This month is the 10-year anniversary of LeadershipVITAE. As part of the celebration, I’m posting some of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the last decade.
As a change leader, you’d think I’d embrace change. Generally, I do. Change I initiate that is.
And isn’t that the way of things? The reality is that we don’t resist change. Not really. We resist being changed. More specifically, we resist the messy middle on the path to change.
Taking the first step
Our bodies, at the cellular level, crave homeostasis. We want consistency and fight anything that disrupts our equilibrium. Even when we consciously crave a change and it’s something positive or good for us. Doesn’t matter. Our minds and bodies will fight to keep us where we are.
The first step is difficult, as we must fight our instincts to take it. Quiet the voices in our heads telling us all the reasons why we should hit snooze instead of getting up and working out. Stay silent instead of advocating for a promotion or raise. Or for someone else’s voice to be heard.
Yet the first step is critical. It gives us momentum. Once we press forward with just one step, we can claim victory because we started. We’re further than we’d be otherwise and that’s a win worth celebrating. We fought an inner battle (and possibly an outer one as well) and won.
Once we take the first step, it’s time to take another. Time to embrace the suck.
The messy middle
While our subconscious might fight us on the first step, we encounter all sorts of obstacles once we get going. It’s not just our own mental, emotional, and physical selves that will try and pull us back to where we were, but others’ as well.
For example, maybe we’ve committed to exercise, but our bodies are sore from getting back into a routine. Then a good friend calls and invites us out to brunch, which we would have done previously. It may feel easier to submit than to invite the friend to join us on a hike or pass for the sake of our workout.
Or when we commit to improving communication to our team, and each time we try to schedule a round table or send out an update, unplanned priorities keep popping up.
This is the messy middle. We’ve recognized a change is needed and left where we were. We can see that the old way wasn’t working for us, but we are not yet at the new. Habits – ours and others’ – pull at us to go back. But once we know, we can’t unknow how the old wasn’t serving us. Now we’re stuck in the suck, not yet where we want to be and unable to go back to the way things were.
This is the part of change we resist. We may like the end state once we get there, but the messy middle is just that. Messy.
Find joy in the journey
As leaders, we must embrace the change journey, not just the end result. Recognize that it will be messy and filled with fits, starts, and drag. It is only by finding the joy in those moments, in the learning they represent, that we can help others through the journey as well.
The transition from what was to what can be is uncomfortable. It takes time to develop new habits, behaviors, or processes. To make them as comfortable as the old ones we left behind.
It is in that in-between that we learn the most. About ourselves and our people. Our challenges and triumphs. The struggle is the journey, and it reveals our capacity and potential so much more than when we are comfortable. No captain tested their skills sitting tethered at the dock. It is only through stormy seas that they know their mettle and that of their crew.
Celebrate the suck
Leaders are life-long learners, and learning is messy. Leaving the comfortable behind and charting a path to a new way of knowing, being, and behaving is a challenging journey leaders are always on.
It means taking a leap and being uncomfortable. If we are also transparent and vulnerable, it means letting our team and others around us see that discomfort. So they know they are not alone in the struggle of change, and that the messy middle is something to embrace rather than avoid.
Let’s normalize and celebrate the suck. The push and pull of striving for the new, while being called to the old. Of being in the middle and doing our best to take one step at a time in the direction we desire. Celebrating each inch forward, and the occasional steps back, as part of growth.
When leaders model growth, including the hard parts, it normalizes the entire change cycle. When we only see the results of someone else, when we’re stuck in the transition, we may think we’re failing. Instead, we’re winning because we took the first step and we’re continuing to move forward.
Change is often difficult, but it doesn’t have to be a fight. Let’s embrace the in-between, celebrate small wins, and revel in what we’ll learn along the way.
