Fear of CHANGE

image fear of changeA couple of months ago, I was coaching a client that was struggling to make changes in his work and home life. He was having difficulty focusing on his responsibilities and felt miserably stuck. Everyday was another lesson in futility. From his vantage point, he had no options to change the situation.

 

As an exercise, I suggested that we make a list of all the choices that he had in life. He was to write down every single choice that came to mind, devoid of judgment. I was impressed by his ability to list the different choices that he had, no matter how crazy they seemed. After the list was completed, we went through the choices and took a closer look at each one of them.

 

One by one, we discussed the choices in detail. One by one, he would give me all the reasons why the choice would absolutely never work. I tried to help him see each choice from a fresh perspective, but no matter what I did, he had a whole list of compelling reasons why it would fail.

 

I looked at him for awhile and then I said calmly, “Do you notice that you’ve vehemently explained to me why none of these ideas work when you originally thought these ideas were great? Why do you think that is?”

 

Sometimes we are so scared of trying something new that we will stay in a horrible situation. There are a lot of uncertainties in trying something new. We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. We aren’t sure how things are going to progress. Fear of the unknown causes us to stay exactly where we are. Fear of failure can take ahold of us and rule our life. The truth is that not making a choice and staying stuck is also failing.

 

Change is hard. It’s hard for people and it’s hard for organizations.

 

At some point in your life, you have sat in this very same chair. You have lamented how unhappy you are, yet still aggressively fought the possibility of any change. Fighting the change ensured that you would be safe from failure. Or did it?

 

My suggestion is to make one change. The change doesn’t have to be huge; it just has to be one teeny tiny step that moves you in the direction of your goal. After you have done this, take another tiny step and another. This pushes you out of your paralysis stage and into an action stage.

 

Be honest and recognize that your reasoning for shooting down all your choices is tied up in your fear of what waits on the other side. Accept the emotion and continue to take small incremental steps.

 

Along the way, be sure to remind yourself that the FEAR of FEAR is far worse than the fear itself.

Phone Addiction

image on phoneI noticed something interesting this morning when I finished my exercise class. As I walked over to grab all my stuff and go home, I took a good look at all the other people getting ready to leave. Instead of talking to each other and discussing the class and life, every single one of them was staring down at their phones. There were 5 people lined up against the wall, all engrossed in their smartphones.

 

This made me chuckle and think about another incident that recently got my attention.

 

I attended a wedding with my whole family. I was so happy to have everyone together to celebrate this joyous occasion. After eating, I pulled everyone out on the dance floor. For a good 45 minutes, we laughed and danced like crazy to the music. Suddenly, I looked over to the closest table to the dance floor. There were about ten people at the table, all in their 20’s. Every single one of them sat silently, staring at their phone.

 

No one engaged in conversation and no one looked up from their phone. Honestly, it was the strangest and saddest thing I had ever seen. In fact, I pointed it out to my son, who quickly snapped a picture of it on his OWN phone.

 

There we were, engaged in the moment, celebrating this big event. However, instead of being in the “here and now”, the group of 10 were isolated with their technology.

 

There’s a story about a CEO of a large billion-dollar company that decided to change his policy for their weekly tactical meetings. As each member of the leadership team entered the room, the CEO motioned for them to place their phones in the box he was holding. He reported that the first meeting didn’t go too well. The team was fidgety and irritated with the change in rules. However, over time he found that the team’s conversations became more meaningful, and the team became more effective and productive. They were focused on NOW.

 

Do you realize how powerful it was to have all that talent in the room with no distractions?

 

I have definitely noticed this issue in my last couple of training presentations. When working with a small group, participants will inevitably utilize their smartphones to check email, etc. during the training. Even when I make a point to ask employees to stay off their phone, there are always a couple of offenders.

 

There are two reasons why this is happening. First, it is no longer seen as bad manners to interrupt what you are doing to check or be on your phone. Second, this behavior has become such a habit that we have difficulty changing this wired action. We are compelled to reach for our phones without even being aware that we are doing it.

 

I’m unsure how this smartphone behavior is going to manifest in the future workforce. In some ways, it helps us accelerate business, but in other ways, it’s a total distraction, a drain on our productivity and a barrier to creative problem solving.

 

I believe what’s needed are some boundaries with smartphone usage. Leadership must role model good behavior and have expectations that there are times where usage is off limits.

 

Organizations want engaged, creative, productive workers and that comes with eliminating the distractions during work. The best work comes out of people that can truly focus on the task at hand.