I’m relieved to say I made it through June. It was kind of a lot. No, actually, a lot a lot.
My youngest daughter, third and last child, graduated 👩🏻🎓from high school. 🤦🏼♀️😢🥲
If you’re an empty nester, I’m sure you can relate to the simultaneous emotions of misery😭 and joy💃🏻 that this milestone evokes.
And if you’ve got younger kids and haven’t yet reached the point where your kind, thoughtful, loving child starts treating you like you’re the most thoughtless, ignorant person they’ve ever met, and acting like the day they move halfway across the country to college can’t come soon enough, brace yourself. It will likely happen. 😈
I’ve learned about this known and unpleasant phenomena called “soiling the nest” where your lovely, little bird starts preparing to become independent and separate themself from you so they unconsciously (and sometimes consciously too) become incredibly moody, avoid spending time with you, and frequently behave in a way that they know will push all of your buttons. They make having them at home so uncomfortable that you actually want to eject them from the nest.
So I made it through graduation, the graduation party, and all of the friends’ kids’ graduation parties, but we still need to make it to college drop-off which is simultaneously STILL and ONLY 6 weeks away.😫
As someone who typically enjoys change, this one is hard.
It’s been causing me to think more about change, and what makes some transitions difficult vs what makes them fun.
Even exciting changes are often challenging though, so what’s the difference between those and the ones that are downright painful?
It’s something we frequently think about at Denamico because helping our clients successfully implement their CRM and use it to ‘digitally transform’ their business requires significant change.
And just as with becoming an empty nester, a systems implementation can be a change that elicits emotions of grief (I need to learn a new way of doing my job?!) and celebration (this will make my life so much easier!)
Why would anyone want to go through that? Especially when change management is one of the top most stressful things at work.
This was a topic that Stephanie Schaefer, President and Chief Growth Officer at The Social Lights, a social media agency, touched on during her recent conversation on the RevOps Champions podcast. They underwent the change to implement HubSpot in order to support their agency growth and agility.
“Evolve or die.” Whether it’s in our business, our role at work, our role as a parent, or just simply living our life. The world changes and so must we if we want to grow and become the best version of ourselves.
There are proven ways to make growth easier, more fun, and less painful though. As Stephanie shared, technology implementation requires managing human behavior change. For successful adoption, it's crucial to clearly demonstrate the benefits to end users and ensure ease of use.
Those aspects are incorporated into the Prosci ADKARⓇ model of facilitating individual change, and it’s what we use to help our clients manage change, and sustain those changes.
- Awareness – Of the need for change
- Desire – To Participate and support the change
- Knowledge – On how to change
- Ability – To implement required skills and behaviors
- Reinforcement – To sustain the change
There are different ways to apply this model, but the important thing to remember, especially when we’re feeling negative emotions about a change, is that there is a model that will help.
I’m not yet sure if I know how to apply the ADKARⓇ model for learning to thrive as an empty nester, but I think the ‘how’ I manage the change will require some golf, tennis, skiing, meeting up with friends, and some travel. Most likely to visit my kids. ✈️
Cheers to you and growing better together,
Kristin
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Kristin Dennewill
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Amy's Angle: Insights from the Inside
How do we strike the right balance between people and technology in a time when a lot of the workforce is no longer physically together?
This was a question posed by Stephanie Schafer when she was our guest on the podcast.
Before her interview, she shared a ‘get-to-know-me’ document that she called her Executive Dossier. It was a rundown of her personal and professional details including values, communication style, her top 5 CliftonStrengths, and a few other assessments she has taken. I appreciated having this before chatting with her for the first time because it made me feel like we had already met.
I also found it especially timely since I had just learned my CliftonStrengths during DenamiDays (our company learning/team-building event). I immediately recognized that Stephanie and I shared “Relator” as one of our top 5 (in fact, it’s my #1).
During our conversation, Stephanie told us, “my heart is for leadership and people.” She feels in the current digital era, it can be difficult to build and maintain strong interpersonal relationships, but it is still as critical as ever.
She went on to say she thinks it’s the responsibility of leaders to find new ways to facilitate connection, collaboration, and ideation for remote/hybrid employees. These comments made me think “Relator” should have been at the top of her CliftonStrengths as well!
I believe that knowing one’s strengths, as well as the strengths of colleagues, is a step in the right direction toward meaningful connection.
Sharing our strengths allows us to reveal more personal aspects of ourselves that may not always come to light in our day-to-day jobs. Giving employees opportunities to use and showcase their strengths can improve their satisfaction with work and will likely maximize their productivity and creativity.
Despite how challenging it can be for leaders of remote/hybrid teams to facilitate relationship-building, the good news is that we can leverage technology to find solutions. Let's use the technology available to us to uncover ways to enhance employees' abilities, make it easier for them to connect with colleagues, and maximize their strengths - all while benefiting the company in the process.
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Amy Weaver
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