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Step Five-Dancing With Change
Learning to dance with change:
Step One: Accept that which cannot be changed.
Step Two: Choose whether you are going to dance or sit this one out.
Step Three: Determine how much of this new dance you already know.
Step Four: Determine your role–are you the Lead or the Follower?
Once you’ve taken Steps 1-4, it’s time to start dancing.
Step Five is:
Focus on learning the new dance.
There are few people who resist change more than I do. I like knowing what I’m doing. I like being competent. I like knowing stuff. So when I have to learn something new, I do not jump up and down yelling, “Yippee!!!” (Unless, of course, it was my idea to begin with.) When a change is thrust upon me, I generally develop what I consider a healthy level of disdain for whatever it is I need to learn. “How can this possibly be better than what I already know? This is stupid. I liked the old way! Why do we need to change it?”
Someone wiser than I once described this as trying to steer your car by using the rear view mirror. Helen Keller put it this way:
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
Refer to Step One. When you are facing a change that is mandatory, accept that you have no choice and then fully devote your efforts to learning whatever it is you need to learn.
Imagine you are in a dance class to learn the Cha-Cha. You can see through floor-to-ceiling windows into the classroom next door where the Mambo is being taught. You learned the Mambo last year and you are really good at it. You love the Mambo; you feel competent and relaxed when doing this dance. The more you gaze through the windows envying those who are dancing the Mambo, the longer it takes you to learn the Cha-Cha.
The Law of Attraction says that you get more of what you focus on. Because of that, amazing things happen when you put your full attention on learning something new. It becomes easier. Because you are focused on the solution, information that will guide you forward comes your way from unexpected sources. You’ll find yourself thinking of unique ways to forge ahead while you are in the shower, driving your car…heck, you’ll even dream of solutions. That is the power of focus.
Years ago when I decided I wanted to do stand-up comedy, funny stories and one-liners would occur to me all day long–talking to my sister on the phone, standing in line at the grocery store, during business meetings…the supply seemed limitless. I even woke up one night laughing at a joke I had just told onstage in my dream. Of course I wrote it down and that’s a tip for you: keep a pad of paper and pen handy so you can write things down as you think of them.
Once I decided that stand-up was not for me, funny information stopped showing up. My focus had shifted. I am fully confident, however, that should I renew my interest in stand-up and focus on “funny,” the information would again be there for the taking.
Can you think of a time when you have been fully devoted to solving something only to have the information you needed show up unexpectedly? Maybe you received an email that held the answer. Maybe you “stumbled across” a magazine article or television show. In the Bible it says, “Seek and ye shall find.” Truer words have yet to be written.
When my daughters were in school, I used to tell them that one of the secrets to getting good grades is to do your homework. Not only will you learn the subject, teachers will bend over backwards for students who are sincerely trying. Doing homework is evidence of your efforts.
The same is true at work. When you focus your full attention on learning what you need to, your supervisor is on your side. If, on the other hand, you spend your energy fighting change, you are making your supervisor’s job difficult and in the long run that’s not good for you or your career.
What’s the bottom line? Looking back over your shoulder while dancing only leads to accidents. The longer we cling to what was, the more time we lose in learning the new. Mourn the old as quickly as you can in order to let go, and then place your focus on learning what’s in front of you.
Cha-Cha anyone? 
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Step Four – Dancing with Change
Step One in learning to dance with change is to accept that which cannot be changed.
Step Two is: choose whether you are going to dance or sit this one out.
Step Three is: Determine how much of this new dance you already know.
Today we will cover the next step in Learning to Dance With Change. Step Four is:
Determine your role—are you the Lead or the Follower?
Before you can start dancing with others, roles need to be determined. If two people get out on the dance floor and both try to lead, the dance does not go well. If both decide to follow, the same is true. Without determining your part before joining the dance, you will step on many toes and the dance will be painfully awkward.
The same is true when implementing change. We’ve all heard the expression, “Too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.” When everyone tries to take the lead on a project, chaos ensues. Things don’t get done because there is an assumption that someone else took care of it. On the flip side, there is often duplication of effort because the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing.
What dancers will tell you is that the Lead does not have any more control over the dance than does the Follower. The Follower is being led but the dance is a partnership; they dance together, making each other look good. When one falters, the other makes up for it.
This is also what happens on a good project team. It is up to the Team Leader to set the tone and structure; the Team members then make sure that each performs their part well so that the overall project is successful.
Too often we think it is up to the Lead to take up the slack on a project. When you approach it in the spirit of partnership, then you realize that if s/he falters, so do you. Just as s/he would take up the slack for you, it is up to you to do the same for your Lead.
We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance. ~ Japanese Proverb
When you find it difficult to follow (or lead, for that matter), it is often due to a feeling of vulnerability, of being exposed. When I was a teenager my father tried, in vain, to teach me the Fox Trot. He finally gave up in exasperation because I could not or would not let him lead. Like most people, I am extremely uncomfortable being in a situation where I feel out of control and I thought that following while dancing was one such situation. Each time I felt uncertain, instead of letting him guide me, I tried to take over. (The story of my life, by the way!)
Years later, I took formal dance lessons with the explicit goal of learning how to follow. My inability to do so had become a social embarrassment so my motivation was high. Today, I can relax and let the other person lead. Of course, the better I know the dance, the more relaxed I am and the more I enjoy it. When my partner starts to take me into unknown territory, my knee-jerk reaction is to take over but I’m now able to take a deep breath and relax into it.
I find myself applying these same concepts to being on a project team. When I was in my twenties, I wanted to run everything. I was of the personality type someone once brilliantly described as “a massive ego coupled with an inferiority complex.” My reaction to feeling vulnerable was to take over. It was never pretty and it didn’t do my career any good, either.
Now that I grasp the concept of partnership, it is much easier to accept the role of Follower. I finally understand that no role is better than another on a project; all are equally necessary to get the job done.
When you are considering whether to take the role of Follower or Lead, the questions below are useful. Please consider them in the context of this specific project because the answers are different depending on the mission:
- Where would your skills be most useful?
- Thinking back to similar projects of the past, in what position would you have delivered optimum performance?
- Are there gaps in your knowledge that a different Lead might have?
- Who could take the team to the finish line the fastest while achieving all the objectives?
- Could you be the Lead for one component of the project and Follower for the rest?
Whatever your role is on a project, remember that, just like dancing, delivering a good performance depends on all parties. If the Follower doesn’t perform his/her role consistently well, the best Lead in the world won’t be able to make up for it.
Dancing With Change – Step 3
To recap: Step One in learning to dance with change is to accept that which cannot be changed. Step Two is: choose whether you are going to dance or sit this one out.
Whether or not you choose to dance or sit this one out, you are still challenged with a change in your life. If you choose to dance, you must learn the new steps. If you decide to sit it out, you are still facing a new dance because the old one is over; it’s no longer available to you. You may opt out of the new one but it doesn’t mean you don’t have to dance. There is no standing still; you’re always dancing.
In the area of change management, there is much discussion about fear and not nearly enough about the more specific concept of vulnerability. Fear is defined as “a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc. whether the threat is real or imagined.” Vulnerability is “the state of feeling exposed; susceptibility to injury or attack.” Although this may be pure semantics, to my mind fear is more momentary where vulnerability has real staying power.
When people are faced with any type of change, they often feel exposed. This can take the form of worrying that they’re incapable, for any number of reasons, of learning this new dance. The two most popular reasons seem to be, “I’m not smart enough,” or “I’m too old.” I’ve even heard the declaration, “I’m tired of learning new things.” We never tire of learning. Aren’t you excited about learning when it’s your idea? What we get weary of is the feeling of vulnerability when new dances are thrust upon us.
Whatever new dance you are faced with, Step Three of learning to dance with change is:
Determine how much of this new dance you already know.
When I was in the fifth grade, The Mashed Potato (not to be confused with The Monster Mash) was THE dance. I became determined to learn it. My friend Margie had an older sister Gigi who agreed to teach it to us. It took two days of concentrated effort over a weekend to learn but it finally clicked. One minute I was struggling and the next minute I was mashing away! The key? I finally figured out that The Mashed Potato is little more than The Charleston standing in one place! (I had already learned The Charleston from a TV show that took place in the Roaring Twenties.) 
When I finally realized the steps were the same, I was suddenly the neighborhood Queen of the Mashed Potato! (At least in my mind.)
You will rarely run into a change that doesn’t include some components you already know. Remember the first time you came face-to-face with a computer? I’ll bet you were already familiar with the keyboard. A quick way to take the fear out of adapting to whatever new “dance” you’re learning is to figure out what you already know that can be applied.
Here are some questions to ask (Managers and Supervisors, these are great to ask your team members):
- What is familiar about this?
- When have you had to learn something similar?
- How did you learn it that time?
- Were there shortcuts you couldn’t see then that you can apply this time around?
- How can you leverage this knowledge?
People who speak several languages will tell you that the third is easier to learn than the second. This is true especially if they are in the same family, such as the Latin languages. That’s because you can apply concepts like case and conjugation you learned the first time around.
The same is true of anything you need to learn. If you’ve done something similar, you can take what you learned from that experience and apply it to what you now face. The important thing is to understand that we all feel vulnerable at the beginning. Some mask it behind indifference; others pretend that nothing could be easier. Still others act as if they already know it.
Whatever external stance you adopt when faced with learning something new, it is important that internally you understand that you already know how to learn; you simply have to apply those methods here. Each time you successfully learn something, you get better at the process. Luckily for us, we needn’t start from scratch each time; the art of learning builds upon itself.
So the next time you are required to learn a new dance, take some time before you dive in to determine what steps and techniques you already know. I turned The Charleston into The Mashed Potato—you can take your knowledge of one project to a new one and be ahead of the game.
When you take the time to determine how much of the new dance you already know, your feelings of vulnerability will abate. You are smart enough, you’re not too old and you know you never really tire of learning!
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Step Two Dancing with Change
To recap: the first step in learning to dance with change is to accept that which cannot be changed.
Once you’ve accepted that the circumstances are here to stay, it is time to decide how you are going to respond. Whenever a change occurs that frightens us (and nearly all change does), one of two instincts is activated in our reptilian brains: fight or flight.
Therefore Step Two in learning how to Dance with Change is to decide:
Are you going to dance or are you going to sit this one out?
In other words, are you going to stay and work through it or are you going to leave? Although many times leaving seems to be the most attractive choice, it is important to understand that leaving results in change, as well.
I have a coaching client who called to say she’s thinking of quitting her job. Although I completely understood her reasons for wanting to (slave-driver boss, not enough money…) it was important for her to work through what changes would occur if she did quit.
Many of the new changes would be positive: no more 18-hour workdays; she would be free to move to the same city as her fiancé’ and she could look for a more reasonable job. But just because a change falls on the plus side of a column doesn’t mean it’s easier to cope with. She would also be faced with finding a new job, packing up to move and let’s not forget the adjustment of living with her fiancé’ versus a long-distance romance.
She determined that the plusses of leaving outweighed the minuses and she quit. In doing so, she’s very clear that she now faces even more change as she moves into this new phase of her life. She decided to sit out the dance she was in and now needs to learn the steps of some new ones.
Deciding to stay when change occurs also has plusses and minuses. Of the two choices, staying is usually the easier. This is true even in the face of grim circumstances. The statistics on abused women successfully escaping their abusers only to voluntarily return are sobering. They are often more afraid of being able to do everything it would take to forge a new life than going back to the life they are familiar with.
I see this in companies all the time. Employees have a lengthy list of complaints about how they are managed, the unfairness of their pay, and the working conditions. And yet, when you suggest they consider developing a strategy for leaving, they have an equally long list of reasons why that’s not a good idea.
For many, the theory is: Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know. And there’s nothing wrong with that unless you make the choice to stay and then act as if you didn’t.
When a change occurs that you don’t like and you make a choice to stay and work through it, then your job is to figure out how. Please do not stay and then focus all your efforts on fighting the change every step of the way. This would be akin to going onto the dance floor when they are playing hip-hop music and stubbornly insisting on dancing a tango. You might dance the most beautiful tango in the world but if the music doesn’t match, you simply look like you don’t know what you are doing and you are a distraction to the other dancers.
We face the choice of dance or sit every single day:
- Tackle our projects with vigor or do busy work to avoid them?
- Pay attention in a meeting or daydream?
- Complain or suggest solutions?
- Show up on time or straggle in late?
- Applaud the way others dance or critique their styles?
- Fully support the goals of your organization or secretly sabotage them?
The dancers who win in competition are not always the ones with the perfect form. They are more often the ones who are having a great time. You can tell they are thoroughly enjoying themselves and they bring the audience (and the judges) along with them.
Have you ever seen dancers who clearly are uncomfortable? They look like they hope the floor will open up at any moment and swallow them. In watching them, we become uncomfortable as well and then nobody’s having any fun.
If you decide to stay and dance, by all means go for it! Do not hold back. Give it your all even if you’re not a great dancer. (Small children can’t dance but they have so much fun and are so committed that they win their audience over.)
When you decide to stay and work through whatever change you are facing and you give it your all, you will discover that suddenly you have mastered the dance and you can move your feet without even thinking about them.
Deciding to dance or sit this one out are both powerful choices. Whatever your choice, fully embrace it.
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Learning New Languages
One of the major benefits of learning how to dance with change is that it keeps your brain facile. In fact, Andrew Weil, M.D. in his book Healthy Aging recommends learning a foreign language (a BIG change for most of us) as a way to stave off the effects of aging on the brain, “You don’t have to master it. Just the attempt to learn a language is like running different software through the brain. You’re exercising more communication channels.”
Well, there are the traditional foreign languages and there are the new languages we need to learn as we are adapting to changes. Some examples:
Learning how to speak the same language as your boss. Even if you are both fluent in the same language, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you both attach the same meaning to words and phrases. My favorite example is the term “customer service.” I continually tell managers that, if one of the results they want from their team is “excellent customer service” then it would serve them well to define what they mean by that. I have seen many problems arise when a team member delivers customer service according to his standards, which are quite different from those of his boss.
The same is true in home situations. We tell our kids “be good” as if they were born knowing what that means. When we define the criteria, there are fewer arguments because both child and parent can clearly see when something is done that doesn’t fit the criteria of “be good.”
Figuring out what all those darned acronyms mean. Many years ago I went to work for a computer software company in Marketing Intelligence (which the Sales team assured me was an oxymoron). For the first three months, whenever I attended a meeting and we were talking about the computerized sales system, I thought I’d landed in the bar scene of Star Wars where every creature spoke a dialect unfamiliar to my untrained ears. So many acronyms flew around the room, my head spun from trying to keep up.
Today it’s IM and Twitter. I’m still trying to get everything straight. So far I have mastered LOL, BTW, 🙁 and (: I’m still working on retweets, direct tweets and whether one’s head could actually explode from the pressure of trying to be hip (and I suspect just using the word hip places me solidly out of contention).
Adapting to the culture. Most foreign language classes start with the basics which include good manners—how to say please, thank you and you’re welcome. Beyond the words, it is important when you finally travel to the foreign country whose language you studied, that you also learn what good manners are within that specific culture. For example, in certain Mideast cultures, showing the bottom of your foot roughly translates to, “I consider you lower than the dirt on the ground.” That faux pas would be difficult to recover from.
Learning what’s acceptable at work is equally important and a moving target. The culture is in constant motion, responding to many factors: changes in the marketplace, employee turnover, new ownership, and mergers with other companies. It is a good practice to routinely raise your head up from your work to assess the culture you are in now. Too many of us decide how to approach our work based on the shape of the culture when we first joined the organization. Are you keeping up with the culture you’re in? Do you know what’s acceptable behavior? If you’re not sure how to assess it, a quick way to start is by observing the behavior that gets rewarded and that which gets punished.
Learning to dance with change is an ongoing process. The more we use the steps (which we’ll cover beginning in my New Year’s column), the better dancer you’ll become. Once you’ve learned the steps, the answer to how to get really good at the dance is contained in this old joke:
A New York City tourist stops a local on the sidewalk to ask, “How does one get to Carnegie Hall?” The local replies, “Practice, practice, practice!”