| Mastering Creative Change: Step
5 Empower Action by Rosanne Bane Fifth of a seven-part excerpt of Rosanne Bane's book-in-progress Creative Change: How to Effectively Move Your Inspirations from Dream to Reality. In Step 5, the rubber meets the road. Empowering the action means identifying and building the structures and relationships that support the change. It also means identifying and eliminating the unsupportive structures and relationships. In Step 5, the change gets challenging, so you need to review your urgency, rely on your allies and focus on the vision and strategy you've identified and shared. Alter the structures You probably already have some inkling of what structures and systems are getting in your way. They're the habits that make it harder to stick with the change you want to make. They are the debts and obligations you've incurred that require you to continue on your old course. Because many of the structures that block your progress are so much a part of your everyday life, the trick will be to recognize that they are obstacles. Begin by keeping a record of how you spend your time. Most of us have only a hazy idea of where the time goes. Writing it down will help you see what's eating your time and attention. Maybe you're spending a twice as much time with e-mail as you think. Maybe you'll realize you spend a half hour just "digging out" your workspace when you want to create and you need to stop dumping mail and other family paperwork in your creative space. Have a courageous conversation with your allies. Ask them to help you identify things that block your progress. Give them explicit permission to tell you what they see and what they suspect about the obstacles you face. Once you know what to alter, the how is often easy to figure out. When it's not, ask your allies to brainstorm alternatives with you. Relationships can work You might have an uncomfortable awareness about the relationships that make your desired change more difficult. They're the people who say things like "What do you want to do that for?" Or "Do you think that will really work?" when it's clear they don't think it will. They're the people who offer to keep you accountable, but don't say anything helpful when you start to backslide, because the unspoken rule is: "I don't want you to call me on my stuff, so I won't call you on yours." They're the relationships where you give so much to others, you don't have any time or energy left for yourself. They're people who undermine your efforts with misplaced sympathy: "Don't worry about it, honey, you can always start next month when things settle down at work." Or undercut your confidence with their own lack of faith: "I don't know, you're taking on an awful lot right now. Do you think this is the best time to start this?" Keep in mind that you cannot change other people. They either change themselves or they don't change. But -- and this is a huge but -- it only takes one person to change a relationship. If you change, the relationship changes. If the other person doesn't like the change, he or she can invest a lot of energy trying to maintain the old status quo, but the relationship is changed. That may be why some people haven't been as helpful as you thought they would be. When a person we're in relationship with starts changing (it doesn't matter if the relationship is personal or professional, close or distant), it can be so unsettling that we unconsciously do all we can to put the brakes on the change. Your job is to talk about why the change is important to you and listen to why the change might be threatening to your partner. Talk about what you want; listen to what your partner wants. Find common ground. If the compromise you come up with still doesn't support your change vision, you need to: • Make sure you have enough support from other relationships • Stop looking to this relationship for support in this change • Determine how much time you can spend in this relationship without delaying the change you need to make • And limit the time and energy you invest in this relationship accordingly. For example, Betty's boss Susan is not supportive of Betty's new commitment to being comfortable in a strong, flexible body. Betty has talked to her boss about how being strong will make her more productive at work, but Susan is unimpressed. Susan just wants Betty on the job on time, doing what she's been hired to do. There is no point in Betty complaining about how her boss won't support her by giving her a longer lunch hour to work out or offering a membership at a gym as an employment perk. Betty needs to make sure she has a workout buddy, a trainer, friends who encourage her, and so on to give her the support she needs. Betty needs to determine how much of her day and her energy she is willing to spend working. If she can't find a way to mesh her workout schedule and her work schedule, she'll have to look for a new job. Continuing to focus on how Susan isn't supporting her is futile. It's an excuse to play the victim. "Well, I tried to change, but my boss won't let me." If you can see how you've done something similar, stop it. If you don't change this, you're using that person as an excuse not to do what you recognize you need to do. There are a few perks to being the victim -- people feel sorry for you, you are entitled to special treatment -- but it is ultimately a place of powerlessness and dissatisfaction. You have the power to change -- use it! Appreciate your gifts As important as it is to identify and eliminate obstacles, it is even more important to appreciate and expand the structures and relationships that support your creative change. Asking yourself "What's working well and how can I build on that?" is an application of Appreciative Inquiry, a social research method and organizational development tool originated by David Copperrider, associate professor of Organizational Behavior at Case Western Reserve University. Appreciative Inquiry assumes that what you're looking for already exists and what we focus on becomes our reality. For example, researchers told elementary school teachers that, based on the results of testing done at the end of the previous term, certain children would excel in their classes that year and a few other children would do very poorly. Despite the fact that the children were chosen entirely at random and there was no reason for any of these children to perform significantly better or worse than their classmates, the predictions always came true. The teachers expected certain students to do well and they did. The teachers expected other children to be "problem kids" and they were. The results were so consistent and so dramatic over several trials that the researchers decided it was unethical to repeat the experiment further. After all, would you want your child randomly selected to fail? We get what we expect. You've experienced this phenomena when you've misplaced your eyeglasses or your keys. Once you start to think, "They're lost and I can't find them anywhere," the more you convince yourself of that -- until you get to the point where you couldn't find them if they were hanging off your nose. Of course, another person will spot them immediately. But because you're focusing on "They're lost," that's your reality. What we focus on gains importance and credibility. The more attention we invest in an idea or activity, the more we increase its impact. The tendency to focus on solving problems, Copperrider insists, creates more problems to solve. Instead, we should focus on what's working well and consider how we can carry that forward. So consider what routines, systems and structures in your life are supporting your creativity and the change you want to make. Structure may seem limiting, but keep in mind that it is the limits of its banks that give a river its direction and speed. Without banks, the river becomes a swamp. Think about the people who support you in your change journey. How can you increase contact with them? How can you deepen the impact of your partnership? Room to grow Back when I was a kid, before baggy was a fashion statement, my mom would insist on buying new clothes that were a little big. It was the thrifty response of a woman with four growing children and a limited budget. It's an idea worth recycling into a life strategy: Give yourself enough room to grow in your relationships and structures. You've probably outgrown a lot of the old stuff years ago. Remember your strengths and abilities. Consider the probability that you are stronger and wiser than you were five years ago. Read good books and take interesting classes, particularly ones that challenge your old perspective and expand your view of reality. Appreciative Inquiry warns us not to focus too much of our attention on the obstacles. Of course, you'll need to identify and eliminate obstacles as you grow into the change you've selected, but do that from an appreciative perspective. Do it with your focus on the bright vision you're moving into. Rosanne Bane, M.A., is a Creativity Coach and author of Dancing in the Dragon's Den: Rekindling the Creative Fire in Your Shadow. She has been teaching creativity for more than 14 years. For more information about her coaching, creativity classes, Change Master workshops and presentations on creativity and change, visit RosanneBane.com or call (612) 722-4139. Copyright © 2003 Rosanne Bane, All Rights Reserved. |
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