Building Change Resilience - Adopt A Flexible Approach

By -
Adopt a flexible approach

No, this does not mean that you need to be a contortionist or agree with everything.  What I mean by a flexible approach is being conscious of your own knee-jerk reaction to change.

The minute anyone proposes something new, how do YOU react? Are you open-minded, with your head tilted, shoulders down and body relaxed as you listen with interest or do you automatically frown, cross your arms and dig your heels in, gearing up for a defensive stand before the person has even said one word?

I think the majority of us tend to first dig in and cross our arms, presenting a strong resistant front. Look at the Catholic Church’s reaction when Galileo said the Earth rotated around the Sun and not the other way around. Don’t mention that to the Flat Earth Society!

What do you think the effect would be if you were more curious and more open to a different point of view? Imagine where the world would be if Alexandre Flemming, the inventor of Penicillin, hadn’t been curious about bacteria? If you are curious and open then there is no need to “buy in” or do anything except be an active listener and open up. This then gives you the space to digest the information before reacting to the news. On reflection you may find that that the change is not as bad as you think. Is it really that big? How much will you have to change? Why should you change?

Remember you don’t know what you don’t know! Some of the changes will have no points of reference to compare to... so don’t waste energy trying to do just that. For others, it will be your experience, skills and knowledge which will allow for the best way to approach and apply the changes impacting your business area. Brainstorm with your teams and collaborate with CBT to propose new ways of doing things.  Sometimes you WILL have to do things differently in order to get the different results that the bank needs.

 Moving from product to customer centricity, takes a lot of change, beginning with the way we think! We are still a bank who has to move, borrow, store and invest money but we have to be creative, innovative and flexible in order to remain competitive.

So how do we become more flexible?

Why not try something simple and start by doing something differently for a week? e.g. changing the route that you take to work or changing your breakfast cereal.

Try saying YES to something you usually say No to or vice versa. I always thought audio books were dull to listen to. My father made me listen to one of the Jack Reacher ones and I was enthralled. They have definitely improved the quality.

Observe what happens and how you feel about it. The good news is that no matter how you feel about it, you still make the change and the world will still be standing.

Want to know more?

Books
The Art of Tea by Osho

You Tube Video’s
Ted Talks – Tim Brown on Creativity
Ted Talks – Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity

Blog
How to stay committed but flexible


Let us know where you have needed to become more flexible by posted your comment below

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Transformational Leadership Coaching With Lumina

By -
Image
A Sample Lumina Splash (c) Transformational Leadership Coaching solutions are supported using psychometric and neuroscience analytics to measure your emotional development. Lumina Learning(c) is a preferred partner of Embracing Change for the measurement of behavioural changes desired by our clients and coachees. Your Transformational Leadership (TLP) coaching programme will include a Lumina Spark portrait,  which is the Lumina baseline psychometric assessment, providing you with your personal emotional benchmark at the beginning of your transformation journey. After completing the Lumina Spark  assessment, you will receive your Lumina Portrait which includes your Lumina Splash(c). Each Lumina Splash is as unique as a finger print. If you want a quick assessment of who you are, you can download the Lumina Splash App by clicking on the links below - then get your friends to also down load so you can compare and find out how well you know each other. Get Your Free Splash
Read more

COVID19 and Emotional Wealth

By -
Image
At this time in history, there is no one on the planet who does not know what COVID-19 is. It is the pandemic that has swept through every single country, mainly killing people older than 70, or who have pre-existing comorbidity health problems and also unfortunately the frontline workers, taking care of those who are protecting us. Today, 08 June 2020,  there have been 406 165 deaths of which 120 000 people have died in the US, 40 000 in the UK alone.  We have been bombarded with more than a trillion pieces of information about the corona virus on how to sanitize our hands, maintain social distance and why we need to stay inside. However, within all of that we have not received much information about how we may protect ourselves from the mental and emotional impacts that this will have on our lives. But there are two accelerated changes that COVID-19 has brought to humanity in less than 8 weeks:- Digital Transformation Emotional Response in Society The digital transformation is taki
Read more

Building Change Resilience - Be A Problem Solver

By -
Image
Be a problem solver How does being a problem solver build resilience to change? Well... if you are a problem solver, you will see a challenge, not as a problem but rather a situation waiting for the right solution! If you see a picture of Mount Kilimanjaro do you think “Phew too big” or do you start planning a route, finding guides and getting the right equipment? When you are first presented with a change, you think what can I do differently and how can we benefit from this? Here are a few questions I ask myself when presented with a challenge or a new situation: What is the real issue? Customers asked for longer branch opening hours because they wanted easier access to their cash 24 hours a day. So the preferred solution to the issue, was not for branches to stay open until 11pm but to install an ATM. Who knows more than me about this issue? Use lessons learnt or simply ask an SME, colleague or friend for support when trying to solve the problem. Don’t forget yo
Read more