A few weeks ago, I was doing some tidying in my office and I fell - one small error of judgement on my part and five subsequent seconds of chaos has led to three weeks of lost work hours.
Fortunately my injuries were neither sufficiently visible nor serious to put me out of action permanently, and to the world at large I was probably 'as normal', but every minute of my waking and sleeping hours since that time has been a reminder that my body is not functioning as it should. Pain also dulls the mind, so I have become haphazard and forgetful, which is perhaps more troubling than the physical issues of walking slowly and painfully, spending five minutes getting up from the couch, leaving something that has dropped on the floor rather than adding to my pain by picking it up.
Well I think I am finally 'on the mend', I have managed a couple of full nights' sleep and am thinking more clearly. I am sure my family is glad as well, I do not make a good patient! But all this strangeneness has caused me to wonder about people who have continual pain for long periods of time and permanent injuries to manage, not just for a few weeks but forever.
What does this mean to careers? I have helped many people with disabilities to find work and to adjust to newly developed restrictions, in a surface way. I have been aware that there is a huge emotional component to living with newly acquired disabilities as well, but I have never really thought of the myriad adjustments that must be made to tasks and in contemplating how to go about managing these when a person has real limitations to what he or she can do. Being a constant multitasker, for me doing many things simultaneously is important in getting through the day; doing them quickly is another way of ensuring life runs reasonably smoothly. A third element of this is that I have never before had to put off a task, simply because I can't physically do it at the time. Overthe past three weeks I have learned to put some things on hold, such as walking to the postbox, until the pain of walking is minimal. Having good and bad times in the day is not something that was part of my repetoire, in the past (and hopefully in the near future) I have wanted to do something, and gone off and done it.
All this has given me new respect for people who manage significant disabilities. I have been thinking a lot lately about what is really important, what activities must I continue to do to ensure I feel happy and fulfilled. If I had to limit myself, what would I drop out, what would I make sure I had the time, energy and ability to do, and how?
This brings me back to my work as a career coach; we all know that at the core of good career management is a sense that we are doing work that best fits with our personalities, values, interests. It might be a useful exercise for us all to reduce ourselves to thinking about just one thing we would need to do to make living worthwhile, and then add more things to the bucket in order - one would presume that the things added later would be less essential.
I'd like to hear if others try this exercise and what results they get from it. It would obviously relate to things other than work.
Comfort Zone
Showing posts with label change management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label change management. Show all posts
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Where is a good Change Agent when you need her?
A friend and colleague, assisting me through a crisis of sorts this week, reminded me that a personal strength of mine is that I am a change agent. Sometimes I don't feel this is a strength. Sometimes it is quite tiring, because I find it hard to just sit and accept things the way they are, even if they appear to be working OK. There is always the need to be revising procedures, searching for new projects, finding a place for a great idea to be introduced or implemented.
The world needs change agents, because we see better ways to do things, we invent new ways to get things done, we see outside the box of 'what is' and focus on what can be. We motivate people to change as well, which is usually a good thing.
Change seems to be an integral component of emerging industries. Environmentalists are change agents who want us to interact more kindly with our natural world. People in the IT industry are constantly inventing new systems, languages and applications to both drive and adapt to tne contemporary world.
Career development practitioners are change agents as well, because we want people to have better lives, more meaningful careers, to move on to something that is an improvement on their current situation.
Change is not always warranted, but, too often people fight change when it is useless to do so. There is an inbuilt survival urge to maintain the status quo (even when the status quo is less than desirable) - this is the law of equilibrium which has a strange power over us. The trouble is, it is an outdated response and one that is unsustainable in a constantly changing world. It also requires a great deal of effort - as soon as we get outside our comfort zones, whether or not we have instigated this ourselves, we subconsciously pull ourselves back a little.
It would be easy if we could go to sleep at night making a wish for how we wish we were, how we wish the world was, and wake up in the morning a new person with a new life, but this rarely happens outside of fairy tales. Real and lasting change is thus often neither fast or radical, but slow and steady, more often than not implemented as two steps forward, one step back.
On the surface, career change can sometimes happen quickly: we are made redundant, we acquire a disability, we find ourselves uprooted from our world due to a small or large scale tragedy as happened in Haiti this week.
In reality though, these changes are often pragmatic and practical. As a change agent involved in careers work, I have come to realise that my ways of working does not suit a lot of people. I can help people to prepare a fantastic resume, I can coach them through the interview process, but this is only fulfilling (for me, and, I would argue, for them) if these activities are related to real change.
What is real change? I describe this as transformational change, which involves examination of one's dreams, hopes, real strengths, areas of challenge, and aiming for a career-life that is wonderful rather than simply workable. We often use phrases like 'unlocking potential', 'finding a true vocation' etc. but these have sometimes unpleasant connotations, for example, that we need to be constant striving and/or giving up our human desires in order to have a 'proper' career or 'true' vocation.
Not so, in fact, career change using the transformation model means not struggling, and not giving up anything (well anything that is really important) except for belief systems that are past their use by date and habits that are less than useful. Unfortunately, in a consumption-driven society we have all been conditioned to see some things as essential - the big house, car, holidays, expensive clothes (or at least a constantly changing wardrobe). This thinking traps us, it locks us into dollar signs on employment contracts, into sacrificing more important things like spending time with friends and family, time in the garden or even just time sitting still and doing nothing.
It is the way of the world that some people will be rich and others poor, that some living environments will be friendly and others alien, that some people will live long and others will die young. But what if you spend thirty years building wealth, only to find it disappears in a blink because you placed too much faith in a particular investment? What if you work out at the gym seven days a week for twenty years, only to become a paraplegic slipping on a just-washed floor? It happens.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't save money or exercise sensibly, but it is all a matter of proportion. So much of what we do is unconscious, related to coping with life rather than living. Ask yourself, how much am I doing something because it is beneficial, and how much am I doing it through habit, stress, anxiety, compulsion? Above all, how much am I doing something to avoid doing something else?
As a career practitioner I ask myself, my clients and those around me the hard questions. I do not tend to be happy with superficial answers to these questions, especially when these are dismissive or an attempt to control what is really an uncontrollable environment. Real change begins within, and happens only alongside a healthy dose of self-belief. As we learn to appreciate the small improvements we are making each day, we see change as a positive thing, something to be treasured rather than feared.
So how do you identify a change agent? These people will become your best friends as the world becomes less stable; look for people who are tolerant, open-minded, non-judgmental, risk-takers, who make the most of opportunities, and who are not worried when things don't work out as planned. Change agents do not need to see others fail so they can be seen as winners, as only when everyone is winning does positive change actually take place.
The world needs change agents, because we see better ways to do things, we invent new ways to get things done, we see outside the box of 'what is' and focus on what can be. We motivate people to change as well, which is usually a good thing.
Change seems to be an integral component of emerging industries. Environmentalists are change agents who want us to interact more kindly with our natural world. People in the IT industry are constantly inventing new systems, languages and applications to both drive and adapt to tne contemporary world.
Career development practitioners are change agents as well, because we want people to have better lives, more meaningful careers, to move on to something that is an improvement on their current situation.
Change is not always warranted, but, too often people fight change when it is useless to do so. There is an inbuilt survival urge to maintain the status quo (even when the status quo is less than desirable) - this is the law of equilibrium which has a strange power over us. The trouble is, it is an outdated response and one that is unsustainable in a constantly changing world. It also requires a great deal of effort - as soon as we get outside our comfort zones, whether or not we have instigated this ourselves, we subconsciously pull ourselves back a little.
It would be easy if we could go to sleep at night making a wish for how we wish we were, how we wish the world was, and wake up in the morning a new person with a new life, but this rarely happens outside of fairy tales. Real and lasting change is thus often neither fast or radical, but slow and steady, more often than not implemented as two steps forward, one step back.
On the surface, career change can sometimes happen quickly: we are made redundant, we acquire a disability, we find ourselves uprooted from our world due to a small or large scale tragedy as happened in Haiti this week.
In reality though, these changes are often pragmatic and practical. As a change agent involved in careers work, I have come to realise that my ways of working does not suit a lot of people. I can help people to prepare a fantastic resume, I can coach them through the interview process, but this is only fulfilling (for me, and, I would argue, for them) if these activities are related to real change.
What is real change? I describe this as transformational change, which involves examination of one's dreams, hopes, real strengths, areas of challenge, and aiming for a career-life that is wonderful rather than simply workable. We often use phrases like 'unlocking potential', 'finding a true vocation' etc. but these have sometimes unpleasant connotations, for example, that we need to be constant striving and/or giving up our human desires in order to have a 'proper' career or 'true' vocation.
Not so, in fact, career change using the transformation model means not struggling, and not giving up anything (well anything that is really important) except for belief systems that are past their use by date and habits that are less than useful. Unfortunately, in a consumption-driven society we have all been conditioned to see some things as essential - the big house, car, holidays, expensive clothes (or at least a constantly changing wardrobe). This thinking traps us, it locks us into dollar signs on employment contracts, into sacrificing more important things like spending time with friends and family, time in the garden or even just time sitting still and doing nothing.
It is the way of the world that some people will be rich and others poor, that some living environments will be friendly and others alien, that some people will live long and others will die young. But what if you spend thirty years building wealth, only to find it disappears in a blink because you placed too much faith in a particular investment? What if you work out at the gym seven days a week for twenty years, only to become a paraplegic slipping on a just-washed floor? It happens.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't save money or exercise sensibly, but it is all a matter of proportion. So much of what we do is unconscious, related to coping with life rather than living. Ask yourself, how much am I doing something because it is beneficial, and how much am I doing it through habit, stress, anxiety, compulsion? Above all, how much am I doing something to avoid doing something else?
As a career practitioner I ask myself, my clients and those around me the hard questions. I do not tend to be happy with superficial answers to these questions, especially when these are dismissive or an attempt to control what is really an uncontrollable environment. Real change begins within, and happens only alongside a healthy dose of self-belief. As we learn to appreciate the small improvements we are making each day, we see change as a positive thing, something to be treasured rather than feared.
So how do you identify a change agent? These people will become your best friends as the world becomes less stable; look for people who are tolerant, open-minded, non-judgmental, risk-takers, who make the most of opportunities, and who are not worried when things don't work out as planned. Change agents do not need to see others fail so they can be seen as winners, as only when everyone is winning does positive change actually take place.
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