Tough Conversations—Know When to Push, and When to Stop
In this series, I’m discussing the importance of having tough conversations with clients when warranted, and describing a few of the dynamics in play when this happens. Because it’s unusual to intentionally take clients to the higher end of the Discomfort Continuum that I described in my last two posts, it is likely to be difficult and stressful for us as well. As change practitioners, when we fail to address important but difficult-to-discuss issues with clients, it’s almost always because we weren’t prepared to deal with our own emotions. more
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©2011 Conner Partners, Inc.
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Danger? Opportunity? You Decide.
In this series, I’ve been talking about the importance of being able to reframe a person’s mindset during a change initiative to shift how he or she sees and interprets certain things. There are five key reframing skills:
1. Address the “context” as well as the “content” of interpersonal communications.
2. Redefine the other person’s frame of reference (FOR) in a way that sheds positive light on the successful implementation of the change at hand.
3. Reset the person’s priorities.
4. Respond effectively when the other person reacts to the reframing attempt.
5. Confront the person with the real price it takes to achieve success.
I’ll focus on the fourth skill in this post.
Reframing Skill #4: The Ability to Respond Appropriately Based on the Person’s Reaction
The disruptive nature of major change produces a crisis in the sense that the status quo is no longer viable. The Chinese express the concept of crisis with two symbols.
The top symbol represents potential danger, the lower, hidden opportunity. By combining the two, the Chinese position change as a paradox. Observing how people respond to the stress produced by the crisis of change reveals two basic orientations that reflect similar characteristics. more
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How to Work Yourself Out of a Job
“A true voyage of discovery does not consist of seeking new landscapes but rather of seeing with new eyes.” —Marcel Proust
As change professionals, we often say that we want to leave clients free from the need for additional services from us. Unfortunately, our track record doesn’t support that claim. This is less true for pure training interventions; however, consultants (both internal and external) engage in more “doing” than in “transferring capability.”
I realize not all change facilitators share this view, but my personal bias is that teaching clients to execute change on their own is a crucial part of practicing our craft. Some internal practitioners lack the charter to do anything but solve problems. (“Just help us get this project implemented. We’ll worry about learning how to do it ourselves later.”) Some external practitioners operate within a business model that doesn’t include teaching clients how to stand on their own without the consultant’s help. This series, however, is for a third category of practitioners more
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©2011 Conner Partners, Inc.
www.connerpartners.com
How to Make Shift Happen
In this series, we’ve been exploring the evolution of organizational paradigms. In my last post, I talked about the collapse/renewal phase, the place where either shift “happens” or it “hits the fan.” Here, I’ll pick up with an exploration of what is involved when orchestrating a new paradigm. It requires a four-part approach involving leadership, a learning environment, a new culture, and resilience.
Strong Leadership Is Imperative
Existing paradigms are typically not dissolved by consensus nor by insiders. Usually a single, determined individual or small group with the power to sanction dramatic change throughout an organization concludes that more
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The Movement Begins
(1) CommentThe Uncertainty Phase—Time to Shift or…
So far in this series, we’ve explored the meaning of the term “paradigm shift,” and we’ve looked at the first two phases of an organizational paradigm evolution. Now it’s time for us to look at how the actual shift happens, to uncover why the existing paradigm begins to decay.
It’s upsetting to realize that a critical issue (current or anticipated problem or opportunity) cannot be adequately addressed by the existing paradigm and its multitude of fixes. Such a crisis is usually precipitated by more
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Before Shift Happens
(1) CommentIn my last post, I talked about the term “paradigm shift.” Very simply, we can say it’s “a fork in the road that opens up a completely new way of perceiving, thinking, and taking action—with no turning back.” I also said that the term has become part of our slang, and that its real meaning has often been diluted more
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©2011 Conner Partners, Inc.
www.connerpartners.com
Lessons Learned About Building Commitment to Change
After three-and-a-half decades of being a professional change practitioner, I’ve seen my share of successful and unsuccessful attempts to generate enough commitment to reach full realization. If there is one thing I’m sure of it’s that the necessary momentum and critical mass of commitment toward desired outcomes is not easy to come by. Below are some of the more important lessons that have affected my practice.
1. The commitment process unfolds at both intellectual and emotional levels.
Usually, intellectual commitment precedes emotional commitment. Most people can grasp the implications of a change at a cognitive level fairly quickly. However, they often find that they need more time to make the necessary emotional adjustments.
This split-level commitment can produce confusion, mixed signals, and more
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©2011 Conner Partners, Inc.
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What Have We Learned About Learning?
(1) CommentEnlightenment isn’t about knowledge you learn, it’s about knowledge you turn into. ~Deepak Chopra
In my opinion, learning is one of the indispensable bedrocks of our craft. I layer many concepts, tools, and techniques on top of this core element, but fostering learning—my own and my clients’—is at the heart of what I do.
Recently, though, I realized that I haven’t been paying enough attention to what I’ve “learned from learning.” This prompted me to go back and reexamine a variety of learning models that I’ve used over the years and ask myself to what extent I apply, by design and with forethought, the concepts or tenets from these frameworks. I didn’t merely ask, “Have the models influenced my thinking or impacted my actions?” but “Am I intentional and mindful about their application?” My answers varied from model to model—sometimes it was encouraging, but mostly it was sobering. more
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©2011 Conner Partners, Inc.
www.connerpartners.com
One Practitioner’s Art Is Another’s Science
The science of change execution is for the domesticated parts of our work; the art covers the untamed aspects. Both are essential to creating the value we promise clients. To reach the proper balance between the two, however, we must have a deeper understanding of their distinctions.
In any profession, both science and art have two levels of application: more
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©2010 Conner Partners, Inc.
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Weaving Science With Art—Over and Over Again
We all unfolded differently in our paths toward proficiency, yet we each found our own understanding regarding the relationship between science and art. In this post, I’ll share how I have seen these two elements impact the way practitioners develop.
In my years of facilitating change and coaching change agents, I’ve seen people use many different routes to become skilled practitioners. Some approaches are much more effective than others more
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©2010 Conner Partners, Inc.
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