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 they are now going to turn to you and say, what should I do? Or what happens when the leader doesn't turn to them and say, what should I do? Now, suddenly it's a new identity and they're recognizing they have to earn it. They have to earn that credibility as something more than a master Excel jockey.
that is terrifying that's terrifying that's a whole new set of skills they're going to have to learn how to convert that data into a story they're going to have to learn how to influence they're going to have to learn how to read that person and speak in their language it's terrifying it's terrifying and so really recognizing that people are going to come out of this change with a new identity helps you as a leader
to have that empathy on the path and to be able to really encourage and support them and put in place what they need to get there that you otherwise might not have recognized, whether it's training and develop, mentoring, coaching, whatever it may be that they're going to need.
I'm really glad you brought up the freeze, unfreeze, freeze model, because that new identity in the last stage is the single most important part of that model.
The wind sometimes looks different at the end than we thought it would at the beginning. So I think absolutely it's fair to step back throughout the change and say, this is what we thought the wind would look like. Is this still true? Or have we come across new information and new learnings along the way that allow us to see what the wind looks like differently?
So I think that's entirely valid because it might not look like you have a win yet, but maybe you do. Maybe it looks different than you think. Maybe what you have here is a small win along the way that you need to celebrate for the progress, even if they've not quite yet gotten to where you see that they could be in the long run.
Because certainly when we look at those key elements, as a leader, you're not doing change alone. Even if it's a personal change, I bet you have friends or family members that come along. And one of those foundations that you really need to attend to is celebrating the dickens out of wins that are so small that you wouldn't normally think to celebrate them.
Because this requires that you focus a lot more of your attention on what's working in the win, and sorry, in the change, versus focusing your attention on what's not working. And guess what? Those saboteurs are hardwired to focus on what's not working.
But there is ample evidence that a great deal of attention on what's working and doing more of that is correlated with getting to that organizational outcome. In the classic sense, we're going to define those outcomes as, for example, a positive change in the stock price. But that's a really hard one for, say, an individual employee to connect to their progress through the change, isn't it?
That's so big, right? One person out of hundreds or thousands saying the stock price moved after we were able to implement this large scale system, but it's hard to see the individual connection. So I think that also speaks to something that is so extraordinarily important, which is connecting your vision to their big whys, not yours, not the company's.
right they're being wise what it goes back to that personal vision what does that success mean to you individually not just the company right but for you as an individual what's the alignment there people will move mountains for you if they really understand how this large-scale change is connected to something more than a bump up in the stock price
or a decrease in operational overhead, but to them, their personal big whys.
I'm so glad you asked about this because I've had this conversation with so many people over the years and I was having this conversation with someone whose boss was a micromanager and it was driving him nuts. And I sat down and said, this would be a great blog post. And this was when people were blogging on LinkedIn, that LinkedIn post. garnered 45,000 views and counting.
It was shared out on the main thread through that weekend. I have never, I'm a coach. I'm not a famous person. I have never had so many views on a LinkedIn post or a blog in my life. And I recognize this is a really big deal. Everyone faces this, right? Everyone faces this.
at some time and you know what happens when we exit a situation because our boss is ineffective we're running from something versus running to something but of course making a change because you're running away from something usually doesn't pan out as well as when you're running towards something.
So I think there are three mistakes that I really see that these talented professionals making when they find themselves working for an ineffective boss. The first one is playing psychologists. Oh, passive aggressive. bad childhood, won't make a decision, commitment phobic, right? These may or may not be real issues that your boss is facing. Who knows?
But when you, again, this is the judge in action. When you're playing psychologist with the ineffective boss, you're inadvertently disempowering yourself because you're hypothesizing about a psychological issue that even if it turns out you're right, you can't personally treat it. You're not the psychologist, right?
So if you find yourself starting to go down that path of that judging, that negative emotion, just let it go. Second one, losing perspective by getting attached to one and only one solution, right? And I've seen this many times in which the individual is saying, I have to persevere.
I have to turn this product line around no matter how much my funding gets cut or how often my boss and her boss change direction or I must get a big win so that boss can see how wrong he is or whatever. a common one. I'm going to HR and I'm not giving up until they fight for what's right.
Now, there's just rarely one clear-cut superior solution to the myriad problems that are caused by an ineffective boss, but there are probably better solutions and there are certainly more options. Shirzad Shamim calls it Turning on your explore neural network where you open up to exploring more solutions to the problem before you jump ship, right?
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