Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM MARCH 2019 44 N ot everyone wants to work with me. I've come to understand and accept this. Once, the day before I was to arrive at a client's location to lead a Team Tune-Up, the leader shared that a few people weren't looking forward to my coming. Ouch! Most of the time, my clients are delighted by my work and most report that people not only feel better but behave better as a result of our work together. Why wouldn't someone look forward to my arrival and all the good, positive work we'd be doing? I shared this conversation with my assistant and he said, "Let's face it, Libby. You're not everyone's cup of tea." I can laugh at this now, but at the time, it made me wonder. Sometimes the harbingers of change signal more tough work ahead. Sometimes, we just don't feel like facing the effort it may take. Once, a client told me, "This was the scariest thing I've ever done. I let you look under the hood... and I knew it wasn't going to be good." Change work is challenging, especially for the leader, even when they might initially think what they want is to change the people in their organizations and on their teams. One of my most favorite Retail Observer columns, entitled, "Dude, It's You," relates stories of how very often the first place change needs to occur is within the leaders themselves. Sometimes, it feels like change is taking a really long time with lots of grumbling and resistance, and leaders can become exhausted or resentful of everyone not just getting on-board with what they feel like they've explained and mapped out and shared. Enough already! I try to reassure teams who embark on culture change that the work takes a lot of courage, especially on the part of the leader. To have an outsider poking around and pointing out places that are less than ideal or serving as obstacles can be mildly annoying, to seriously stressful. But the truth is that there's a lot of wisdom and smarts inside organizations (and inside the leaders!). I believe it's there... and I also believe if you could've made the changes you wanted by yourselves, you would've done it already. The first place to examine this resistance to change is within yourself as a leader. What are you holding on to as the capital-T truth? That's an opportunity for investigation. Where do you notice your own energy or literal feet dragging when it comes to the changes that need to be made? There's something underneath that. Your internal reluctance can manifest externally as resistance. Typically, we are reluctant for a few reasons: • The Territory of the Unknown: I've written a lot about how everyone thinks you know where you are going. Or they think you think you do! But the truth is that our relationship to ambiguity and mystery is the stuff that visionary leaders are made of. We can't know all the answers. We cannot predict all the external indicators of what this change will incur. Sometimes, you may feel reluctant to purposefully go out there to the edge of the horizon where the ice may be thin or where it seems like the world as we know it simply drops off. Who wouldn't feel some reluctance? • Fear of Loss of Control: Shhhhh. I have a secret... we're not actually in control of anything, especially our employees, our clients or customers, or anything external to ourselves. It's just a powerful, magnetic illusion. The number of recovering perfectionists in leadership roles is astounding, and as Marshall Goldsmith's What Got You Here Won't Get You There suggests, the things that take us to one level of success will not help us with what comes next. And even in that, the notion of growth as only hierarchical is a paradigm that's dissolving before our eyes. We can only control how we respond and how we show up. That's it, and it's a daily promise and practice. • The Tyranny of the Persona: We all have personas, those public- facing selves that help us rise to the occasion or put on our "game face" so we can hold on to a sense of confidence or competence that seems to induce followership. It's like an exaggerated Facebook profile: we share the happy family photos or most inspiring memes, but it's not the whole picture. Personas work until they don't. Saving face shows up in every leader's path unfolding. To show vulnerability, humility, or a sense of comfort with the messiness of change can actually help us (and help others), but our entrenched ideas of what we are supposed to do and be can get in the way of our being real in the midst of tumult. What is the measure of your reluctance? RELUCTANCE AND CHANGE: WHEN RESISTANCE IS FUTILE Libby Wagner Culture Coach RO Libby Wagner, author of The Influencing Option: The Art of Building a Profit Culture in Business, works with clients to help them create and sustain profit cultures. www.libbywagner.com

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