you don't pause and you don't say, do you know what?
00:38:17 Eleanor:
I'm heading to burn out here.
00:38:19 Eleanor:
I got to stop.
00:38:20 Eleanor:
Just allow yourself to kind of sit in that moment.
00:38:23 Eleanor:
So for me, I think fearless forward is knowing when to pause, when to say, I've given this everything.
00:38:30 Eleanor:
And I'm okay with that.
00:38:31 Eleanor:
I'm happy, I'm at peace, I'm accepting, and I now need to take time out or step out, and I will come back in again.
00:38:40 Eleanor:
So for me, I think that's what Fearless Forward is about.
00:38:44 Sally-Anne:
Elena, thank you very much for this conversation.
00:38:49 Sally-Anne:
Many of us think of change as disruption.
00:38:53 Sally-Anne:
We want to get through it as quickly as possible.
00:38:56 Sally-Anne:
But what if we pause?
00:38:58 Sally-Anne:
Give ourselves space to listen to what's actually happening for us and be honest with ourselves.
00:39:04 Sally-Anne:
Then play with possibilities.
00:39:07 Sally-Anne:
Try things.
00:39:08 Sally-Anne:
What if we normalize change as constant and often messy?
00:39:13 Sally-Anne:
Because the more we deny that mess, the more trouble we create for ourselves and others.
00:39:20 Sally-Anne:
And let's remember that just because we're all living through the same external change,
00:39:25 Sally-Anne:
That doesn't mean we're having the same internal experience.
00:39:30 Sally-Anne:
In real life, people rarely move through change in a neat, linear way.
00:39:35 Sally-Anne:
The change curve is actually full of unpredictable twists and turns.
00:39:40 Sally-Anne:
Sometimes the most intelligent way forward is not to push harder, but to pause long enough to take ownership of what is actually ours to change.
00:39:53 Sally-Anne:
Thank you for listening.
00:39:54 Sally-Anne:
Fearless Forward is edited and produced by Rob Lawrence.
00:39:57 Sally-Anne:
I'll be back with you in two weeks for our next conversation about how leaders have faced their fears.
00:40:03 Sally-Anne:
To be sure of catching it, go to fearlessforward.org or subscribe to my weekly bulletin at skillfulleaders.com.