Between meetings, the phone rang. I was expecting someone to be in touch on other managers that I was working with on a particular change. This person phoned me a few times. Every time, I was in the middle of the meeting. Due to unfortunate timing, we didn’t connect for some time. The next meeting was in thirty minutes, and I didn’t fancy having a conversation with anyone as I needed to prepare for this meeting. Being a change professional, most people calling me aren’t likely to chat about the weather. Often there are heavy-duty complaints or frustrations about an impending change. Sometimes it is to ask thorny questions or a favour, such as bespoke training for the caller’s large team.
Yet it might be a brief conversation? Who knows? So I dialled the number and took a deep breath, knowing this could be a lengthy conversation.
The person had received an email from me a few days ago with some complicated instructions. These instructions were to help provide some valuable administration for setting up a change in the right way. This setup would help this manager and a few other managers involved in the transition.
I spoke to the person and could hear the confusion in their voice. There were struggling to engage essential functions in a spreadsheet I had sent. I felt the strong temptation to cut the call short and complete the conversation a little while later. I’m glad that I didn’t. Instead, I took a breath and listened to the person on the end of my phone. I asked a few questions about their context, which they were happy to share. We fixed their spreadsheet problem, and there were quite happy with what they needed to do.
The most important thing I learned was that this person was fairly new to their role. Being based in Australia, many of us were recently subject to lockdown due to COVID. This person could not sit near their colleagues, and their team was nationally dispersed. I felt sorry for this new manager, sitting alone. I could understand how they may have felt isolated and overwhelmed — even if it wasn’t clear nor evident in their voice. They were still learning the role itself when chaos had broken out. On top of this, I’m introducing a change to this manager’s working life.
Sitting in my ivory tower, the logistics of my change makes sense to me. After all, I played a large role in architecting the details of it. Hopefully my audience is across it, and whether they are is primarily due to the quality of my messages. But I see any change is extra stress on top of an already stressful circumstance. All this manager needed was someone to talk through in simple terms how this change impacts them. Suddenly, my next meeting didn’t seem as crucial as this manager who needed human connection. They needed to make sense of so many things going on. But more importantly, for someone to understand where they are coming from.
To me, it was one of the most rewarding conversations I’ve had that week. We spoke briefly about the change, then about their operations and challenges. The conversation was friendly and was a reciprocal exchange of ideas and good humour. I had probably passed him in the office just before the latest lockdown. Because he was new and the opportunity didn’t present itself for us to meet, we haven’t met face-to-face yet.
Despite how busy I felt at the time and how rushed between meetings I was, I was glad that I stopped took a breath. This moment allowed me to properly connect with one of many individuals involved in the change. It was actually energising, and I learned a lot from this person. Their perspective on the change and what they shared with me about their job role was valuable. It helped illustrate whether my change was going on the right track. With all this workload and uncertainty, I was glad to take the opportunity to actually serve an individual. In doing so, I felt like I had put their mind at ease about the change. In contrast, I am usually looking for clever systematic ways to do precisely this for dozens or hundreds or even thousands of people. Yet, there is nothing like a one-to-one human connection.
The change manager’s job can be gratifying at times. Our role is to introduce stress via a new change to already stressed managers and employees, on the flip side of this gratification. But then there are these brief conversations where we help ease people’s concerns. Hopefully, our calm tone and approach provide a modicum of structure, clarity and stability into their working life. I understand this feeling of calm, maybe for a moment. No doubt the manager or employee we speak with goes back to their busy, stressful and sometimes chaotic working life. Yet it may be these small moments that make a difference for change managers and an individual manager or employee alike. Maybe the dial shifts just that tiny bit in changing my organisation’s status quo?
Change management can be a heady mix of strategy, analytics, planning and working with sometimes strong emotions. So many people struggle to change, and they act out in various ways during their change journey. It is easy to overlook occasional glimmers of job satisfaction from brief moments of connection like this. But are these occasional glimmers more satisfying than simply striving towards the big picture, big-ticket items like delivering a significant change deliverable?
Every job role, including change management, is about serving others. How are you helping people today? What occasional glimmers of job satisfaction are you obtaining from brief yet productive moments of connection?
Our book — The Change Manager’s Companion — is available now. You can also check out our online course on Change Management.