Understanding How You Approach Moments of Change

We live in a world where we’re always navigating change on one level or another. Our capacities and abilities to navigate change vary dramatically from one person to another. When facing change, our instinctive responses could be to run and hide or rise to the challenge. We may experience feelings of vulnerability, empowerment, isolation, or relational connection. 

When working to help clients successfully navigate change, we start by asking them to reflect on an experience from their own lives – when they have successfully navigated a change experience. In this episode of the Leadership Vision Podcast, we will be asking you that same question: “When have YOU successfully navigated change?”

This is part of our multi-episode series walking through our team engagement process, simulating a client engagement while providing tools and examples to help your team thrive.

Today our conversation around change will focus on personal stories of change. Specifically, a change all of us can relate to, changing schools! No matter who we are, all of us have, at some level, navigated a change in schools at some point in our lives. Be that due to a physical move, or moving from elementary, to middle, high school, and beyond.

Enjoy! 

Why Focus on Changing Schools?

Changing schools is one experience that everyone can relate to. When working with clients, we really want to focus on the reality of what happens when we face change and to remind ourselves that we have, at one point, successfully navigated it. When we’re faced with a significant change event, it creates a neurological response that we perceive as a threat. Be that physically, psychologically, or emotionally. This can shut us down and close us off to the opportunity that this change may bring about in us. So, when we think about a positive change we’ve already navigated, we can look at some of the triggers and responses differently. 

Brian, Linda, and I each share an experience of changing school. Brian shares a graduate school experience, Linda shares a college experience, and I share what it was like moving school in middle school. We hope this will cause you to think about your own positive change experience and use that to lean into your next, or current, change experience.

How Do You Navigate Change?

As you listen, think about your own story of change, then answer this prompt: what’s important to know about me in the change process is... Share your answer in the comments, social media, or with your friends, colleagues, or anyone who will listen. Next week, we will give you some very practical tools to help you understand your unique needs and capacities for successfully navigating change.

Change is inevitable. It happens all the time to all of us. It can sharpen us and challenge us to be better people. How do you think and feel about change and what it means? Pay attention to the different tensions around change situations in your life. How do you respond to them? How do you show up? And what can you learn? We’d love to hear from you! Connect with me at nathan@leadershipvisionconsulting.com.