Nine questions to ask yourself when making change
Splitting the difference between Eleanor Roosevelt and Michael Sandel to understand the best response to resistance , and how one leader is building purpose at the end of a second career
Driving home after a long day, or after picking up my son from the bus stop, we pass a sign that reads: “Primitive Road: No Warning Signs” (the colon, of course, is mine). We live two miles past that marker, that warning sign, up a long dirt road, backed up against Forest Service Land and state DNR land. Just a mile hike beyond our house is designated Wilderness Area. As in my home state of Alaska, this rural community is politically purple when it’s good, and mottled red blue when it’s not. I appreciate the diversity of perspective and opinion; group think is dangerous no matter what side it falls on. But the cancer of often uncritical thought and knee jerk reactions has spread here as it has everywhere in our world. Perhaps it has always been there; a part of our sweep of history and our human failings.
In the midst of challenges- differing opinions or ideas, responses to national or even community events, it is sad to see many giving up on the hard work of change and connection, and falling into polemic. This happens at every level; it is much easier to feel aggrieved, and to criticize— a person, a system even, than it is to be curious, and to do the hard work of either moving on in your thoughts and feelings or getting engaged in a meaningful and civil way to make things better.
Polemic can result in adoption of terrible policies— such as removing the mention of any women or minorities on military and government websites. And polemic can quickly become violence, as we’ve seen this past week when a group of elderly Jews were set on fire in Boulder, CO, only a week after the assassination of the young couple outside of the Jewish embassy in Washington D.C., all in the name of a political position on a war on another continent. And violence can begin to feel rational, as with the rhetoric to justify the federalization of the National Guard in California.
I believe that the first situation will one day be rectified; there are quiet heroes copying and saving this information to be reinstated when the current absurdities come to an end, though that in no way makes what is happening acceptable. The latter cannot be rectified, excused nor tolerated in the murders and the growing violence toward a particular group of people. And what is being used as an excuse for deployment of the military is an extremely dangerous precedent.
Making change does not mean mindlessly defending a system, as is so often done (it’s easier to do that than really understand what’s at issue.) Both the left and the right do this— the right mindlessly defending, let’s say, organized religion of a certain kind, without looking at the ills that organized religion has sometimes caused or is causing, or the way that it has been used by politicians. The left has created their own gods in both ideas and institutions: the critical pedagogy used in public schools at the expense of learning, for example, which has led to decades of deterioration in academic ability. Neither is thoughtfully considering how these things could be changed for the better— or if they are the right idea at all. Have I stirred up the hornet’s nest in which you live yet?
Most recently, a liberal writer I follow who is inclined to theology commented that we need a “revolution for which we do not have the will.” Of course, the far right has been calling for the same, which we saw on the terrible storming of the capital on January 6. Both sides are terribly wrong.
“War is sweet to those who have no experience of it, but the experienced man trembles excelling in his heart on its approach,” said Pindar. Dwight D. Eisenhower said “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.” Armed revolution is idiocy without an understanding of what would follow, how things could be rebuilt, and the left has not offered any tenable solutions at all.
Both sides— and all of us in between— need to do the hard work of finding solutions. Both sides, and all of us in between, need to do the hard work of having the conversations.
Excited to be heading to Iowa and Utah for keynotes this month!
But perhaps more importantly, such revolutionary calls are based on problems only possible in a privileged society— problems sharpened more by rhetoric in service to political positions than any reality. Stephen Pinker has convincingly argued in The Better Angels of Our Nature (Bill Gates’ favorite book) that we are as a world we are materially better off than we have ever been. Wars are fewer. People are living longer, freer, and healthier lives.
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Of course, where there is inequity, it is important to name it. And of course, that there has been improvement in our overall condition does not mean that we should not continue to try to improve and continually work for justice. We should, and we must, always work for justice. And its also important to understand that the way we define these terms as well as the way we interpret experience and necessity will continue to be different.
Making the change
When you work to make that change, you’re going to feel the resistance. When you stand up and say— I’m going to do this differently— there is always a cost.
I will never forget riding the bus out to the flight line in Dothan, Alabama, where I was going be learning to fly the Apache helicopter. I’d just graduated as an honor graduate from flight school and the Aviation Officer Basic Course.
“Where you headed, L.T.?” a warrant officer asked me on the bus.
“Ft Bragg,” I said, feigning confidence.
The warrant officer nodded. “Got buddies at Bragg. Said they were getting a female. They don’t think you’ll be able to hang in the field.”
Until that point, I’d been learning the fundamentals of aviation and leadership along with my peers. This short conversation was a shot over the bow. Just because I’d done the work and showed up didn’t mean other people were going to like it. The operational world would be different than the schoolhouse. A woman showing up in a world that had been proudly all-male challenged not only ideas of competence, but also propriety. It challenged a worldview. Whether or not that was the correct worldview didn’t matter— the challenge was there, and the resistance was fierce.
On the podcast this week: Tom Cappelletti— on the way he lives into purpose at the end of his second career. I’m proud to support his work on www.AMeasureofaMan.org.
There is a kind of initial horror, a kind of shame, that flush of embarrassment that can strike when you realize: people, people I don’t know, maybe some that I do, are talking about me, and saying bad things. It’s a normal thing to feel horrified; culturally and socially humans are uniquely built to try to fit in. It’s how the tribe worked— and still works to some degree. But it’s not how change is made.
Go back and look at your story. If I’d wanted to fit in, I would never have joined ROTC at an elite southern university. Choosing aviation was not fitting in; requesting and accepting an assignment to fly the Apache was not only not fitting in, it was actively opposing the dominant paradigm. To actively oppose the dominant paradigm comes at a cost, and sometimes the psychic and emotional burden is heavy.
The burden is too heavy— until you do these two things. The first from Marcus Aurelius: “Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.” The second: go back to your story, go back to your values (the COMMIT phase of The Grit Factor). Ask yourself the questions:
Am I acting in alignment with my values?
Is taking this step, among this change, moving in this direction, aligned with what I know and have tested to be true and good?
Are you aligned— are you living into your purpose in this part of your life?
If the answer to that is yes, then those feelings— which are completely natural— begin to fall away. In fact, they very nearly evaporate.
That doesn’t mean that the work is over. There are still hard lessons. When you make change, most people— including people you think you know or trust— will turn out to fall into the majority unwilling to stand up to the wind of resistance. They aren’t willing to step out of line with the mainstream. They wont risk the discomfort. (My old boss at Microsoft, now friend, who usually reads this newsletter, once warned me with, I imagined, a wry smile: “Shannon, never forget. No good deed goes unpunished.”)
Some years ago I began a project that turned into, not without its occasional storm, a beautiful public library and community center. A particular community member asked to meet with me early on in that project, and yelled at me using profanity about embarking on a project that had such a price tag. That same community member called to express concern for another undertaking— while lauding the library’s profoundly positive impact on the community. He is a person who will come along when the work is done, and be a source of headwind until that time.
Once your initiative or project is moving forward and has visible support— then some of these people come back around. Some fade into the swell of support (or nonchalance). You will know by then, though, who it is you can rely on, and who you cannot. This is not about fitting in— it is, in an exquisitely different way, about belonging, the much healthier condition Brene Brown distinguishes this way: “Fitting in is the greatest barrier to belonging. Fitting in, I've discovered during the past decade of research, is assessing situations and groups of people, then twisting yourself into a human pretzel in order to get them to let you hang out with them. Belonging is something else entirely—it's showing up and letting yourself be seen and known as you really are.”
And that is the benefit of this work, this living into the change, into the hard alignment with what matters: you learn who it is you can actually trust, and you find ways to belong— not to fit in. There is freedom in this— and tremendous openness. (Martha Beck articulates this well in The Way of Integrity.)
Anthony Hopkins reminds us that oftentimes the resistance you feel to the work that you do id not worth considering. “It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me,” he says. He isn’t the only one. Eleanor Roosevelt said very nearly the same thing decades before: “What other people think of me is none of my business.” Imagine what you can do when you follow the lead of these mentors and release the weight of other people’s opinions.
To get to this place, four additional questions to ask yourself:
Will I regret not doing this?
Is this important to do right now?
Is this work aligned with my values?
Will this work make my organization/company/community better?
If it is helpful to you as you make change in your company or organization, your community or your life, know that others have walked the road before you. There is a great deal that requires change in this world, and very few people willing to do the work to identify it and to make it happen. We need more people who will be honest— and courageous.
What to do with resistance
Even if you’ve made it through the previous seven questions, making change will go more smoothly if you pursue your reasoning further. Resistance is feedback. Ask yourself what you can learn from it. What is it telling you?
Jeffrey and Laurie Ford, the former an associate professor of management at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business and the latter the president of Critical Path Consultants, both coauthors of The Four Conversations, writes for Harvard Business Review that: “Resistance, properly understood as feedback, can be an important resource in improving the quality and clarity of the objectives and strategies at the heart of a change proposal. And, properly used, it can enhance the prospects for successful implementation.”
The two Fords suggest two more questions to ask in the face of resistance:
“Why am I seeing this behavior as resistance?” and
“If I viewed the resistance as feedback, what could I learn about how to refine the change effort?”
If the work you are doing is within an organization your answers— and approach— will differ from doing work outside of an organization. Both require radical candor with yourself as well as with the people who are opposing change. Being willing to refine action using the information from resistance, however delivered, may likely be a part of your path to success.
Whatever the path, change is never easy.
While you do the work of change, especially the paradigm-shaking sort, be kind. Not nice, but kind. Be honest, and treat people and ideas with respect. Remember the maxim to “first do no harm.” Consider the source of the resistance, and give it its due; this will help you be thoughtful with people, even when you disagree.
As Michael Sandel, professor of political philosophy at Harvard University, reminds us in Justice, “To achieve a just society we have to reason together about the meaning of the good life, and to create a public culture hospitable to the disagreements that will inevitably arise.”
The difficult work of being in community and in conversation is equally flawed at community and national (even global) levels— but the work of repair can be done equally in each of these places, too. The return to civility can happen in each of these venues as well.
Working toward that culture and working toward change will not always work in perfect harmony, but they are part of the same symphony.
What I’m reading: Living to Die Well, The Quickening, by Elizabeth Rush, The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver (finally!), Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo (as a part of the Catherine Project)
What I’m listening to: Morality in the 21st Century, BBC Everyday Ethics on Adolescence
What I’m learning: Justice, Michael Sandel’s course at Harvard U, free at EdX