Navigating Organizational Change with Coach Rene

Organizational change is a part of life. Coach Rene delves into her experience with organizational change and how anyone can learn to embrace and adapt to it rather than fearing or resisting it. She shares concrete ways to get comfortable with change, why you should reflect on change, and steps for coping with it in order to see it as an opportunity for growth.

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Episode Transcript

(00:03):
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(01:07):
Thanks for listening and see you nexttime. Welcome to Coaches. You need
a podcast short designed to be demystifiedcoaching and help you our audience understand what
coaching is and how it can helpyou. I'm your host, Jamie,
and today I'm delighted to be herewith coach Renee to discuss responding to organizational

(01:29):
change, which is a segment fromher new book, Crush It Conquer Workplace
Challenges. Thank you so much,Renee for being with us here today.
Thank you for having me. CoachRenee has been coaching for three years,
but she has a long career inasset management and particularly managing very large teams,
including a transformational team, and findfinding the best ways to invest in

(01:55):
growing those teams with the right coachingand the right training. Her clients are
young profitionals and middle management, sowelcome again. Thank you. I would
like to open today's podcast with thequote that you that you shared at the
beginning of this chapter on organizational changeand handling organizational change, because I think

(02:16):
it summarizes really well what we're goingto talk about very briefly here today,
and that quote is a quote bySocrates. It's the secret of change is
to focus all of your energy noton fighting the old, but on building
the new, which is beautiful.So why don't we go ahead and get
started and just talk a little bit, and why don't we define and you

(02:39):
know, what is it? Howdo we think about what is organizational change
and why is it important for organizations? Okay, yeah, so organizational change
it happens all the time in theworkplace, right, and it it is
necessary because we could be operating inefficiently, right, and so management has to

(03:00):
look out and see how can wecreate efficiencies with what we're doing. It
may be manual processes that we needto automate or potentially move processes to another
team. And so it does happena lot. People don't love it when
it happens. And you know,in asset management in the industry, over

(03:23):
the past five years, there's beenwhat they call a transformational change, and
so there is a lot of changeand it happens frequently. So you need
to think about how can you likechange, right, because it's going to
happen a lot. So instead ofbeing fearful, think about how you can

(03:45):
adapt to change in your organization.Yeah, I feel like I personally realized
very late in life there was alot of things that just in general,
let's take it outside of the organization, just in general, I think as
we as human beings, it's sometimesit's the fact that there's change itself that

(04:05):
we don't like. It's not reallywhat the change is, and in fact,
we don't actually dissect and think aboutit. It's just like, oh,
but this is different, yes,And I feel like I myself as
you know my you know, I'vegone, I got married, I had
kids, you know, went throughall these life changes, right, and
didn't embrace it in the way thatI should have. So, you know,

(04:29):
I'd love to hear your thoughts onhow someone should approach embracing change and
adapting to change, particularly in anorganizational context. Okay, So I think
the first thing is getting comfortable withchange, right, And I've heard a
lot about this, and some ofthe things you can try to do is

(04:50):
make change in your everyday life.Right, Like maybe you take the same
route to work every day. I'mpretty much a creature of how it,
so I may walk to work thesame way every day, right, and
so we do these same things everyday. Change it because then once you

(05:11):
do that, you start to becomecomfortable with change, right, And I
think it's the same thing in theworkplace, Like we get so comfortable we
go to work every day and it'slike, Okay, I know I have
to do these things. I knowI have to report to this person or
these people report to me. Buttry to think about that differently and does

(05:33):
it make sense? Right? Ialways try to go into work now thinking
about what is working, what isnot, and what can we do to
make it better. So if you'realways thinking that way, then change becomes
easier. I think it becomes somethingmore that you can embrace if you look

(05:54):
at it with a lens of progressexactly. Yes, you can look back
and say, well, look atall that we've been through, you know.
And I always like to look atit as a journey, right,
Okay, I started here and thingswere okay, but then we made this
change, and now look where we'vecome to. We're at such a much

(06:15):
better place, and we can alwaysthink about how we can make things better.
So that's how I try to lookat it now. Instead of a
few years ago, I would sayabout four years ago, which I talk
about in the book, I hada change happened to me and I didn't
like it. Right. I didn'thandle it well. I wasn't comfortable with

(06:36):
it, and I think back toOkay, but what did I learn from
that? And now I'm a verydifferent person because I went through that change.
Are you comfortable speaking on a littlemore detail about that change and sort
of what stages you went through toget to this place where you're at?

(07:00):
Okay? Okay. So I wasasked a few years ago in the workplace.
I was managing a large team andI was called into my boss's office
and he said, Renee, we'remaking a change. I was heading up
a client service team, and hesaid, we are bringing someone in new
who's going to be taking over themanagement of the team, and we want

(07:24):
to move you into a transformation role, so you won't be managing anyone.
You're going to be digitizing client serviceprocesses. So I said, okay,
well I like technology, and hesaid, yeah, you talked about how
you like technology, so we thoughtyou would be great at this role.

(07:45):
And I thought, but I managea client service team, right, And
I liked the team that I wasmanaging. I had already taken them through
a lot of change, and soit was really upsetting to me. I
actually left the office that day todeal with my emotions. I didn't want

(08:05):
to deal with them in the inthe office. And it's funny. I
talked to my at the time twentytwo year old daughter and you know,
said, oh my god, Ican't believe this is happening to me.
And it was funny. She saidsomething to me like, well, mom,
it's not what happens to you,it's how you react to it.
Your twenty two year old sila,Yes, this is yeah then twenty two,

(08:28):
and I thought, wow, thatmakes a lot of sense. But
I didn't really listen at the time. I still went home. I was
very upset. I you know,I called HR. I did all like,
how could they do this to me? I'm managing this team and you
know, how could they do this? I don't understand. And then I

(08:50):
had to work for someone who atthe time was my peer colleague, who
was then becoming my manager. SoI liked her very much, but I
was uncomfortable that I had to nowreport to her, and so it took
me a long time. I dida lot of soul searching, you know,
I did what I had to do. I came in, it was

(09:11):
announced to the team that I wasmoving on, and I was very you
know, transparent with them. Isaid, look, this is a change,
but I'm embracing it and I'm goingto do these things. I'm still
going to work with everyone. Andbut I went home and I was very
upset. I was very depressed atthe time, and I started looking for

(09:35):
books that could help me deal withthis, like how am I going to
deal with this big change in mycareer? And I read something by Marie
Fourlio if I don't know if she'sanother kind of life coach, and she
has a book called Everything Is figureOutable. So I read this book and
I just kind of immersed myself intoit and it was very good because she

(10:00):
talks about doing things that make youhappy and you're really passionate about and so
at the time I thought, well, I'm very passionate about helping others be
successful, which is why I becamea manager in the first place. Right,
So this is when I thought,if I can't be a manager,

(10:22):
I want to be a coach.And so I did end up going to
a program to learn to become acoach. I became certified professional coach,
and that kind of helped me dealwith what I was missing in the workplace,
right. And so now I lookback and I think I could have

(10:43):
handled it differently. Right. Icould have said, Okay, it's a
change, this might be exciting forme to do something differently, and really
just talk to my manager and say, okay, well, what is your
vision of what I'm going to bedoing, right and what can I do
to help you help the team?Because we were all going through this massive

(11:07):
restructuring, right, and there werea lot of people who didn't deal well
with it either, and they becausebasically what they felt was, this is
my job. I've been doing it. Some people had been doing it for
fifteen years without any change. Sosome people did not make it. They

(11:28):
didn't they resisted it, they leftthe firm. And you know, I
continue to stay and I look backand think about, wow, all the
things that I learn from this change. I never knew anything about transformation and
doing a lot of initiatives that Imay not have been involved in as the

(11:52):
manager of the client service team.So that's where I looked at it,
like, Okay, I learned something. And now we had another recent change
and I was moving off of thetransformation role and I was okay with it
because I said, Okay, nowI want to look at this change and

(12:15):
how we can help the change,the team learn and you know, make
us a better team. Right.So I had a different attitude this time
around. Well, it's really havingalmost like you have. You've had a
mindset shift around what change really meansexactly, And I think it's a reframing
around change is not something to resist, but change is opportunity exactly, learn

(12:39):
and growth exactly opportunity. And that'swhat happened exactly. And so what are
the steps that you would recommend toanyone facing an organizational change? What would
you sort of if we were tosort of narrow it down in a sort
of very simple like how to guideWhat are these steps that you would lay
out for somebody? I would saythe most important thing is listen when you're

(13:05):
being told that there's going to bea change, right first, listen to
that. Don't react, right.I know it's hard, and I think
sometimes we just have to take itin and say, Okay, let me
process this. You know, maybeit's a day you sit and process it.
Then follow up with your manager,ask about the vision for the team

(13:26):
and your role, you know,what is what is my role going to
be? How can I help?How can I learn how to do this
role? And then it's just takeit day by day right and learn.
But the big thing is to doit with a positive mindset, right,
rather than reacting negatively to it.Right. That's our kind of first reaction

(13:54):
is why are you doing this tome? So I think it's if you
ask you management, why what isthe change for? Right? What is
my role in it? And howcan I be a change agent to help
the team around me, you know, really embrace the change. Well,

(14:18):
thank you so much, coach,thank you for having me today, and
to our audience, thank you forlistening. If you would like to work
with Coach Renee or one of ourother qualified coaches, please visit us at
theidemics dot com. Thanks for listening, Please subscribe wherever you listen and leave
us a review. Find your idealcoach at www dot viidems dot com.

(14:41):
Special thanks to our producer Martin Maluskiand singer songwriter Doug Allen.