Mastering change is no easy feat. While change has been around for as long as humans have, the brain is a complex beast. The impact of change tests our ability to deal with situations that human brains are not used to or expect, and the emotions that are triggered in the process.
The brain has around 86 billion neurons, and when it experiences a new learning or situation, the neurons form connections — called synapses — and these connections create neural pathways through neuroplasticity. This process continues throughout moments of life. Learning something completely new and challenging, like a musical instrument, a new language or even brushing our teeth with the opposite hand creates new neural pathways but doing it once does not make the neural pathway intense or fixed.
It takes repetition for a neural pathway to become a habit, and the resulting “new normal” in the mind, along with our beliefs and values, exists within these pathways, often referred to as a person’s “wiring” or sense of identity.
When change occurs, it triggers an internal alarm in the brain. The neural pathways that represent familiar and trusted ways of doing things are disrupted, signaling that the old approach no longer works and that a new pathway must be developed.
Developing new neural pathways is always possible for as long as people live. However, it’s not always easy, especially if it requires a rewrite of current values, beliefs or habits. It is our relationship with change that influences how easy and fast it is to create and accept the new wirings.
Our Unique Relationships With Change
Every person has a relationship with change, and this begins to develop at an early age. If a child is exposed to frequent relocations, school changes, changes to family life or any environmental changes, this becomes part of their beliefs on what the mind refers to as “normal,” and their relationship with change is “expect it to happen frequently.” Conversely, if a child was exposed to very little change, lived in the same family home, went to the same school, and experienced the same environment each day, this becomes part of their beliefs that this is “normal” and the relationship with change is “It is a rare occurrence, so expect consistency.” Then, there are all the situations and occurrences between these two extremes. Picture the change relationship as a scale between 1-10, with 1 being “loves consistency” and 10 being “loves change and sometimes changes for the sake of change.” Neither end of the continuum is right or wrong, and it is not imperative to love change. They are both appropriate and leveraged in different circumstances.
Teams and workplaces need people all along the change continuum. They need people who love consistency: People who come in and do the same thing each day, do it well and are happy to do this for a long time. These people add value to any workplace, create a level of stability in teams, but aren’t generally great with change. Change is an absolute given in this world, so while a love for change is not required, an acceptance is.
Improving Leaders’ Relationships With Change
To make it slightly easier for leaders to accept change, encourage them to focus on increasing the score on the relationship with change scale. This starts by getting the mind more accustomed to change on a regular basis so it’s not such an unexpected occurrence and will be less likely to “shock” their brain.
The more leaders practice creating new neural pathways, the more it becomes a habit, helping the mind grow comfortable with change as a regular occurrence. Like any habit, this process can be challenging at first, but it becomes easier over time. Encouraging leaders to form habits around change is key, since changes initiated by the individual are often easier to accept than those that feel imposed.
L&D leaders can equip organizational leaders to proactively guide and shape change rather than simply react to it. By helping leaders foster new neural pathways in their teams, L&D can make change feel more familiar and manageable across the organization.
Mastering Change Through Training and Development
Training and development can provide opportunities to constantly learn and create new neural pathways. This process mirrors how we adapt to change.
Whether it’s reading an article or book, attending a course or program, researching a topic, listening to a podcast or any other form of training and development, learning something new is a great way to create new pathways. If learning something new only happens once annually, that is the way the mind will expect change to occur in the future: just once a year. If a leader learns something new each month and creates new neural pathways, this becomes their normal, and the mind becomes accustomed to forming new habits and aligning values and beliefs on a regular basis.
Ultimately, the best time to begin creating new neural pathways is yesterday. The adage “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” exists for a reason: In our early years, learning is normal and expected, occurring daily from birth and continuing into at least early adulthood. Over the years spent in the workplace, however, learning often tends to decrease as workers’ confidence grows along with experience and repetition of the habits they’ve previously created.
By maintaining or increasing training and development for leaders, L&D leaders help ensure that leaders, and by extension their teams, are regularly building new neural pathways. This prepares leaders’ minds to respond to change more easily, making it feel less foreign, more expected, and even potentially desirable.
Leaders don’t need to be experts at embracing change, and training doesn’t have to be constant to be effective, but consistent learning makes adapting to change smoother in both professional and personal contexts. Regular development opportunities are an excellent starting point.
