On today’s episode of No Bullshit with Alex Willis, Alex will make sure you understand that old dogs can indeed learn new tricks, and he will show you some strategies designed to assist you and your team as you face your next big change. By the end of all our segments, you’ll know why a herd of cattle will run away from an impending storm, while a herd of buffalo will run towards it.
Think back to the last time you went through a big change. Whether it was the last time you moved homes, when you married your partner, or your last promotion, you most likely experienced some levels of stress or growing pains as a result. And that’s okay, change is hard…for everyone.
On today’s episode of No Bullshit with Alex Willis, Alex will make sure you understand that old dogs can indeed learn new tricks, and he will show you some strategies designed to assist you and your team as you face your next big change. By the end of all our segments, you’ll know why a herd of cattle will run away from an impending storm, while a herd of buffalo will run towards it.
In our first segment, The Takeoff, Alex discusses the importance of change and why each and every one of us can benefit from tackling it head-on. To take off in the right direction, you’ll be told what the 5 Keys of Change are, and how understanding them will help you lead your team through successfully.
Tune into our next segment, The Level, where you will see the typical timeline of how a new change impacts a team. You may have felt this before at work where morale and productivity are at all-time lows before the tides change, people adjust, and both start to improve to even higher levels than before the change was introduced. Alex will outline this all for you on what’s called, “The Change Curve.”
Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts as well as the YouTube channel to watch full video episodes and be notified as soon as the next episode is live.
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[00:00:00] Alex Willis: Hey, hey, what's up guys? Alex Willis here, c e o of Leadership Search. And I wanna personally welcome you to No Bullshit with Alex Willis, the number one go-to source for leadership development in the construction industry. And my friends, I am super, super excited to have you here today because we're dealing with a topic that is very, very relevant for us in the construction industry, and that's this thing called chain.
[00:00:30] Alex Willis: Ooh. I know that is something that is very, very difficult for most people to deal with, but I tell you this, this is something that's rapidly happening in our industry. And so the thing is, how do you deal with it? How do you deal with it? How do you master? In episode two, we talked about the challenges of stress and how to do that right there, the challenge of change and how to handle it with the stress potentially.
[00:00:51] Alex Willis: But today we're gonna jump into talking about what are those key things you have to think about. For yourself as well as for your team to help manage transition and change. So stick around my friends, you don't wanna miss it. You wanna understand this so you could begin to be a master of change and understand how to do it, and how to do it really, really well.
[00:01:09] Alex Willis: So I look forward to seeing you in the takeoff. Hey, hey. Welcome to the takeoff, my friends, where we are talking about change today. How do you handle change? And let's be honest with you, most people don't like change. Most people don't like change. And here's why. Here's why. Truth be told, it's uncomfortable if we're being honest for a second, I just want you to do one thing with me for a second on three.
[00:01:30] Alex Willis: I just want you to cross your arms with me on three. If you're driving, don't do it. Keep your hands on the steering wheel, but if you are sitting in an area that you're safe, cross your arms on three. Here we go. Want your three? Everyone cross your arms. Oh, how does that feel? Feels good, doesn't it? Oh, I like it.
[00:01:44] Alex Willis: It feels really, really good. Now, here's the deal on three. I want you to cross them the other way. Here we go. 1, 2, 3. I. Think about that. Like right now, this just feels so uncomfortable to me and I'm doing the drill. I'm the one leading the drill. It still feels very, very uncomfortable. Just something as simple as crossing my arm.
[00:02:03] Alex Willis: So I want you to understand this, this thing called change. Please, please, please understand it is very difficult a necessary for us to continue to thrive and survive in life. In today's show, what we wanna do is we wanna do two things. Two major things, like I told you before, former football player being hit in the head a couple times.
[00:02:21] Alex Willis: So we gotta make it simple. So number one, we want to clearly understand how it feels, hear me out clearly understand how it feels in a change. Because feeling is do a lot for us. And number two, we wanna talk about the process of change, the process of change, and the responsibilities and how you respond and how you react to it for yourself as well as your team.
[00:02:42] Alex Willis: So two goals. Number one, how does it feel? Number two, the responsibilities of it, as well as how you can manage yourself, as well as manage your team really, really well for that. So, In order to understand this, we have to understand what we like to call the five keys of change. The five keys of change. And so number one is this, that people display different reactions to change.
[00:03:04] Alex Willis: You have to understand that. People display different reactions to change. And if you think about that from a personality standpoint, I want you to understand if we, if you remember in our first episode we talked about the four lenses and those color personality types, and so please, please, please understand that those personality types tend to address and look at change totally different.
[00:03:25] Alex Willis: Lemme give you two examples. That goal personality type, who's process driven. Or structured all about rules and regulations. Typically, they despise change because they like the tried and true method. They say, Hey, listen, if it's not broke, why are we fixing it? What are we doing here? What's going on? Right Where, where is that orange personality type, that action oriented jumping action, get shit done, kind of personality type.
[00:03:50] Alex Willis: They love change, man. They're looking for change every step of the way, everywhere they can go. So the first principle I need you to understand is that different people respond differently to change. So as a leader, you have to come in the situation knowing that that's what you're up against. Some people are gonna love it.
[00:04:05] Alex Willis: Some people are gonna hate it. Some people jump right into it. Some people will be slow to get into it. You need to really, really get a chance to understand that right now. Understand this as we talk about change, all people are looking for basic needs to be met during the change, right? So, so number two, all people are looking for basic needs to be met during the change.
[00:04:27] Alex Willis: As a leader, you have to understand what those needs are. And begin to address them really, really well if you're going to try to get them on board with you faster with that, right? Number three, understand you will lose something as a result of change. And this is where we struggle sometimes as leaders to think about this, right?
[00:04:47] Alex Willis: My wife and I, Sabrina, we actually call this the depth of growth, right? Some things have to die if you're going to grow, and, and I want you to just think about it. If you decide to lose weight, well, your old eating habits. What you used to do with your time before going to the gym, all of that has to die.
[00:05:04] Alex Willis: So you have to give all of that up in order to get whatever it is you're going after. Change. Now, here's the scary part about that, my friend, oftentimes when we're in that process of making that transition, we're giving up what we know. I know what it feels like to sleep in. I know what it feels like to eat this kind of food, but I'm giving that up ahead of time.
[00:05:26] Alex Willis: For something that I know nothing about the change. Oh, it sounds good. Oh, it sounds good to be in shape. It sounds good to feel healthy, but I don't know what it feels like. I don't know what the sacrifice is. I don't know how much I'm going to have to commit to it. So there's something you're giving up on the front end for that, right.
[00:05:42] Alex Willis: Number four, please understand people have different expectations up, change. Some people expect things to just be totally different. Wow, boom, pal. Some people say, well, you know, no, I want to just see incremental change. So as a leader, it's important that you really begin to lay that out, understanding what is your expectation of change, as well as what is your team expectation of change so that you can have the same vision, knowing exactly what it looks like, and be able to measure that really, really, really well.
[00:06:10] Alex Willis: Right. And then last but not least, I'm gonna reiterate this. There will always. Always, always, always, always be fear of change. Always my friends, right? So, so you have to know that coming in and if you're gonna be successful, that's important for you to understand right. Now, in order for us to understand this really quickly, there's some theory we have to talk about, and this is understanding the important part of the human factor in change.
[00:06:35] Alex Willis: Because most people begin to think about just change as policies and equipment and procedures and how we do things. Yeah, yeah. Equipment. Different methodologies of how we're going to pay and bill our customers, how we're gonna choose vendors policies that HR may roll out. All of those are things, but please understand, my friend.
[00:06:54] Alex Willis: There's a human factor in all of those things. Now, the human factor really begins to determine the ROI return on investment that you get from the change right now. Now, what is the human factor? Well, there are three things. That determined the human factor and how quickly you can see your return on investment for the change you're implementing.
[00:07:13] Alex Willis: Be it a policy, be it tools, be it practices, whatever, right? The first thing is the speed of adoption. The speed of adoption. How quickly can people pick it up? How quickly can people pick it up? Because understand the longer it takes for them to pick it up. The longer that initiative is going to take, and usually it dies very quickly.
[00:07:36] Alex Willis: So, so the faster you can get 'em to pick it up, the better you can be with that, right? So, so that's number one. The second thing is this ultimate utilization. Ultimate utilization. What do I mean by that? Well, not only do you want people to adopt it really, really fast, but how quickly can you get your entire team doing that process?
[00:07:53] Alex Willis: Everyone looking in the same direction, going in the same way? Oftentimes my friends, We have these early adopters, and you have late, late, late, late, late, late, late adopters when it comes to this kind of stuff. And as a result of that, that human factor slows us down. So speed of adoption, number one. Number two, we're talking about the ultimate utilization.
[00:08:15] Alex Willis: How fast do people begin to utilize it? And then last but not least, proficiency, how good are they at it? And not only good at it, I mean I'm talking great. Have they practiced it enough? Like an athlete where they began to get so good they could do it in their sleep. The new process, the new forms, the new tools, whatever it is, because understand that time for them to be proficient in it slows down the ROI.
[00:08:44] Alex Willis: With that. So those are the three things that as leaders in the construction industry, you're constantly looking for, Hey, wait a minute, how quickly are my people doing the speed of adoption? Number two, ultimate utilization. Do I have the entire team using this system? Right? And then number three, how proficiently do they use it?
[00:09:00] Alex Willis: And if I can begin to do that, my friends, we can be very, very efficient. We can begin to see the benefit and power of the change. Right? As we talk about this, here's what usually happens. Lemme give you a picture, paint a picture for you. Usually what ends up happening is this. You have what we like to call the current state.
[00:09:17] Alex Willis: The current state. This is the policies, the procedures, what we've been doing, how we've been doing it over the years. And truth be told, everybody's doing the current state. Now all of a sudden something happens and we say, Hey. We are going to make some changes to go to what we like to call this future state.
[00:09:37] Alex Willis: Now, most leaders talk about the current state and they directly jump to the future state. What they forget and where they struggle, my friends, is this middle piece of this transitional state. Now, usually everyone's comfortable here, so when they move to this next piece, you typically have a huge drop off.
[00:10:00] Alex Willis: Most people will lag behind. I'm not trying it. And so if you don't get people gathered in that transition state, it's gonna be very, very difficult, right? So usually you have a huge drop off in the transition state and another drop off in the future state. So as a leader, it's your job to really begin to think about those things because if you could think about those things, As you begin to talk, as you begin to communicate, you could do a phenomenal job with your teams and ultimately be successful.
[00:10:25] Alex Willis: Right now, in our next segment, we're going to really begin to dive in to talk about something called the change curve. Now, as a leader, you need to understand, I don't care what it is you do in life. Going back to my other example, be it working out, be it dieting, be it trying to spend more time with family, be it being more efficient on the job, new tool.
[00:10:46] Alex Willis: Every process you go through and of change has its curve and it's pretty similar. So I want you to stick around, tune into the next segment so that you can begin to dive in to see what you need to be aware of as it pertains to this change curve. What you're going to see, what you're going to hear, what you're going to.
[00:11:06] Alex Willis: Feel, and more importantly, what you as a leader should say and do. So I look forward to seeing you in our next segment. Hey, I wanna thank you again for tuning in to No Bullshit with Alex Willis, the number one go-to source for leadership development in the construction industry, my friends, and don't forget to hit play on that next segment.