This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 129 / 4 Truths of Radiant Change with Kristen Lisanti

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

Most people resist change, are afraid of it, or at least feel really uncomfortable with it. But that doesn’t change the fact that CHANGE IS COMING. You can count on it. It is for that very reason that I’ve invited Kristen Lisanti to join me today to talk about navigating change… and not just any old change, but what she calls RADIANT change. Kristen coaches leaders and their teams to drive transformation at scale, guiding them through her proven methodology to spark and sustain meaningful change. Kristen is trained and certified by the NeuroLeadership Institute, the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, the Leadership Circle and the International Coaching Federation. In short, she knows what she’s talking about when it comes to change. A loving reminder of the first truth: it’s INEVITABLE. No amount of avoiding, resisting, running, or fighting will change that. And progress, success, healthier relationships, and our deepest desires often live on the other side of change. To learn more about Kristen and her work go to kristenlisanti.com or follow her on IG @Kristen Lisanti To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com.

Here's a thought from our guest today, but you're going to have to listen to the full episode to get all the mind-blasting moments. In my work, it's about starting wherever somebody is. Are they trying to change their organization? Are they trying to change themselves? We start where we are, and everything ripples out from there. That's the notion of radiant change. We begin within, and then we can change everything.

I am Nicole Kalil, and I'm going to share something that I know to be true about me. It's a little strange, the very least uncommon. I love change. And I'm not talking about the change in my couch cushions or a bag of dirty nickels. I'm talking about the choice and process of making something new or different. I'm talking about becoming better. I'm talking about letting go of old shit to create new stuff type of change. I crave it. More often than not, I need to be careful that I'm not seeking change for the sake of change, just because I'm bored or because I want to focus on something new. Like as an example, moving six times in the last nine years, that might be an over-rotation on change. I remember when I discovered that most people

hate change. I was shocked. And then I thought there might be something wrong with me. Well, because, you know, head trash. Now I'm not going to pretend that I've got changed all figured out or that I never resist it ever, or that my changes are always smart, but I think I've learned to embrace it in many positive ways while still acknowledging that I have work I can do and progress to be made in the area of how and when I make change. Because at the end of the day, life, relationships, parenting, technology, work, and certainly leadership all require that we embrace change a lot. But the reality is most people resist it, are afraid of

it, or feel really uncomfortable with change. Whether it's because we feel that loss of control or we hate uncertainty, we feel unprepared or this idea that we need to create new habits. Maybe we worry about what other people will think or experience imposter syndrome or fear and doubt if our changes involve needing to learn new things. There's also the work of navigating change, the ripple effects, letting go of the past, feeling the pain, transition, or possibly even feeling threatened with the change. So when we put it like that, it starts to make sense why we avoid it and resist it. But that doesn't change the fact that change is coming. You can count on it. And it's for that very reason that I've invited Kristen Lassanti to join me today to talk about change. And not just any old change, but what she calls radiant change. Kristen coaches leaders and their teams to drive transformation at scale, guiding them

through her proven methodology to spark and sustain meaningful change. Over 25 years, she has held executive culture, talent, and communication roles in global firms. She's coached CEOs, advised senior leadership teams, and built high-performance cultures around the world. Kristen is trained and certified by the Neuro Leadership Institute, the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA's Semmel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, the Leadership Circle, and the International Coaching Federation.

In short, she knows what she's talking about when it comes to change. Kristen, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about a really big and scary topic. Nicole, thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here. Awesome. Okay. So I want to start with the question of, you know, change really is everywhere we look. When it comes to your work, what do you focus on? How do you help people and teams navigate through change? Yeah. My work really is about helping people, teams, organizational cultures change their relationship to change. So that's kind of maybe a way to boil it down. I really think about this notion of change and this notion of radiant change as I'm calling

it as inner work, right? Sustainable change only comes from the inside out, right? It's about the stories we're telling ourselves. It's about the patterns we fall into in our relationships, whether that's personal, professional. It's about the assumptions about how things have to be, maybe based on how they used to be, right? And we're dealing with change in all of these different dimensions of our lives, right? We're dealing with societal change. We're dealing with

organizational change, relational change. And all of these, including the changes within ourselves, are all connected and mirroring and reinforcing one another. So in my work, it's about starting wherever somebody is. Are they trying to change their organization? Are they trying to change themselves? We start where we are and everything ripples out from there. That's the notion of radiant change. We begin within and then we can change everything. Okay. So in my work with my focus on confidence, I always talk about confidence

being something that comes from the inside and then can show up externally versus the other way around. So am I hearing you that it's similar with change? Ultimately, we're going to start internally and then it'll either show up or we'll deal with the external ramifications of it. Yeah, I would say so. Particularly if we are leading change ourselves in a group environment, it's always going to start with how we are showing up in the context of that change that impacts whether or not people are able to come along with us. But also if we're thinking about like an organizational change, we typically think about it being kind of like a top-down mandate, right? Like this is a do it because I say so. And I'm working with organizations to help them realize that that top-down mandate-driven

approach is actually much less effective than one that starts from within the organization and builds momentum over time. So it's less about control. It's more about curiosity, creativity. It's less about the straight line from here to there and it's more about riding this chaotic but very predictable curve right um and mostly i think it's about resetting our expectations we think change is going to go a certain way and if we can learn to stop struggling with our own expectations about how change should work or how this particular change that we want should go, then I think that we can learn to dance with it and we can learn to flow with it and we can learn to show up in a relationship with it that

allows it to unfold in ways that we can't plan, can't control, but absolutely can be unstoppable and undeniable in terms of its power to radiate out. I'm such a big fan of framing it like a dance. I don't know, something about that really spoke to me. I also love, you know, the focus on curiosity and creativity. I don't know if it's something about the older I get, the more I embrace those very much in my past was more the control fix. And now I think I'm evolving hopefully more towards curiosity and creativity. So I appreciate that. My next question is what should we know about change that we probably don't know?

I think the first thing to know about change is that it is not going to be linear, right? It is going to have its ups and downs, particularly one very major down, which comes at the beginning. So think about it as an arc, right? We have a high of our optimism and our, you know, maybe even if we're receiving a change that is happening to us, there's that sense of like, okay, like there's an energy peak and then there's a dip, right? And so just knowing that that's going to happen, right? And that that's a part of it. You said it at the very beginning, change is inevitable. And I think that that's also really important to remember. It's something that we all know, you know, change is going to happen. Everything is always changing.

Everything will change. Nothing stays the same. There's going to be the change that we want, right? We want women's rights, right? We want a society that is moving in the direction of anti-racism. From an organizational perspective, we might want to merge two companies for greater scale and impact. From a relational perspective, we may want to build more intimacy with a partner, right? So those are the changes we want. And then we're always receiving the changes we don't want. We're receiving societally a global pandemic. We are receiving as an organization the impact of the great resignation, right? Relationally, maybe there's a bad breakup. Personally, internally in our lives, maybe there's a, but somehow it manages to surprise us like every time. Right. So simply opening ourselves up to the inevitability of change, I think, is really important. This is a lifelong practice. This is actually the first of what I call my 10 truths of radiant change.

Right. I have a whole list that is based in my experience and a lot of brilliant thinkers who came before me around the topic of change. And the inevitability is the first one. I think the other thing that I coach my clients around with the inevitability of change is the thing that we can choose is the mindset we're bringing to a change. And I'll often use the model of, am I in a to me mindset or am I in a through me mindset? So when I'm in to me, and I often will find myself there, the story in my mind is this is happening to me. I am not responsible. I have no power and there's nothing I can do. Right. And it's a very depleting place to be. On the other hand, through me, when I'm in that mode, maybe I didn't choose the change. Right. But what power do I have to shape the arc of this

particular change? What can I do to show up in a way that is authentic to who I am and that is connected to some sort of value or vision that I have for this change? There's always something that we can do. That is so powerful. I've heard the, you know, have to versus get to approach to things that happen in life, but I love to me versus through me. I especially love that it keeps the power in our own hands. When something's happening to us, we're giving the power to the thing or the person versus if it's happening through us. And I don't mean power, like, you know, hierarchical. I mean, like the choice and the optionality and the, like, I decide. Agree. And something that is why I'm so happy to be here with you today. And in thinking about this as being women's work is that in my experience,

anyway, I think women are really uniquely suited to be powerful agents for positive, radiant change, right? For a few reasons. I think that A, we are typically not satisfied with the status quo, right? Particularly in institutional context, it wasn't designed for us. It often doesn't serve us, right? So we are continually, I think, open to more. We tend to be resilient by nature. And resilient, I think, is one of those words that particularly over the last few years has really been misunderstood. Resilient doesn't mean roll with the punches. Resilient doesn't mean like staying static in the face of change. It means recognizing where we're vulnerable, working to build our capacity, adapting to meet the unexpected.

And I think women do that beautifully. And I think we also tend to orient toward community and collaboration, which is another one of those truths of radiant change. It's co-created. We don't do it on our own. The hero stories and narratives that are out there are total fallacies, right? We need one another. And I think women do that really effectively, which is part of what makes us excellent change makers

wherever we go. I'm so glad you said that. I hadn't even thought to ask any questions about what are the nuances or differences about how women might approach change versus any other gender. And so I'm so glad that you brought that up. I also want to circle back with what you started with, because it's so important, this idea that there is going to be a dip or a low or something that happens when you face a change or when you commit to a change. Because I think, I know I've done this and I've seen a lot of people I've worked with do this. We think it's a sign that we're not supposed to do it, right? We think it's like the universe or God telling us like,

that change is bad. And it's like, no, knowing that that is an inevitable part of change, I think is really, really helpful. So thank you for saying that. Okay, I wanna go to the 10 truths of change. I know that in preparation for the podcast, I wanted to hone in and I know

we don't have time to do 10. So I wanted to start with the first four, which I know you already hit the first one, which is change is inevitable. You just beautifully set that up for me. So excellent. So, okay. So once we have accepted that change is inevitable, the second truth is that we have to also accept and embrace that change is possible. This is one of those paradoxes of working with change, right? It's like we struggle on both of those to receive the change and to work with it and also to believe that we can achieve it, right? That is really all about vision. What is the vision that we have for this change? Can we see it? And I don't just mean pointing out a problem and obsessing over obstacles. I mean, what's on the other side of this change? What is the new

reality that we want to create? Now, something I run into a lot when I'm working with CEOs is that they tell me that their vision is revenue growth and profitability. And I gently remind them that that is not a vision. Financial success is an outcome. Your vision is the future state, which will naturally generate all of the outcomes you want to see. So it really is a visionary exercise. Let's write the story of that it down to its essence is something that'll fit on a bumper sticker or be the title of a Beyonce song, make it nice and sticky. And your vision is everything for the change that you are leading through the rest of the change curve. It's going to guide you. It's going to be your North star. It's going to galvanize other people to want to join in and help because you need them. And it's going to ground you when things get tough. And this is where you were going just a moment ago, that there's that resistance we're going to talk about in a moment. But I wanted to first kind of put a pin on the importance of

a powerful, compelling, noble vision for yourself and for others. And I want to reiterate this second truth that it's possible is incredibly impactful. And I've noticed that the people who seem to embrace change the most are the people who have a tendency either because of who they are or they've practiced their way into it. They start with yes. They start with the belief that it's possible. And then, you know, they decide whether or not they want to. And I find people who resist change often start with no, like that can't happen. It's not possible. So I just wanted to hone in on how important I think that one is. Okay. Let's talk about the third and fourth truth. Okay. Beautiful.

So again, you've given me the perfect segue because some of us lean into yes, and some of us lean in to no. And that no is where the third truth comes in, which is change is uncomfortable. You said it so beautifully a moment ago, Nicole. When we feel that resistance to change, whether it's our own resistance or others, it's like something's wrong, but nothing is wrong. This is just how it works. That dip in the change curve is actually has a name. It's called the trough of disillusionment, which to me sounds like something out of the princess bride. I just love that name, but it doesn't mean change isn't possible. It doesn't mean we aren't capable of leading the

change. And it just means that we're dealing with human beings who have functioning brains. So what's going on in the brain is really important to understand here. As human beings with human brains, we experience any change as a loss. Any change is going to come with some kind of trade-off, right? Even if I decide, you know, I want to get up and work out early in the morning, I'm losing out on sleep, which as a Taurus is a very big deal. So there's always a loss. When we don't choose the change for ourselves, we and our brains experience this change as a threat. Our amygdala and the other reactive regions of the brain get activated. They initiate our threat response, fight, flight, freeze, appease. And it sends us spiraling. It sends us into

no. And most human beings are going to have that response very naturally. Totally makes sense. And we love our amygdala. But the things we need to know about the amygdala, if we happen to find ourselves in that place of resistance, is that when it's activated, it's taking up all of the brain's energy. It's depleting the other visionary regions of the brain, like our prefrontal cortex, sometimes called the CEO of the brain that can be forward looking. So the amygdala is only ever looking backward. It's looking into the past to try to predict the future. It can't see potential possibility going forward. It can only see the dangers of the past and try to protect them from imagined dangers in the future. So that's one thing we need to know about the amygdala is it is not very smart. In fact, it is unconscious, right? It does not have conscious discerning capabilities to differentiate between something that is an actual threat and something that's a perceived threat. It's still trying to protect us from saber-toothed tigers in the jungle from an evolutionary perspective. It's, you know, experiencing change as something

that's going to be dangerous for us. So the most effective change makers are the ones who can surf that curve, who can anticipate the resistance is going to happen, who can honor the losses that are going to be inherent within it. I try to coach my change leaders to leverage emotional data. So any emotional response that's coming up within you or within the people that you're working with, point to needs that they have. So let's leverage that data, look at the needs, and then address those needs

and keep people focused back on the vision that we set originally. So a follow-up question is because I believe we have an inner knowing or inner truths or feelings if something is not meant for us or if it's not right for us. Having said that, I also believe that discomfort is a necessary part of growth, success, confidence, all the things we want. Any insight into how we can tell the difference between discomfort or feeling uncomfortable versus this is not right, this is not meant for me, or like, I'm not uncomfortable, I'm afraid. It's like how do we distinguish between the ones we should walk towards and the ones we should walk away from. It's such an important question.

In my experience, it is a lot about cultivating our own self-awareness and our relationship to fear so that we can distinguish, oh, this is the fear of something that's exciting. And be aware if that fear is coming from a place of trying to protect myself from old stories and being aware of, you know, okay, this is feeling like a true threat to me. Something in this is not good for me. It's not generative for me. There are these two kinds of fear, I think, and we have to be able to distinguish. For me, there's no pat way to do that, but it is, I think about in the moment looking at, okay, how much risk am I willing to take here to edge forward and to see? Because if it really is a toss up, then it's probably worth waiting in and just getting a

sense of how hot is this water? And do I feel that I'm growing through this or do I feel like, yeah, this is just not for me. And the reality is that there are going to be people who opt out of a change that you're leading. And that is also fine. You don't need everybody all at once, all the time with you. Such great advice. I think about all of the big and important things or choices or changes that I've made in my life. And I often say they come with equal parts fear and equal parts excitement. And so I wonder what you were saying kind of popped that popped into my head is it's like, if it's a hundred percent fear and 0% excitement, that's probably a sign, not the right change for you, at least not now, right? But looking for that combination of the two that, yes, I want this,

and I'm afraid, or I'm excited about that, and then I'm a little nervous. Those are probably more the uncomfortable pieces versus if there is none of those positive feelings associated with it, then it's like you're assigned to not dive into that change. Is that fair? I think that makes perfect sense. And you're actually striking on why mindfulness practice is such a key part of this work because cultivating that self-awareness to be able to distinguish like what part of this is fear for survival and what part of it is real and based in reality versus what parts of it are coming from these very old stories. That's critical for us to be able to manage, leverage, navigate any kind

of change in our lives. Yeah. Okay. Fourth truth. Okay. So this one's a big one and I feel like it might be a big one, particularly for women, but I don't think it's gender exclusive. Many successful people have gotten where we are by being master problem solvers, or so we think. We approach change as a problem to solve because we have been successful and we've been rewarded for being great at solving problems. And I think what this means is that we spend as leaders, as managers, as parents, most of our time firefighting. And the thing is there's always more fires. So those are, I've got three reasons why this is a trap, this kind of fix it mentality. The fourth truth of radiant change is that change is not a fix.

We don't want to fix our way through a particular change. Three reasons why. There are always going to be more problems. There are always going to be more fires to put out. Secondly, if we're focused on the fire, we are not focused on the vision. Two different parts of the brain, again, prefrontal cortex is focused on the vision, the amygdala focused on the fire. Both of them cannot operate at the same time. And thirdly, when we are focused on the fire, we're just addressing symptoms. When we are focused on

the vision that we have for the future reality we want to create, we can build deeper, broader systemic solutions that address the root causes. I think about like the classic example of a manager who is just used to their team members come to them and every time they come with a problem, they fix the problem for them. And over time, this burns out the manager. It doesn't support the team's growth and the problems keep multiplying because we aren't addressing what the real need of the team is to be able to excel at a higher level. So that's one pattern I see a lot in my work with teams. So in terms of getting out of fix-it mode, we can continually be bringing ourselves back to

the vision. What is that new reality that we're doing this for? We can look for strengths instead of weaknesses, because that's another orientation that we have as humans, right? Is what's wrong. And instead work on building on those strengths and focus always on what's possible, focus on progress, focus on potential rather than aiming for perfection, which BTW is not a thing. I call perfectionism one of the confidence derailers. It's the enemy of confidence. And, and so I couldn't agree more. Would change for the sake of change fall into this category? So like, I think of, you said, you know, it has us addressing the symptoms, not necessarily the core. I can see, especially in my work history, sometimes changing a process or changing a system or changing a goal or whatever, without recognizing what was underneath it. And so that we end up just changing a bunch of shit and nothing ever actually gets. So my question is, does this sort of change for the

sake of change or changing things at a surface level, would that fall into this fourth truth of it just not being a fix? I would think so. Absolutely. And I see it happen all the time. The great resignation is one example from both sides or from an individual perspective. I can't tell you how many conversations I had with people who left one job because they were like, this is the problem. I need to change. I need to change my job. And they got to another company with a quote unquote better job. And then they called me and said, wait, it's the same shit over here. What's going on? And I said, maybe there's a systemic issue with how we are working right now. And this is one of my kind of

personal passions is we need to change the way that we work, right? Make it more sustainable, more meaningful. That's what people are crying out for. Of course, on the organizational side of this very dynamic, we have organizations saying, oh, let's increase our perks. We got to like, we got to be more attractive. We got to offer, you know, people are burnt out. Let's give them yoga classes, right? So that's, again, an example of just kind of overlaying a firefighting solution, spraying water everywhere at the surface level without thinking about, okay, how do we reforest? How do we plant trees?

How do we give people what they really want, which is a sense of purpose and a sense of autonomy and a sense of something that they're growing toward. And if we can nurture those more intrinsic factors, we can engage our people. We can get the best out of them. We can build beautiful new companies, but not if we are just treating everything as surface level issues and surface level solutions. Okay. So that leads me to my last question. You started by saying earlier on that change is not linear.

And I'll use the example of unlimited vacation. I'm assuming organizations that did this, did it with the best of intentions, but now the data and research is starting to show that it actually is counterproductive. So my question is, as you're navigating through the ups and the downs and the peaks and the valleys and the chaos of change, how do you listen for tests, pay attention to what, like, how do you be flexible as you're going through the change so you can determine whether or not your change is working or if you're headed in the right direction or if you need to redirect. It's my question making sense. Yeah, it absolutely is. And you're actually,

again, beautifully setting up the rest of the change curve, the rest of the 10 truths of radiant change. We're always co-creating change with our people. So we're not going off in an organizational situation. We're not going off and sitting in the corner office and building out a beautiful change plan and then rolling it out. You can't see me podcast listeners, but I'm doing the air quotes. I banished the term, roll it out from my clients' vocabularies because that's not how change works. We want to continually be listening, exploring, designing with, not for, and iterating, right? Because change is never done and we're always going to be iterating and improving upon what we're doing. So yeah, that first well-intentioned strategy of unlimited PTO,

now we've learned that that means, you know, no structure at all means it's the wild west. And some people are taking tons of PTO and depending on your manager, some others might be taking none. So maybe it's minimum PTO. Maybe there is some kind of requirement. How can we structure it so that people have the autonomy and the generosity that we want them to have, but that it's in such a way that it's actually workable. And that's our continuous work with change. We're never done learning. We're never done listening to those feedback loops and reassessing and staying again, to go back to where we started open, curious, creative about what really is going to work here. I would say that helps us stick the landing, but to be honest,

we're never going to stick the landing. We're always working toward it. Progress, not perfection and continual openness and curiosity toward what that progress can look like. So it often happens as I close out a podcast episode that I wish I had more time, but I genuinely wish we could go through the other six. And so I know I will be checking out your website and I want to send other people your direction. So KristenLisanti.com. You can also find her on LinkedIn. We'll put all of that in show notes. But Kristen, could you give us some insight if we wanted to learn about all 10 truths,

dig a little bit deeper into the first four and the following six? How might we do that? Okay, beautiful. So yes, come to the website. There you will find, I've got a free worksheet for anybody who's interested in kind of asking some reflective prompts about how you are maybe navigating a particular change in your work, in your world, in your life. I'm also currently preparing to launch, hopefully by the time this goes live, it'll be up on the website, a new course called Agents of Radiant Change. And this is really for anybody who's ready to

change their relationship to change and be a more effective agent of change wherever you go. This can be in your team, your business, your industry, your community, even your own lives. And even if you don't see yourself as a leader, by the way, maybe, especially if you don't see yourself as a change agent, this course can really help you. So the notion of agents of radiant change is everybody can bring a change that they're working with or toward. We're going to make the theoretical very concrete and in a systematic way and a very supportive cohort of other change makers. We're going to learn to do this dance together. I love that. Kristen, thank you so much for your time and for helping us all to embrace the dance that change brings. Cha-cha-cha. Thank you for having me. I love that. Okay. Let me close out our time together with a loving reminder of the first

truth of change. It's inevitable. No amount of avoiding, resisting, running, or fighting will change that. And progress, success, healthier relationships, and frankly, most of our deepest desires often live on the other side of change. What if you chose to embrace it? What if you learned to dance with it? Like actually dancing, sometimes you may lead, sometimes you may follow.

You want to make a connection and you also want to give each other some space. Loosen up. Don't be so rigid. Listen for the rhythm and trust how it makes you feel. And the most important thing when dancing as with change is to have some fun. And that is woman's work.