Adapting to Change

This introductory module frames the "Adapting to Change" workshop, using the Aesop's fable of the Oak and the Reeds to introduce flexibility as the key trait for navigating change and uncertainty, both at work and in personal life. Participants identify a current change and an upcoming change they're facing, then share these along with their workshop goals with peers in small groups to set a personal focus for the rest of the session.

This module introduces the Change Curve, a model adapted from Elisabeth K??bler-Ross's stages of grief, to explain why people react so differently to workplace change. Participants learn the six stages ??? Shock and Denial, Anger and Frustration, Confusion and Depression, Acceptance, Problem-Solving, and The New Normal ??? along with matching coaching strategies (context and clarity, emotional support, and direction and guidance) for meeting people where they are. Practice includes diagnosing which stage employees are in from realistic quotes drawn from a credit union technology rollout, mapping themselves and their own team members onto the curve for a real change they're facing, and identifying next-stage coaching moves. The module also covers research on how leader burnout and declining psychological safety can stall a team's progress through the curve.

This module has participants apply the Change Curve model to a real change they're currently navigating. Working with a partner, each person identifies where they personally sit on the curve, then picks one key person on their team going through the same change, places that person on the curve based on specific evidence (what they're hearing, seeing, and sensing in attitude), and identifies concrete actions to help that person move forward.

This module teaches leaders to tell the difference between technical challenges (solvable with existing expertise) and adaptive challenges (requiring new learning and mindset shifts), using Ronald Heifetz's adaptive leadership framework. Participants sort real organizational changes into these two categories, use a heat map exercise to assess where change is creating productive tension versus overload based on Heifetz's "productive zone of disequilibrium," and design small, low-risk experiments to test assumptions and move adaptive challenges forward.