Shrinking Big Changes Into Smaller Moments

Are restructures causing distress and fatigue for your leaders and teams? We've found that whether people feel safe enough to be honest early about how a change is landing is the single biggest difference between changes that succeed and changes that don't. In this episode, Katie takes us behind the scenes of a large educational institution navigating a restructure, senior leadership changes and new psychosocial hazard obligations at the same time. She shares how they used the five HEART factors, honour feelings, engage purposefully, appreciate strengths, reach out and take tiny steps, to break the change into smaller moments, and how their leaders moved from overwhelmed and discouraged to equipped and energised. 

00:03 Katie outlines what the institution was facing: a restructure, senior leaders leaving, changing roles and arriving (including a new CEO), and new psychosocial hazard obligations, all landing at once. 

04:20 Katie explains how honouring feelings worked in practice: executives committed to talking about hard things, and every team used the four-question safety check chat to name what was working, what was a struggle, what they were learning and what to try next. 

08:32 Katie describes engaging purposefully through learning goals set alongside performance goals, so people had something within their control even when the restructure wasn't, and every leader got the same training no matter when they joined. 

13:50 Katie shares how appreciating strengths through team mapping revealed superpowers, collision points and gaps, and shifted one of their top hazards, inadequate reward and recognition. 

17:57 Katie explains why reaching out for help was hardest for siloed faculties and for senior executives who felt they should have the answers, and how playful practice helped them unlearn that. 

21:51 Michelle and Katie connect nervous system regulation to asking for help: the leaders who could settle themselves were the ones who could look up, get curious and find solutions beyond their own group. 

25:51 Katie shares how taking tiny steps happened through regular group coaching, starting with the executive team because they're the most contagious people in any workplace. 

29:59 Katie defines what success looked like: leaders moving from overwhelmed and discouraged to equipped and energised, a board now engaged, and a way of leading that carries beyond this restructure. 

Take our free five-minute change survey to see how you're navigating change right now at thechangelabs.com. 

Want to go deeper? Explore evidence-based tools for navigating change — including our new Change Fatigue Antifote mini-masterclass — at thechangelabs.com.