Change isn’t just inevitable…it’s also vital to continued growth, success and prosperity.

Coaching can be a great way to ready yourself not only to accept change that comes your way but to embrace, influence and even drive change for the betterment of your organization and yourself.

When Change Hits

Often, change is thrust upon you—it’s not necessarily your idea and not necessarily welcome. But whether you’re facing an unanticipated change in employer, position, team, boss, peer, systems or processes, you can enlist a seasoned coach to help you:

• Overcome resistance. Many people have a natural tendency to resist change or get caught up in negativity and drama surrounding it. A coach will work with you to examine your resistance and separate known factors, truth and reality from perceptions, preconceived notions and fears.
• Take control. Your coach will pique your curiosity about what’s possible with impending change and show you that you are both in charge of and responsible for how you respond to it. Together, you’ll find ways to stay engaged and begin to address change from a place of strength, commitment and zeal.
• Stay accountable. You’ll learn just how much you can influence change when you are willing to lean into it and be proactive about it. Your coaching partner will challenge you to look for solutions and creative ways to make change work most effectively and successfully for you and your organization.
• See opportunity. Times of change are always times to consider what else might be doable. A quality coach will open your eyes to opportunity—maybe it’s the chance to retool a position to better serve your needs, reprioritize goals to reflect what’s truly important, save money or harness new technological advances. You’ll find that, with skilled coaching, guidance and support, change can lead to unexpected freedom and breakthrough.
• Serve as model. As you thrive through times of change, others will likely take notice and be inspired to join you. What will emerge is a communal spirit of cooperation, collaboration and progress that will surely push you all, as individuals and as an organization, toward a better future.

Driving Change

A great coaching partnership will empower you to cope confidently with even the most overwhelming of changes and move forward with intention, assuredness and positivity.

It will also motivate and equip you to envision and drive well-thought, well-managed change. Your coach will encourage you to:

• Be strategic. All too often, people make changes for the wrong reasons—perhaps they’re attracted to what’s shiny and new, they’re fearful that something unwanted might happen or they’re restless and choose to institute change for change’s sake. A coaching partner challenges you to think strategically about your intentions and works with you to determine whether you really need change as well as how best to go about implementing it.

Strike a balance. The best kind of change achieves the ideal balance between doing things “the way we’ve always done them” and reinventing the wheel. Well-executed change honors the past and is based on a full understanding of what works (and what doesn’t), what’s already been tried (and what hasn’t) and how people are feeling about where things are and where they could be. It takes well-informed, calculated risks while acknowledging and celebrating the best of the old and reflecting and embracing the most promising of the new.

• Be thoughtful. Compassionate change leaders will recognize and appreciate how change impacts a company and its people. Stay particularly mindful of generational differences among employees that might affect reactions and approaches to change.
• Communicate well. Be transparent and straightforward about your reasoning behind any change, and be clear about your expectations. Make sure employees are comfortable voicing concerns, opinions and ideas and that you’re genuinely open to hearing them.
• Solicit buy-in. Support all parties to the best of your ability through change. Offer any resources they may need, including additional training, education, technology or tools for success.
• Recognize new possibilities. One change will often uncover another. Don’t be surprised, for instance, if a well-managed change spotlights a rock-star employee who simply didn’t have space and opportunity to shine before!

Flourishing Through Change

Sometimes change happens to you, and sometimes it’s well thought, well planned and well-executed.  You need to be able to flourish through both. But even under the best of circumstances, change can be hard and often feels too fast and too furious.

The experts at Leap Solutions have decades of coaching experience, and we bring calm, clarity and efficiency to your change process. We also bring invaluable distance, outside perspective and insight while asking thoughtful questions, uncovering how change truly impacts you and everyone around you, challenging your thinking, and, together, imagining and realizing the incredible new opportunities that change can afford you and your organization.

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https://leapsolutions.com/practice-areas/executive-coaching/

 For further reading, check out:  No Ego: How Leaders Can Cut the Cost of Workplace Drama, End Entitlement, and Drive Big Results by Cy Wakeman, St. Martin’ Press, 2017