Transitions

We’re staying with old friends this week, in a cottage in Wales. We first came here eighteen years ago when we had small children and have reminisced about those years when holidays felt more like hard work than a rest and about the time we resorted to digging a ‘playpen’ on the beach to corral our energetic toddlers so we could sit down for a few minutes with a flask of tea. Every visit since then has been slightly different as the children’s ages, needs and interests have changed, but in the same beautiful setting: windswept beaches, long walks and ice creams, cosy tea shops, and meals and games around the long wooden table. This year we’re here without those two toddlers: they’re finishing up their first year at university, still energetic, but no longer keeping us up at night. We’re all in a new stage of life.

There’s something especially restful about arriving somewhere familiar for a vacation: all the benefits of a change of space and pace, but without the disruption of discovering a new place and figuring out where and when and how everything works. We slip easily into holiday mode from day one. No transition needed.

PC: K King

I’ve been re-reading a change management classic recently: Transitions by William Bridges. As I shared in my last post, I’m in a time of transition and I know a lot of other people who are too. The organisation I work for is adjusting to a new leadership team and new structure, reconfiguring into different teams and relationships. I’m also preparing to work with several other organisations on their own change processes in the coming months, addressing both structural and cultural issues. And many of the young and elderly people in my family are facing transitions too. The need to transition well is one of the key lessons I’ve learned about managing change, whether it’s personal and individual or corporate and collective. As Bridges says, it isn’t the change that does you in. It’s the transition.

My colleague, David, wrote this last week in an internal work newsletter:

“Change, by its very nature, places us between what was and what is yet to be. It’s often more comfortable to be firmly planted in either the past or the future—but real change occurs in the space between. And that space is rarely comfortable.” (David Wafo, shared with permission)

Bridges distinguishes between change (an external event or situation) and transition (the internal psychological process people go through to adapt to the change). His theory is that people do not necessarily struggle with the change itself, but with the internal adjustment required to navigate it. He identifies these three distinct stages of transition:

1. Letting Go - leaving the old ways and old identity. This is where the losses occur.

2. The Neutral Zone - the old is gone but the new hasn’t fully arrived.

3. New beginnings - where new identity, realities and energy develop.

Endings and beginnings tend to be more familiar to us: one thing stops and a new thing begins. Many of us tend to try and rush from one to the next with as little time in between as possible, avoiding the chasm of nothing that might open up and engulf us in uncertainty and ambiguity. If we’re wise, we’ll take the time to mark the endings, identify the losses and grieve where necessary before launching into the new beginnings where we will create fresh habits, patterns, relationships and a reshaped sense of identity. But the ‘neutral zone’ is a more elusive space. Even if we’re forced through it quickly by necessity, it’s worth paying attention to.

Here are five lessons I have learned and am learning about managing that internal adjustment process, and navigating the neutral zone, from Transitions as well as from my own experience transitioning often between countries, communities and homes. While these apply more to a personal journey through change, if you are helping others through workplace transitions you may want to read the footnote below.¹

1. Make the most of the neutral zone. Bridges describes the neutral zone as a special place where great productivity and creativity can emerge and warns against wasting this rare opportunity to reflect and try out new rhythms, roles or activities. It can help to reframe what might feel like emptiness or a lack of productivity into a special season of testing and incubating new possibilities. As my colleague David described above, this ‘in between’ space is where real change occurs and new things can develop, even if it’s uncomfortable. Insights from complexity science tell us that novelty emerges when existing patterns are disrupted, so the disruption is something to positively embrace if we’re looking for new directions and opportunities.

2. In this time when nothing is settled, focus on the certainties that haven’t changed. For me this is my identity in Christ and my history with God, who has never failed to invite me into new adventures and provide what I need to pursue them. It’s also my husband, home and hobbies, and my local community, church and old friends. Share with others what you are going through and they will no doubt have their own stories to encourage you. One friend recounted how she found comfort in nature in a time of transition: in nature change is constant but there are profound and predictable certainties in the different seasons of growth and decay.

3. Don’t rush new things into being, let them emerge in their own time. When you are living between an end and a beginning, the temptation is strong to make decisions and commit to new things quickly. Neuroscience shows that our brains actually prefer negative certainties over (potentially positive) uncertainty, so we will rush to fill the void as soon as we can (Scarlett, 2016²). But as Bridges says, it’s a journey from one identity to another and that takes time to do well. If we rush to solidify our new normal, we might just miss out on possibilities and opportunities that will take more time to develop.

4. It’s okay for things to feel a bit weird in the meantime. You’re reworking your life—and more importantly, rewiring your brain—into something new and that’s going to feel uncomfortable at times. Roll with it. Embrace the awkward, unsettled feeling. Rushing into the most comfortable space you can find probably isn’t going to be the most productive or wisest option long-term.

5. Let God do his thing, in his time, which is often not fast. I’ve always loved how the theologian Kosuke Koyama writes about the “three-mile-an-hour-God” he encountered in the paddy fields of Thailand, where everything happened at a much slower pace than in his homeland of Japan. He asked, “Is not the biblical God an “inefficient” and “slow” God because he is the God of the covenant relationship motivated by love?” (Water Buffalo Theology, 1999). Embrace the slowness and inefficiency of that loving relationship and trust that in good time the next right thing(s) will unfold.

   

   PC: S Watts

   We’re heading home today. This post has unfurled slowly across the days of our vacation, like the ferns unfolding in the woodland we walked through earlier in the week. Shaking the sand from our shoes and piling damp beach towels into the boot of our car, we’re relaxed and rested, better prepared for what comes next. A vacation is a kind of neutral zone too, a chance to press pause on life and breathe, take stock. I’m grateful.

1. If you are managing change in your workplace, I recommend William Bridges’ workbook, Managing transitions: Making the most of change (2017) for some good content on leading people through the three stages of transition.

2. Hilary Scarlett’s Neuroscience for Organizational Change (2016) is another excellent resource for understanding how people react to change and how to help them through it in more brain-friendly ways.