5 Tactics to Respond Well to Change
Feb 18, 2024
The part of the U.S. where I live received more than usual snowfall, causing the power to fail, rearranging more meetings and assignments than I care to remember.
Sometimes it snows on your work.
If we’re anything alike, such interruptions bother me sometimes.
After all, infants are the only people I know who ask for change.
And yet change assaults us at work like unforecasted snow.
There’s a layoff nobody saw coming.
A new initiative slips under the door of your daily tasks with no warning.
The operating system updates unannounced with no training.
Mayhem wins sometimes.
Chaos reigns freely and destabilizes what you depend on daily.
How you deal with this multitude of inevitable changes determines how positive or negative your work culture is.
Here are five tactics to deal better as you respond to daily change:
Relax
When sudden change interrupts your work flow, your fight-or-flight response to stress emerges just as quickly. You go thermonuclear or turbodive down due to a sense of powerlessness.
Work Positive business people first relax. They take a breath and see the moment as it is—a moment. They resist the urge to go Incredible Hulk or Chicken Little and focus on the positive in that moment.
Relate
Work Positive professionals secondly relate. They quickly turn to others and invest in their social circles. They offer support and gain strength from relationships, putting a face to the moment in the midst of change.
Once you relax, your focus shifts from “me” to “we.” You relate to and invest in others.
Remember
Next, Work Positive business people succeed as they look behind the moment to similar past times. They reflect on what they implemented that worked. They gather courage and strength from the knowledge that they survived and are still in business today. Such emotional fortitude energizes them to deal strategically with the moment.
Everyone has a survival story. Such tales willingly suspend your disbelief in the moment and propel you forward.
Respond
Having relaxed, related, and remembered, Work Positive professionals now choose to respond. The temptation is to first react. Success builds from well-chosen inner steps before it emerges in outer steps.
The focusing question behind your response is, “What can I do?” The powerlessness of rapid change paralyzes with a myopic view of “What I Can’t Do.” There is always some sliver of an opportunity open to successful people. They see what they look for. Seizing the moment, they respond with creative imagination and transform the paralysis into a powerful rewriting of the script.
Reward
Finally, successful Work Positive business people reward themselves. They take off earlier than usual to play in the snow and other delightful experiences.
Also, they reward others. They gift the team member who went the extra mile for a client.
Rewards recognize the importance of others to the success of the business. This secret step may be the greatest of all as it hooks the team member’s emotional engagement in a most personal way—if you insure that the reward is given in response to the team member’s desires, rather than your own. Work Positive professionals lead from heartfelt recognition, acknowledging it takes a team to navigate the white water of rapid change.
Change happens daily.
Implement these five secret steps of the positively successful and Work Positive!
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