Personal Change

I've spent the week reflecting on my most difficult personal change challenge. While a few situations came to mind, one prevailed as most significant, which ultimately had me view change in a different light. The story dates back quite a bit. While it isn't within the last few years as the prompt suggests, I understand this is the most relevant change challenge to discuss in this reflection.

In 2009, I embarked on a new life journey. Having lived in the northeast my entire life, I moved to Houston, Texas. I obtained a job that I was excited about, and at the time, I was very confident that the move would be a seamless transition. It was not, but it proved to be the best life decision I ever made.

Arriving at my new home, significant amounts of change hit me all at once. I would love to share that I navigated through this with fineness and grace, but that is far from true. I describe my first nine months in Houston as the worst version of myself.

The Challenges:

I Knew No One

I Felt Different

I Had Difficulty Making Friends

I Wasn't As "Cool" As I Thought I Was

Ultimately, my geography changed, but so I thought, my identity. I found myself lonely and depressed. I not only felt like a failure, hearing about fun things my college peers were accomplishing, but I also believed that I had already "peaked." Reflecting on this, I'm so thankful that I had the humbling life experience of being so different and forcing myself to reevaluate who I was at my core.

How Did I Overcome My Challenges?

It took some luck for me to overcome my challenges. First, I earned an opportunity to leave my small operating company to work at our corporate headquarters. The fact that this transfer could happen was indeed lucky, as the corporate headquarters was in Houston- funny enough, two blocks away from where I lived. A change of scenery was exactly what I needed to gain momentum and begin transforming my views of myself and the environment around me. This fresh start put me in an environment where I could meet new people, mainly around the same age. They were from all over the country. It provided me the insight that I had lived in a bubble, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and that different people and ways of thinking about things not only existed but were interesting. Looking back, I realized I had zero emotional intelligence. Potentially negative EQ if that is possible. The opportunity I had to make friends from all across the country deeply impacted the trajectory of my life. I owe my change transformation to the wonderfully diverse group of folks I met at a pivotal time in my life—having friends and people to do things with after work made me feel "safe" and allowed me to thrive in my new environment.

After gaining safety, I found myself in a workplace where I was flourishing. I not only excelled at my role in national college recruitment, but I was networking with senior management and executives at the corporate office. I was beginning to regain my confidence and realized that I hadn't peaked in college.

I paired the opportunity I was afforded with an understanding that I was different. But my views of how I was different evolved. I was a closed-minded person unwilling to adapt to those around me, in a sea of new people who were, mostly, kind and friendly and didn't want to hang out with someone so negative. I overcame my change challenges after I understood that I needed to be open to other people because they wouldn't adapt to me- nor should they.

I have so many vivid memories of these nine months. They genuinely feel like they were yesterday, which tells me that this was one of the most impactful experiences I've ever had in my life, and it was all based on change. I changed my environment. I had a newly conceived understanding of myself. I didn't like who I was and opened my mind to see things differently and be better. I owe a fair amount of my contentedness and success to being open to change.

Most Significant Barrier to Success?

I had reflected on this question a lot in 2020, amid the Covid pandemic. My partner and I were very interested in turning a bad situation into an opportunity for us to grow. As a couple, we got serious about our fitness and our relationship. We began a diet and exercise practice and moved in together. I'm happy to report those two significant changes have been a success. As an individual, I had a keystone focus. I realized that I needed to end my paralysis by analysis.

Like everyone else, I have internal thoughts and dialogues with myself- but I believe I have many more than an average person. Not acting on my ideas made me anxious, and during periods, depressed. To get out of this cycle, I set my 2021 overarching goal as "end paralysis by analysis. Take massive action in 2021." I have this written on my whiteboard at my desk. It's at eye level.

The practice of forming an annual overarching goal had begun for me in 2019 when I decided I needed to become more financially literate. Every year, I set a new purpose and tell myself that the goal needs to ground me in my decisions over the year. Further, I give myself a pass to spend any amount of money in achieving the year's overarching purpose.

Today, I am more effective when dealing with change. In Houston, the experiences I had served as a humbling boot camp in ego leveling. While I'm living life through my perspective, it doesn't mean it's the only one. There are endless perspectives, and the best way to navigate life is to listen and respect others. I am so thankful to have learned this in my early twenties.

Pairing this lived insight with proper goal setting, I feel comfortable working with change. However, there is a counterbalance to my growth in personal change. I am keenly aware and sensitive when others handle change differently than I now do. This judgment is very unfair of me, as I shouldn't hold others to the same standard I currently have for myself. I am particularly perturbed when I witness others mandate change without incorporating other vital stakeholders or me in the change discussion. I am afflicted when no explanation for the reasoning of the change is provided. While I will be compliant with these scenarios of change that develop around me, I am not entirely comfortable in the situation.

Impact on Teamwork

Within this scenario, as a member of a seven-person team, I would leverage my past experiences with change to serve as a positive force for the major change project.

I have identified that my personal change sensitivities are when I'm kept out of the loop and am not made aware of the rationale for why something is happening. I would not consider these "barriers," as I can function around these scenarios.

Among my team members, I would advocate that we incorporate change stakeholders along the way and attempt to have them rally on our behalf. A quintessential key to ensuring success would be clearly and concisely relaying the change benefits. Marrying these two actions together may prove time-consuming, but I believe it would lead to less friction and resistance upon implementation.

Additionally, I would propose that we identify what other change leaders use as best practices. Together we will discover and discuss several change models- Kotter's Change Management Theory, ADKAR, McKinsey 7-S Model, etc. I would want to receive team member buy-in and allow their voices to be heard in discussing which change model is most appropriate for what we are trying to implement across our organization. Finally, I'd focus on how we best leverage our shared vision to be most impactful to the members of senior leadership we must convince.

My thought process around this scenario is similar to where Jacqueline and I found ourselves in early 2020. We were interested in turning a bad situation into an opportunity to grow. I could wallow in my annoyance about being left out of change processes in the past, or I could take those emotions and implant them into a new strategy that mitigates the risk of anyone else feeling that way.

Submitted 1/21/22