How Do You Guide Others Through Changing Times?

How Do You  Guide Others Through Changing Times?

How Do You Guide Others Through Changing Times?

How would you like a process that can help your people deal with changes faster and easier than you ever thought possible? What if the process not only opened you and your team to endless possibilities but also ensured faster buy-in from all the various stakeholders you impact. I’ve been guiding serving leaders through change for over 20 years, from small startup businesses to family businesses over 100 years old continuing to change to keep up with the many challenges businesses face as they grow and prosper. In one client engagement, I was dealing with a large medical practice. I was assigned a psychiatrist to work with to determine how medical professionals deal with change in high stress specialties. I asked several of my better clients to be involved in the pilot program. This allowed me to explore the topic further and it gave me access to a great team of people who deal with high stress on a regular basis.

I can’t imagine a much more stressful job than running a small or mid-market privately-held business today. I share the best process I found and help you apply it to your life starting today. I use this four step process when dealing with my clients to help them see the possibilities in their life and organizations. The process is called Appreciative Inquiry Method and was originally developed by David Cooperrider, PhD. He has continued developing and evolving the process over the years.

It’s a simple four step process that focuses on a positive “what’s working well” approach to uncover potential ideas to help you get the results you want. The reason I find it helpful is that this process brings up positive emotions from the very beginning of the process. It’s a world view approach that works with my strengths-based model that I’ve used over the years with many high performing people. Most of my work in positive psychology is based on the feelings that individuals are doing the best they can in the moment and that most people would do even better if they were given an opportunity. By appreciating the positive from the start, I remove many of the negative emotions surrounding failure and allow my clients to almost immediately become unstuck.

I specialize in exit planning strategies. The biggest change most business owners ever encounter is leaving their business. Most people don’t even think about leaving their businesses until the time they want to walk out the door. The time to begin planning is several years before you want to go. This gives you an opportunity to think about what’s next, and to plan your goals. The four step process lets you start to think about what you want to do after your business, even if you want to stay in it.

Now, let’s see if this system can help you better deal with all the change in your world. The four steps in the process are: Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny. In my next blog, I start explaining each step and how you can do it. If you want a sneak peek at the process, you can check out the following resource: http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/
See you here next Tuesday.

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