April is here, which has always been a month that signifies change for me. The days are getting noticeably longer, the birds are chirping in the morning and flowers are beginning to bloom. This year in particular, there seems to be signs of changes on the horizon.
You have probably heard the saying, “the only thing constant is change.” But how often do we stop and examine our relationship to change?
Typically, when we make changes, we have a positive relationship to it. Maybe we decided to take a new job with more flexibility to have more time with family or we decided to move to a larger house to create more space for our home office. We took ownership of our life or situation and made a change to make things work better for us.
However, when change happens to us, we often have a sourer relationship to the change. Our job was reorganized to a different department or our landlord sold the house we were renting, forcing us to move. Our job may give us the same or even more flexibility as before and needing to move may give us the opportunity to seek a larger house. However, when change happens to us, this creates a disruption, and we relate to it differently.
Throughout April we will examine change and how to navigate it productively in the workplace. For this first post, let’s look at what is going on underneath the change that can make it so difficult to navigate.
Ownership and Autonomy
As I alluded to above, whether we have control over the change can significantly impact our relationship to it. When change happens that impacts us and we have little to no influence over the change, it interferes and often violates our need for consistency, predictability, ownership and autonomy and perhaps even touches on safety and security, depending on the nature of the change. Change is going to happen constantly throughout our lives, but whether we have control or influence over it can make all the difference.
Try taking inventory of a change that is happening to you and consider what you do have control over. If your lease is not being extended, perhaps you have control over where you move to. If your job is changing, perhaps you have control over your own professionalism during the transition. Finding and focusing on what you do have control or influence over can help ease the discomfort of unplanned change.
Grief and Loss
When we experience change, we often are in a process of letting go of something. When we move, we are letting go of a place with a lot of memories. When we change jobs, perhaps we are letting go of our co-workers or responsibilities. When we change our diet, maybe we are letting go of eating pizza! This can be a seemingly large scale letting go, with the death of a loved one, a move or change in relationship status (married, divorce, single, etc.). Or it can be a smaller scale letting go, with a change in work process or schedule, a shift in routine or your favorite show getting cancelled.
Regardless of the scale, change means we are losing the way things were for a future that may not look all that clear. For many of us, this situation can feel a lot like grief.
Grief can lead us to denial, anger, depression, numbness or disorientation, among other emotions or responses. We need time to work through these emotions to get to acceptance and recovery.. If you are interested in learning more about grief and loss, I will encourage you to check out this article and read it from the vantage point of navigating change.
Individual Experiences and Non-Linear Progression
It is important that we acknowledge that change affects each of us differently and there is not a prescribed, linear pathway to navigate through it. It is OK to experience change differently than your family, peers and co-workers. It also is OK to wake up one day with acceptance of the change and then to wake up angry about it the next day. Change is dynamic and so are our responses and emotions. This is all normal and the first thing we can do is be mindful of where our experience is coming from.
Try labeling your emotional experience and asking yourself “what is the emotional experience I am having able to tell me about what is important to me?” After some self-inquiry, you may find some insight that helps you navigate the change with more ease.
This post is an introduction to helping us understand a few of the underlying components of change and how to navigate it. Tune in next week as we discuss navigating organizational change in more detail.
Luke Wiesner is the UC Merced Conflict Resolution Coach, a private resource for staff members who are interested in having a partner to support workplace challenges or conflicts. This service is voluntary, and you can partner with the coach by yourself or with fellow university employees.
