Jennifer Selby Long
speaker
698 appearances
14 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard May 2025
Jennifer Selby Long’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And so it becomes super important that the coach helps you see that what got you here won't necessarily get you where you want to be next and to really face yourself. And how you might be caught up or getting in your own way of that. And by extension, getting in others ways.
Another type of coaching that's been extremely valuable to me because I had absolutely no background running a business or having a small business was hiring a business coach. Someone who was more of an advisor in their style. and who specializes in small practices that are advisory and coaching such as my own. So they have tremendous depth.
And I think part of my takeaway from that is to some extent, a good coach can cross a lot of different areas from life coaching to leadership to specialized industries. It is helpful when your coach has experience relevant to what it is you're trying to do and where you're trying to do it.
Because that particular organization's ability to specialize in the type of business I lead has been enormously helpful to me. And it was one of the reasons that I decided to continue staying focused on leaders and particularly leaders who are leading change often change that exists in part because technology is now available that enable things that couldn't happen before.
It is very helpful to have your coach be specialized.
There is a natural personal process of change. This is a little bit separate from organizational change. Organizational change is about how the company needs to change. But there is every person in it going through their personal process of change as part of this. And this is where we often don't get people across the finish line as leaders.
And that's where the changes get stalled and hung up because there are these perfectly natural, but often very painful stages that we go through with change. And Bill Bridges was one of the early writers on this. I have actually gone back to Bill Bridges model after trying many others since then, because it is beautiful in its simplicity.
He says there are fundamentally three stages that we go through. The first one is losses and endings. The recognition of what we are losing, what is ending. The second one is the big, long transition stage. It is the big one. It is very substantial. And the third one is new beginnings, where that change starts to get integrated into our new sense of identity.
And where leaders often struggle with this, I find, is they are... either thinking of the change themselves or privy to the change much sooner than the people who are on their teams. And so I had a leader who was getting quite impatient with her team because she had moved through losses and endings. Through a transition, she was really starting to transition into new beginnings.
Some of them were still struggling with losses and endings around what would they lose that was familiar to them. Even though they agreed that what was coming was going to be better for them, was in fact going to address a lot of the problems that they complained about a lot. And so...
For a leader, it can be really challenging because you're often a stage ahead or further ahead within the same stage over the people who you lead. And so being patient and just reminding yourself that you need to be patient with others and that impatience does no one any good is a pretty vital self-awareness and other awareness skill to have.
we do find that those stages hold whether you're the leader initiating the change right so it's your choice where you're in control or whether it's a change that's forced upon you such as say an unexpected layoff and suddenly you no longer have that job The stages that your brain goes through are what they are. And you go through a period of loss.
You go through a period of transition where, as Bridges says, it's as if you're on a ship and you look back and suddenly you can no longer see the shore. But you're looking out ahead and all you can see is water. So when my client was getting impatient and her team was getting a little uncomfortable with that impatience, it was because she could start to see the shore on the other side.
All they could see was water, right? They were just not quite caught up with her yet. Now, I do think that there are some do's and don'ts that can help move yourself and others through these stages. There are a number, but a few that anyone could put in place. The first, obviously, Vince, you want to secure your basic survival needs. Those are going to help to ground you.
Go take a look at your bank accounts. Go cut your expenses if you're worried about that. Do what you need to do to have a sense that your basic survival needs are met. This is really going to help to ground you in the moment. Now, a second one that sounds totally woo-woo is to build hope.
And the way that we build hope is by envisioning what your life will look like, say, 12 to 18 months from now, if the change turns out in the best possible way. And if you're a leader, this is often a gap that I see. So... I'll take this same client as an example. She had very much envisioned what the future would look like for the organization. She's a business genius.
She's on the short list of clients who, when she was doing a 360 and I contacted the EAs of the senior most team, Man, those guys couldn't call me fast enough. Oh, she has something that she needs from me. I'm in, right? So it's super business genius.
But the challenge was that she needed and didn't realize she needed her people to actually envision what their lives would look like if this change turned out in the best possible way. Not just their work, right? Not just what is best for the business, but who are you with? What's your life like? What are you doing? What are you saying? Where are you? How do you feel when you look back?
That builds hope. And interestingly, a lot of leaders will want to mix this up with planning and road mapping. That's not what this is. This is connecting the change that you want to lead to the individual's reasons, their big whys. Not yours. Not the company's. A couple others that are important do's are to strengthen personal bonds.
We instinctively go in when change comes and think we have to power through it alone, but we do not. And the more you're going through it together with others, the stronger. So reach out and strengthen those personal bonds. And I think also one that can be difficult but so vital is to look for that hidden gift in what seems like a bad situation.
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