Fear of temporary incompetence
During the transition process, you do not feel competent because you have given up the old way and have not yet mastered the new one. Edgar Schein
Making the learning easier will speed up change. Being observant of how people react to change and constantly looking for how they cooperate will amplify motivation to change. The key to making this happen is keeping the change and learning open to how people learn.
Being observant of how people learn may mean adjusting the training for skills needed in the change, taking a multi-point approach. Having formal; informal; coaching; job aids; testing areas; work groups; subject matter experts; through the change until it is complete and is “just what people do”.
How to work with this?
- It is NOT helpful to fight and argue
- It is helpful to listen, agree and cooperate. Talk to discover slightly different viewpoints for cooperation
- Make failure and learning part of the objectives
- Instead of making them more anxious. Make the learning easier
- Use how each person and the team responds as a chance to make the learning even easier
- Once the team and I found what works we kept doing more of that
Use how each person and the team responds as a chance to make the learning even easier
- By making the learning easier, the team and I were better able to understand how this team worked with change, and what worked best. Following the person-centered-task-assignment, We were able to use how each person responded to the assignment as a chance to amplify the change skills and management approaches.
- In our next meeting I asked, Who has some goals they would like to share that are in the QQT/R method? … 8 shared 3 goals each, and the other 4 listened.
- Following the sharing 11 of the managers said they found the process easy to do and found themselves in meetings asking ‘what-by-when’ and clarifying how good the outcome needs to be within the time-frame requested.
- All the managers stated they noticed slight changes and improvements in their classmates and could see them applying some of the content to their work and meetings.
- All managers indicated that they liked the ability to choose to complete or not complete the field assignment, and they would like to see how they can incorporate ‘making learning easier’ into their management routines.
Not every manager completed the task assignment as asked. They defined goals and objectives for themselves and their teams. This showed the team and me, how they cooperate with change plus illustrated that we are together with this change.