How can you manage personal change ? | Dr. Grant Van Ulbrich | TEDxImperialCollege

and what's the topic the topic is change we all know a little bit about change but change is constant it is personal and how you manage it makes it variable and achievable think about that for a moment change is absolutely constant it is the one thing that each and every one of us will experience throughout all of our lives would you agree yeah but how do we manage it let me ask you this raise your hand if you have ever been taught how to manage personal change in your life no one absolutely no one doesn't surprise me we have not been taught how to manage personal change and isn't that shocking what we've just talked about together is we discovered something that's going to affect each and every one of you all throughout your life shouldn't we know how to manage that and that is where the Gap is we've learned a lot about organizational change and organizational change has an array of models to teach you how to manage organizational change but that is used within the organization or companies or businesses or universities as large entities and all of these worldly models are used on you and I say there's an opportunity there there is a gap that's missing do you know what the Gap is you the individual what about me where's the model for me to learn how to manage personal change so if we know what organizational change is what is personal change personal change is any change situation that happens to you with you for you or about you it's not about the organization it's about you and you're a human being you matter you can accept change or you can reject change but I'll tell you what most organizational change models don't account for that they say that you're just going to go through a process and you will magically accept the change and the change will be executed surprise I say that that's not the way human beings think that's not the way we act and that's not the way we live now I am no different than you personal change processes and experiences change us would you agree yeah each and every single day so just like you in my 20s I experience some massive personal change I went and joined the United States Navy so I came from a little Midwestern State called Kansas you've heard of Dorothy The Wizard of Oz Toto yeah I hopped in the first twister and said take me to an aircraft carrier and that's what I did I went around the world and my contract was reserved four years on board that ship living and working with six thousand other Sailors on board I served three years and six months on that very vessel until one day my leadership and supervisors came to me and they said your services are no longer necessary and actually we are going to discharge you from the service and you will not get an honorable discharge you're going to get a dishonorable one and why is that because you're you are gay when I went into the military it was illegal to be gay in the service so talk about personal change my world was upside down personal experiences change us but they don't have to consume us and they don't have to us but sometimes they can so at that moment my supervisors on board the ship made me pack everything that I had and I put it in my backpack on my back at five dollars in my pocket they walked me off of the ship in San Francisco Bay off of the base and said go on now so I'm in the Bay of San Francisco and I am homeless instantly no money no home no job what do you do well many people can panic and many people can get stuck in the homelessness but I took that experience and I said I'm not going to let this Define me I'm going to harden up I'm going to find a way forward and I did I was in a great City I was homeless I stowed everything as far as I could and I went and did my best bathrooms showers Etc restaurants so I could go get a job interview and I did and I got a job in residential apartment sales and I worked my way up and very quickly I worked my way up to a six-figure salary so I was determined personal change was my driver it was not going to Define me I was going to define it and at the at the end of a few years I had bought my own condo I bought my first cars I had my furniture life was great six figure salary in my 20s in San Francisco come on that's a great life right what could go wrong well personal change it happens to us and you can't escape from it so I went to celebrate with friends one day and I learned very quickly I don't know how to ski dang it I didn't prepare for that change so as my friends and I went all the way up to the top of the mountain they went left to go down the mountain gracefully and I flew off the top of the mountain and took a 20-foot drop over the cliff as I dropped my head went into the snow this way and the rock it would move it went straight down and it broke my shoulder my entire left shoulder went down four inches and my life was over at that moment what I didn't realize somehow I made it to the bottom of the mountain on one of those little side mobiles but as I woke up what I didn't realize how much this personal experience was going to transform me again right how do you survive this well I had three major surgeries over the rest of the year I couldn't afford my home or my cars because I lost my job that couldn't work so I had to let go of the house let go of the cars let go of the furniture and voila I was homeless yet again second time in my life are you kidding me personal change it can Define you it doesn't have to you but sometimes it does but what do you do in that moment well I realized how quickly that life is so precious and even though I tried and I tried to get back up I couldn't pay the medical bills we don't have National Health Care in the United States so my medical bills were piling up into the six figures but I didn't have the salary so I went bankrupt talk about Rock Bottom where do you go right I took all of this and after a year friends re-homed me and after this year after my third set of surgeries to remove two titanium plates and 12 pins from my left side I decided that life is so fragile I must do what I want to do to be happy I must find a way to make the most I can out of this life so I love ships and I took an entry-level job in the cruise industry and I was only making twenty thousand dollars a year but I was happy they weren't expelling me from the cruise industry because they loved who I was they championed diversity and they said no you be you and you bring that to work each and every single day what do you want to be you can do it and I'm proud to say I've been doing this for 25 years so throughout the cruise industry life and working I've had lots lots more personal changes happen and your personal experiences continue to Define you and that grew within the ranks but it wouldn't be until about 20 years later so from that picture you just saw to this picture now is 20 years my leadership said can you move from Miami and can you come over to Europe and we want you to lead sales transformation not really sure how you're going to do that oh wait we are you can go back to University here in England and you can learn there's a brand new master's program in sales transformation so we want you to do that can you say no no move to London hello it's personal change I'm going to do that so I did and I'm here with you so not only did I do my masters but I got into the master's program and it was so much personal change to go into school University in your 40s my gosh I see all of you in your powerful minds here's my old mind going can I do this and the answer is yes I can personal change doesn't have to Define you but you can learn to manage it and in a classroom just like this I raise my hand to my professors and I said I do not believe that the organizational change models you are teaching me are purposely fit for what I'm about to do I said why your job is to lead transformation for the sales industry for all of your teams around the world I said but these models are all prescriptive they say that I'm magically going to accept the change true now my professors were really perplexed as well as my cohort these are senior vice presidents vice presidents of industry in this cohort sitting in the in the classroom they all looked at me like I just lost my mind and I simply said this to my professors human beings can accept change and then can reject change would you agree yeah that's right and change can be positive and change can be negative would you agree these models don't replicate that so they're defunct I'm so sorry I can't use that for human beings for personal change so the supervisor said perhaps you need to go build the model yourself with my experiences and when I survived that was a challenge and I was game on so I did I built that I built that model in my in my master's program in my research and I focused on the root cause which is the fear of change metaphysophobia and I said how do we get people to stop being panicky you know so whenever you have a personal change situation you go to your mom your dad your brothers your sisters your professors here at University and you raise your hand and you say I don't know what to do I'm stressed I'm full of anxiety right you're shaking your heads because this is way we live what do they say to you don't worry about it you're gonna be fine everything's okay I'll just get on with it does that sound familiar the reason they say that to you is because they don't know how to manage personal change either you've already established none of us have been taught how to do it so what I wanted to do was focus on how do I build something bespoke for you and the way you think the way you live and the way you act so that you can manage change and embrace it right in doing that and focusing on it I focused on the root word scared and this is the model scared so what it's two parts so the first part is focusing on your feelings and yes men it's okay to focus on your feelings but ladies they can still teach us how and I Champion them because we need to listen to them so it's all right take get rid of your machuism start focusing on your feelings and how you feel at the center of the model as you see here okay the center of the model is your change and you are together with it so you're synonymous with the change that's happening to you you need to embrace that the outer rims of the model are your focus points think of it like your own personal coach so I want you to focus on the top Center one is surprise am I surprised by this change positive or negative am I conflicted by this change or am I championing this change again positive or negative you're starting to critically reflect on the change that's happening to you versus fear and assumption and resistance then you take an action and an action brings in information and what an action is is asking a friend asking a relative asking a professor or your mom and your dad or whoever you're asking people for information this is action when you do this you're bringing in information points and you can start to take control of the change that is happening with you right now your goal is to make an informed decision you're starting to move forward and then you say am I receptive to this change positive or I'm rejecting this change and that's okay it really is because do you think you magically accept every single change that happens to you no we reject change left and right but traditional leadership doesn't support that and I say yes you can you're still going to be left saying well so what can I do and here's where I'm teaching you how to manage that then what you do is I ask you to look forward to say are there any other options or actions that you can explore again another focal point to say can I bring in more information before I make a decision then the decision portion here is you want to make an informed decision you want to stop the guesswork you want to stop assumption when we go there we go wrong but if you can make an informed decision now you're in control if you can make a favorable decision wonderful move forward if you can make an unfavorable decision that's okay too I don't like this change great so what are you going to do about it what's your plan there's also a third element in the middle that's called indecision who has ever felt this before I don't know what to do I'm confused I need help right hands going up everywhere right that's called indecision and usually when you're an indecision it means you haven't taken any actions you haven't explored any opportunities you haven't done the work to bring in information for you to be able to make that decision so this is why I'm encouraging you to do so so you can make your own decision whichever way you choose now as adults young adults and even adolescents we do not think linear so I couldn't build a model that says this is a linear fashion when we learn we learn in chaos we learn in back and forth up and down different types of ways written processes so the model reflects that and on this next slide as you can see here it shows that so you've got positive energy at the top negative energy at the bottom and you have time across and you notice you can bounce back and forth but the goal is a a methodology process for you to think about the change and think it through for yourself so that you can make a decision at the end of it your goal is to make an informed decision it's your change but it's up to you if you like it or not now you're going to be left saying well so what so what does it mean or so what can I do about it and this is where I don't want you to make assumptions the organizational change models have stopped right here the change is done it's been executed and I say that's not true as human beings we're in chaos sometimes right you leave us hanging because you don't include us in your models so what's your so what your so what has to be built on a thought process you are at the center of the change plan you've just made a decision about it so now let's start to put together your own plan of what it looks like what's your so what at the top is strategy then you have options or opportunities start to think what does your plan look like what elements can you write down or critically think about and then you ask yourself do I have a Way Forward this is for you this is talking with yourself maybe having friends guide you through as well too does this look like my plan can move forward if it can great if you can't then perhaps you need to go back and rework some elements of your plan and that's all right too this is all about critical self-reflection for yourself giving yourself that permission to talk about it then you move forward and you say right do I have hope or do I know how I'm going to execute this change the hope is a driver it's your motivation and this is all about you and this gets really exciting because if you get excited about your plan you're going to enact it and you're going to be able to carry it through and ignite the change in the way that you want not the way the organization wants it's about you right if you move forward then you try to say to yourself what actions will I take to make sure that the plan that I've just built happens the way I want it to and finally how will you take ownership and that could be Milestones that could be dates or it could simply be congratulating yourself because the change that you put forward work the way you want together scared so what is the new methodology for managing personal change for yourself embrace your feelings make your plan but most importantly think about it you're the most important person on the planet and your opinions matter so people ask does this work and the answer is absolutely it does work and why does it work because all of our leadership here at Royal Caribbean in my business we put this process into place with our employees during the pandemic and that was a recipe for personal change for everyone and our employees were coming to us as they were being prepared to be let go many of us lost our jobs but when we applied this to them a magical thing happened they were no longer scared they came to us and said here's our so what we need this from you this from you and then they went back and did their jobs we expected them to check out but they didn't they proved that they could think the change through so then we gave it to our B2B customers across Europe Middle East and Africa 1 100 travel agents across these regions participated and learned it for themselves as well and we had reports from travel agents as families saying they're using it with their kids as young as 14 years of age and when I asked them I said how do you think this is successful they said because children don't have the bias towards learning that we as adults do so I'm really happy to say that this is my leadership team and we are all back we are back as good as you can possibly imagine we're having record-breaking years and our sales team around the world our inner working together with our B2B customers and we're no longer afraid of personal change because we know how to manage it together so whenever change happens to you I want you to just ask yourself this are you scared so what [Applause] thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 1,423,995

Keywords: Business, Change, Diversity, Empowerment, English, Leadership, TEDxTalks, [TEDxEID:51162]

Id: B4-yyN7zWyQ

Length: 18min 17sec (1097 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 10 2023