Each life accomplishment that filled me with pride was first felt as a desire that eventually became a personal quest, and it typically required mastering some new information or skills. Writing a book, getting healthy, managing money, training my dog, delivering a solid corporate keynote—whatever my aspiration, it required me to want it, own it, and learn how to do it well.
I find this 3-step process (want it, own it, learn it) is a helpful framework when I’m hired to bring high-level leadership communication skills to leaders and teams. If they want great results such as better relationships, higher productivity, fantastic culture, and love of the work, they must change the way they currently do and say things. And change is just plain hard. As a matter of fact, neuroscience tells us that it takes 2 to 3 months to form a new neuropathway in the brain so that new things move from difficult to easy, slow to fast, and hard-to-remember to second-nature.
If you are in a position to train, coach, or lead others, it might be helpful to remember this same framework to help your teammates navigate change a little more easily.
1) Want It: For change to take hold, a person must personally want the result for themselves—not for you, not for the team, not for the clients or patients—for themselves. To help those you are coaching to buy into the idea, you must help them see change as the path to getting something they want such as more ease, money, time, respect, opportunities, pride, fun, or any other real motivator. When you tie what they want with the change you are suggesting, they’re in. With that buy-in, you can move them toward the process of change.
2) Own It: Once they want the change, you must help them step into ownership of the solution and process. If people feel like they have a say in the development of the process, they feel personal ownership in the change itself.
3) Learn It: When they are personally invested in making change happen and they take ownership for creating the process, you can now introduce new skills. They will need the steps, frameworks, or structure to make the changes needed to move them to different and better results. They will need repetition, practice, patience, and practical application along with good coaching support to make the new skills stick.
If you are feeling resistance, reticence, or pushback when introducing change to your team, ask yourself if you are creating the desire and the buy-in and ownership of the process before bringing the know-how and skills and expecting their compliance and results.
“Change cannot be put on people. The best way to instill change is to do it with them. Create it with them.”
~ Lisa Bodell
