C: Welcome to Slingshot25’s Shotcast, a series of bite-sized podcasts that’ll feel like an espresso shot to your brain. I’m Courtney.
J: I’m Jackie.
C: Something we’ve been thinking about… Ooh, I don’t even know what to call this. It’s such an unnameable, indescribable situation.
J: Ooh, we must be on the bleeding edge of something.
C: Maybe. So we’ve been talking about what happens when, as an employee — like, you’re a leader, but you’re also an employee — and sometimes you need help, and you look up for help, and the people you’re looking up to don’t seem to be looking down.
J: The higher you go in the organization, I think the more that becomes true.
C: Yeah.
J: Yeah.
C: So, we did a previous episode where we talked about how there’s so much uncertainty in times of change, and one of the things we need to do is help people look sideways and down.
C: Which is basically asking people to see their sphere of influence. And it doesn’t really help if part of that influential sphere is when you look up and you don’t get what you need.
C: And it is a good frame of mind, mindset, whatever, to control what you can control, to influence what you can influence. Sideways and down, you’re gonna have a lot more. But the truth is, you need some help when you look up sometimes.
J: That’s right.
C: And in those moments, we are struggling to make sense of things. I think there are two problems: one is how our brains work after change and how we make sense of things, and one is how leadership works, or doesn’t. So I want to talk about the brain part first, and then we’ll talk about the leadership piece next.
J: Okay.
C: One thing that’s really interesting about how we process change is that as things are changing, we all kind of make up a story in those moments of how it’s going to work, and we do that individually. There’s no way — even if we work together, we’re on a small team, we have the same boss, we have the same training — how we’re processing and making sense of the change is a very individual experience. So we’re actually going to have a different episode and talk a lot about sensemaking, the need for it, a little bit of how to do it. But we just have to appreciate that there is going to be this uncertainty, a lot of messiness, a lot of confusion, a lot of frustration, because everybody’s sort of jamming to their own Spotify song, right? Everybody’s in their own lane about the stuff, and then we look to leaders to try to give us direction, create clarity, and those leaders don’t always… it’s like they’re not even paying attention. They don’t even know that’s a problem.
J: Yeah, absolutely. The thing you were saying in there, Courtney, that just sparked a thought for me is this idea that we create our own stories, and we think in narratives. All of us do. If you ever pay attention to your thoughts in a day, you’ll realize that they are, at least, partial narratives. They may not be coherent and readable in a book, but you think in narratives. And the other thing we know about how humans think is we tend to make ourselves the hero of our own stories.
C: Absolutely.
J: We will always overcome. We’ll figure this out.
C: Or the victim. I got flipped off on my lunch break today — because I pulled out, I didn’t pull out fast enough in front of a car. I upset someone.
J: Well, someday we’ll talk about the fundamental attribution error to describe all of what you just experienced there. But these internal narratives — we tend to make ourselves the hero of our own stories. Now, here’s why that came up for me: one of the things that happens during times of intense change is that leaders are in the swirl as much as their employees are, and they’re looking up, and because they’re leaders, sometimes people really aren’t taking care of them. Like you said, the person above them isn’t looking down. We can find that leaders fall into what I’d call an unfair place during times of intense, transformational change. Oh, goodness, we all just love this word “transformation” in organizations these days. You know, transformational change can mean that the change is largely incoherent. It’s entangled hopelessly across teams — there’s no one person who could explain it — and leaders are trying to find their way forward in this mess, and they end up in this place all too often. I think if you asked any corporate employee who’s in an organization going through some transformation, put whatever word you want in front of it, some big transformation, they will tell you that there are people burning the midnight oil every single night. There are people burning out. There are heroics. People are doing amazing things, and of course, in a really short burst, that’s okay, but this is how this thing is actually getting across the finish line, through months, sometimes years. We’ve heard of teams that have been working these heroic schedules essentially for years, trying to bring transformation into organizations. And that’s just… I don’t think you have to have us tell you this. That’s just not okay. When leaders are hesitant to, I think, or maybe don’t know how to, don’t have the skills to raise those things up — we love to give people ways to frame things so that they can, it’s almost like, externalize things. A psychiatrist will say, rather than saying “I’m sad,” you know, you feel like, “I’m a sad person,” you should say, “I’m feeling sad,” because it externalizes something, and it creates a little space, and it’s helpful. I might suggest that here to leaders: instead of internalizing, “I’m not doing enough. I’m not managing this well enough. I’m not finding the right stories. I’m not getting all the work done. I’m not doing the heroics,” rather than taking that in and trying to embody coherence for this crazy, entangled change, say instead, “I’m going to give that back to the system.” This is an under-designed or poorly designed integration, and it doesn’t mean anyone is sitting there rubbing their hands together with an evil laugh — it’s just that people aren’t aware of it. We don’t have things mobilized in the right way. So how do I start to give voice to that, to find words for that? I think we’re kind of on the bleeding edge here, and we don’t have a lot of really specific things for leaders to do, but I think the best place to start is just to realize that that’s something you shouldn’t carry, and it’s time to, as we say, give it back to the system so that more people can get involved in making sense of it.
C: Yeah, and I think some of the signs or things to notice — if you’re communicating about the change and you’re having a hard time finding the truth in it, like, “Hey, here’s the schedule,” but you don’t believe in the schedule?
J: Right.
C: Or here’s the resource plan, but you don’t believe in the resource plan, or you see some hot-button issue that’s going to crash the whole thing. In those moments, you’ve got to find your voice and speak up and ask for help, and you’ve got to get the attention of that leader — and maybe you’ve already done that, and it’s not working. But that’s the thing you have to do. Can you find some truth? Can you find something to believe in, in it? And if you can’t, you’ve got to go fight for a better solution. And maybe the last thing I’ll say on this: if you are someone who is fighting for a better solution, and every turn, every change, and every request is one you don’t believe in, that you don’t think is possible… once in a while you’ve got to push on a rock — that’s part of leadership. But if everywhere you turn it’s rocks to climb over, dig up, bury through, I think sometimes you’ve got to ask yourself if this is the right environment for you.
C: We say a lot: stay in joy, or leave in peace. There is no third option. It is not okay to stay in disappointment, anger, resentment, exhaustion. You deserve more than that. You just deserve more than that. And so, if you’ve had to fight, fight, fight it, and if it’s all a fight, maybe some stepping back and having a reflection is overdue.
J: I have one more thing I want to add to this. For those leaders — I would love to just leave us with one. If any really senior leaders are listening to this, I’d like to think that they are — and you’re that person at the top of an organization who’s pushing transformation through, I want you to take heed of this as well. Now, we don’t expect you to work out every detail of an integration down to the foundation of your organization. That’s absurd. But what we do ask you to do is to make no assumptions about what you think you know about the reality of the integration of this transformation. You must know this by now if you’re a highly privileged senior leader: you get information that is sanitized, summarized — Courtney, you like to say “bubble-wrapped” — all the way to the top, and it’s just pure politics that that happens. Do not mistake your partial information for complete knowledge. So just go and see what the reality is, and give people a method, a venue, if you will, to talk to you about the reality of an integration. Don’t be surprised by what you hear.
C: In a way that is helpful and safe and open — not with a critical lens. With your authority, it may always feel that way.
J: I love it.
C: All right. That’s all for this episode of our Shotcast, but we always have much more to say. If you want more, drop us a line at slingshot25.com. Until next time.
