Lockdown 2020 series: Making change happen with your Observers
Last week, I wrote about four different states we might see in ourselves and the people around us while we get our heads around how to make lockdown work for us. It’s important to note that all four roles in this matrix are valid. They all have needs, they contribute in slightly different ways, they have limits to their effectiveness, and people move into different states depending on what’s going on around them, including the support they are getting from their leader.
My plan is to kick each week off with an overview of one of the states in the model to the right: what you’ll see, what someone in that state typically contributes, what limits their effectiveness, and what they need from you, as their leader, to keep making progress. So let’s get into it with Observers
Observers aren’t ready to commit yet.
In most cases, Observers are thrown off balance by the change. It’s the sudden swerve on the bike track that they didn’t see coming, or that arrived in a different state or at a different speed than they expected. It’s probably upended some things they have held dear until now, and they can feel exposed and like there’s nowhere to hide. There might be many leaders who are Observers right now as well – they’re feeling completely unbalanced by having to fully embrace remote working when they had never really been convinced of its validity anyway.
The Nutshell Version - Observers:
Have low readiness for this change and don’t appear to be actively involved in bringing it to life
Need to know they belong
Are your sense-checkers who look before they leap and need to know it’s safe to act
Will spot the potential pitfalls in the plan
Risk being left behind if they overplay their role
Need you to engage closely, listen, empathise and support them to make a plan to progress forward
Will fight, flee or freeze if you use an ‘enforce’ approach.
Because Observers aren’t prepared for this change, they won’t readily step into it. If you are leading people in this state, what you might see is apparently very little – if any – action from them to support this new way of working. We’re highly attuned to notice potential threats. When we find those threats, our first response is to protect ourselves. The well known flight, fight or freeze response is how that plays out.
When I first taught kindergarten children in Japan, day 1 was exactly like the above. 5 pre-school kids who had never spoken English before and one who’d learnt some phrases from his older brothers found themselves in a room with an odd looking bloke from a country they’d never heard of who was talking to them in a strange language.
It kicked in the threat response from them, and pretty much all that happened was flight (run around the room like crazy and ignore the stranger trying to calm them down) or fight (one kid – who became my firm favourite – threw things at me).
Luckily I had Yumiko, my co-teacher, with me. She got beside them, talked them down from their emotional explosion, and spent time explaining what we were going to do today (lots of playtime, see if you can trick the new guy into saying funny things in Japanese, there’s treats at morning tea time). An hour in, Yumiko had all the kids at least watching with interest what was going on, and at no point did she tell them they must follow instructions.
Observers need to know they belong
If you want Observers to get more involved, your first job is to send them safety signals. They want to know – am I still part of this group? When we know we belong to a group, we’ll adopt the norms of the group. Right now, that’s remote working and finding ways to contribute in an uncertain environment. So to help your Observers keep making progress, what belonging signals are you sending them? How are you connecting with them daily? How do they know you care about their wellbeing and the questions they might have going on? And how are you providing clarity about the role they have to play in the success of the team right now?
Observers are your sense-checkers
Observers are standing back to check the change is safe before committing to trying it out. They’ll ask questions – lots of questions; they’ll stress-test the proposed solutions, and they’ll contribute by pointing out the potential pitfalls or signalling when we might need to slow down to steady ourselves a bit. This behaviour can make them more discerning about which options to choose when everyone else seems to be trying anything to make something work.
Observers risk being left behind
Any of these states can be overplayed. While Observers might be more discerning and help us to steady up while moving forward, getting too stuck in that state means they freeze and don’t participate. And then they get left behind. Part of belonging to a group means moving with the group when it’s time to go. So while it’s okay to stop, check the water and make a plan before leaping, at some point, the leap has to be made.
Making it work: Engage closely with Observers to help them keep moving
If Observers need to feel belonging, your job is to send those signals. Take a lead from Yumiko and get beside your Observers. Ask them to share how things are going , what’s working well and what’s worrying them or not sitting right. Then just listen. Take time with them to explore and empathise. Empathy is as close to a magic wand as I’ve ever found. It does something in our brains that tells us we are in this thing with the other person – that we belong to the same group. Then, with your Observer, step through anything they are unsure about. Help them understand it, ask them to come up with a plan for making progress, then encourage them to give it a go. Let them know what they can expect from you as they give it a go (and make sure you deliver on that). This approach nudges them into being participants – the role we’ll get into next week.