<\/p>\n
ALISON BEARD: Welcome to\u00a0HBR \u30ea\u30fc\u30c0\u30fc\u30b7\u30c3\u30d7\u306b\u3064\u3044\u3066<\/em>. I\u2019m HBR Executive Editor Alison Beard. On this show, we share case studies and conversations with the world\u2019s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. We carefully curate this feed from across the HBR portfolio, aiming to help you unlock your next level of leadership.<\/p>\n I hope you enjoy the episode.<\/p>\n ADI IGNATIUS: I\u2019m Adi Ignatius.<\/p>\n ALISON BEARD: I\u2019m Alison Beard, and this is the HBR IdeaCast.<\/em><\/p>\n ADI IGNATIUS: So, Alison, I want to start today by talking about identity, and specifically our identity at work. So, you and I think are both people who feel very connected to our work, our self-identity is wrapped up in our jobs, in our titles, we\u2019re editors, we\u2019re journalists, that\u2019s a big part of how we think about ourselves.<\/p>\n ALISON BEARD: 100%. I think especially when you\u2019ve studied and trained to do one profession, you\u2019ve been doing the job a long time, you become an expert and leader in your organization and your field, and you\u2019re recognized for all of that, it really becomes who you are.<\/p>\n ADI IGNATIUS: Absolutely. Okay. So, take that idea, that feeling, that sense of identity, and think about the rug being pulled out from under you. So, maybe your company goes out of business, maybe you get laid off, or somehow the journey you thought you were on has been derailed.<\/p>\n ALISON BEARD: That sounds absolutely horrible, and I think it would be really hard to figure out how to recover.<\/p>\n ADI IGNATIUS: So, it is, and look, we talk about change, we talk about adaptability all the time, it\u2019s sort of theoretical. Today\u2019s guest is here to offer real, concrete ideas based on research as to how to frame sudden change, how to adapt to it, and how to really grow from it. So, Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist, she\u2019s host of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, and author of the book, The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans. Here\u2019s my conversation with Maya.<\/p>\n ADI IGNATIUS: The starting point of your book is a personal setback and people who know your podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, know that there too you\u2019ve tried to learn from, you tried to share inspiration from bad breaks that have come your way. So just to set the stage, if you\u2019re willing, talk about your experiences with sudden unforeseen change and how they move you to try to understand and learn from them.<\/p>\n MAYA SHANKAR: Yeah. There\u2019s a fascinating number of topics you can study as a cognitive scientist. One reason that I\u2019ve been drawn to the topic of change and how we navigate it is that I really suck at navigating change. I\u2019m really scared of it and I don\u2019t do a great job. One reason is that I really love the feeling of being in control. I don\u2019t like uncertainty. Many people share this trait with me. There\u2019s a really fascinating research study showing that people are more stressed when they\u2019re told they have a 50% chance of receiving an electric shock than when they\u2019re told they have a 100% chance. So we would rather be certain that a bad thing\u2019s going to happen sometimes than to have to grapple with any ambiguity.<\/p>\n It sounds pretty wild that this would be the case, but I think a lot of people can resonate with this. We like knowing how the story ends. We want to believe that the world is a clean input\/output model and that our behaviors matter and that if we try hard enough, good things will happen in our lives. And so when that unexpected proverbial anvil drops from the sky, it can shatter the illusion of control that we all comfortably live with day to day and force us to contend with the true limits of our control.<\/p>\n ADI IGNATIUS: Maya, then if you\u2019re willing, again, for people who don\u2019t know your program and your story, talk about the big life change that you experienced when you were younger.<\/p>\n MAYA SHANKAR: I was a aspiring concert violinist as a little kid. I was studying at Julliard under the renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman, and I had big dreams of becoming a professional one day. Everything was going according to plan until I overextended my finger on a single note. I damaged tendons in my hand. And after some time, doctors told me that this was a career-ending injury and that I had to give up my dream.<\/p>\n And I remember, Adi, in that moment feeling not simply like I had lost the violin, but also like I had lost myself in this more foundational way. I think sometimes we don\u2019t appreciate how much something has come to define us until we lose that thing. It was through that experience that I learned a valuable lesson. I mean, I only would learn this lesson much later when I was reflecting on it, but it can be quite precarious for us to anchor our self identities and our self-worth and our self-confidence too tightly to what we do because in a moment, life can take that thing away from us.<\/p>\n And so what I\u2019ve learned to do is to anchor my identity, not simply to what I do, but to why I do that thing. What I mean by this is I asked myself, \u201cWhat is it that you loved about playing the violin, Maya?\u201d And I realized the answer was emotional connection. That\u2019s the thing that makes me light up as a person, is feeling connected with other people. And that part of my identity was still very much intact, and it could\u2019ve been a softer landing for me had I known that and it could be a guide that steered me towards my next steps.<\/p>\n And so I would urge everyone listening to ask themselves what their why is. Maybe it\u2019s a commitment to service. Maybe it\u2019s a love of learning and getting better at something. Maybe it\u2019s having a creative outlet. Whatever your why is, it can be a stable force that makes you more resilient in the face of change and serves as a compass as you figure out what comes next.<\/p>\n ADI IGNATIUS: So in the business world, we always talk about embracing change. The only constant is change as philosophers and high-priced business consultants have told us. And more and more companies are trying to hire for resilience, right? Which is really an ability to deal with unforeseen change. And one of the challenges, how do you hire for that? How do you know that somebody has that resilience that will inevitably be valuable?<\/p>\n From your experience, from your research, how can you tell when somebody has these skills that will allow them to deal with the profound changes that are going to come everyone\u2019s way?<\/p>\n MAYA SHANKAR: Yeah. It\u2019s a complex research question. And obviously there\u2019s many, many factors that drive any individual person\u2019s resilience, but the one more hopeful message that I can offer is we absolutely can build some resilience in the face of change through concrete strategies. You can think of resilience as a muscle that you can work at. And the way that you do this is by fully internalizing that when a big change happens to you, it can also lead to lasting changes within you. You will be a different person on the other side of change in ways that might be hard to appreciate right now, but also in ways that you can actually shape.<\/p>\n This is a very empowering realization for a lot of people and actually boost their resilience because if you\u2019re feeling really daunted at the outset of a change, you can\u2019t possibly navigate it with any equanimity or wisdom, it\u2019s helpful to remind yourself that the person you\u2019re going to become on the other side will have new abilities, new perspectives, new values, new beliefs about themselves and the world around them that might actually make them far more capable of navigating the change.<\/p>\n And so one trait that I\u2019ve seen by and large is a willingness to be open to that kind of self-transformation that occurs when you\u2019re going through an episode like this, not seeing yourself as fixed in stone. And while a lot of the people that I interviewed are not happy necessarily that the change happened to them\u2026 I mean, who would invite illness or loss into their life willingly? They were very happy for the person they became as a result of the change they went through. So they tapped into newfound confidence or courage or strength or a renewed relationship with their family or with themselves.<\/p>\n And so whether it\u2019s an organization or a person who\u2019s going through this kind of disruption, reminding yourself that it\u2019s not even the same entity that will be looking back at that change can fill you with some degree of optimism.<\/p>\n ADI IGNATIUS: You just mentioned organizations, and I\u2019m interested in the idea \u2013 are these paths toward, let\u2019s say, thoughtful, productive adaptation to change, are they as applicable for organizations as they are to individuals?<\/p>\n MAYA SHANKAR: Well, I\u2019m not an organizational psychologist, so I should first caveat by saying that. But what I can say is organizations are made up of a bunch of people. That is what an organization is. And so I study people. I study individual people and how they respond. If you think about an organization in terms of its constituent parts, if every person in a company is meeting a moment of change with this personal resilience, it will have a big impact on the trajectory of the company.<\/p>\n There\u2019s one relevant insight from behavioral science here, which is called the end of history illusion. What it says is that while we fully acknowledge that we\u2019ve changed considerably in the past\u2026 So if you were to show me pictures of Maya from 10 or 20 years ago, I would try to forge as much psychological distance as I could between present day Maya and that person. But then if you were to ask me, \u201cWell, how much do you anticipate that you\u2019ll change moving forward?\u201d my brain will play a trick on me and I\u2019ll think, \u201cNo, no, no, no, no. I\u2019m more or less done changing. What you see is what you get. This is the finished product.\u201d<\/p>\n And so the researchers, one of them is from Harvard, Dan Gilbert, they say that our brains believe that the present moment is this watershed moment in which we have become the person we will be for the rest of our lives. And so I think this is, again, very revealing and we want to do everything we can as individuals to overcome this bias when we are facing hardship.<\/p>\n ADI IGNATIUS: Right. Business experience suggests that we are not good at managing change, and that\u2019s partly because we hold onto what we know, but also because we\u2019re not good at imagining an alternative. So what does your research tell you about how we come up with these alternate ways of thinking about ourselves and our potential?<\/p>\n MAYA SHANKAR: All of us have had the experience of life closing a bunch of doors, right? So we anticipated that the future would look one way, and then we get news that the future\u2019s not going to look that way. What research shows is that we can actually needlessly constrain ourselves when it comes to alternative futures that we might live out, and that\u2019s because of a failure of imagination in certain moments. It\u2019s also because of biases or prejudices that we have or just our experience seeing other people in those situations. We might have a very limited understanding of the possible futures that are available to someone who was incarcerated or someone who was a high school dropout or someone who\u2019s a widow or someone who\u2019s unemployed, but that doesn\u2019t actually represent reality.<\/p>\n And so one of my chapters, it\u2019s actually called Possible Selves, distills concrete strategies that we can use to crack open our imagination about futures that are still available to us and may actually be newly available to us in our newly constrained environments.<\/p>\n I imagine, actually, that some of these strategies could be relevant even for businesses. So one of the techniques that I give people is called moral elevation. Moral elevation is the warm, fuzzy feeling that we get in our chest when we witness someone else\u2019s extraordinary behaviors. It might be their courage or self-sacrifice or ability to forgive or resilience or commitment to their ill partners. Whatever it is, moral elevation doesn\u2019t just make us feel good about humanity. It can actually change our brains. It can rewire our brains, and that\u2019s because when we witness someone defying our understanding of what humans are capable of, in turn, it cracks open our own imagination about what we are capable of, and it transcends domains.<\/p>\n So if you see someone expressing extraordinary levels of compassion, it might not necessarily translate into compassion for you, but it might translate into you testing the limits of some other aspect of your personality that you\u2019re really eager or some other behavioral trait that you\u2019re really eager to see flourish.<\/p>\n And so I have noticed that introducing moral beauty into my life and moral elevation has had a profound impact on the futures that I\u2019ve seen when I feel like many doors have closed. And I wonder in the business context if\u2026 You might not get a warm, fuzzy feeling in your chest, but looking to other businesses, other leaders, other managers for ways that they lead that again, violate your understanding of what\u2019s necessary to lead or who are kind in ways that you find so awe-inspiring or so unexpected, that can shift us as leaders too.<\/p>\n ADI IGNATIUS: I feel like in many ways the message of your book is don\u2019t just feel sorry for yourself. I mean, if you think about your journey, you were on a path maybe to become a concert violinist. You suffer an injury. I feel like in my life, I\u2019ve met a lot of people who were on some path and something like that happened and they never quite dug themselves out. They just felt the world had conspired against them.<\/p>\n Is it a superpower to try to overcome a setback that profound, or in your life, are you meeting people\u2026 What\u2019s the norm? Are you the norm or is the norm that these things swamp us and we never quite recover?<\/p>\n MAYA SHANKAR: Well, I should first say that my story of losing the violin just pales in comparison to the intensity of stories that I write about in The Other Side of Change. So it feels like I got the smallest serving of change compared to what some of these people go through. And so I so admire the way that they have tapped into resilience in these wild moments, right? There\u2019s a woman who has a brainstem stroke and ends up with locked in syndrome where you can only voluntarily move your eye muscles and no other muscles in your body. And so the only way you can communicate with the world is through blinks.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s another young man who\u2019s dealing with a prison sentence and another dealing with a very mysterious health diagnosis, right? I think the human mind is exceedingly adaptive and resilient.<\/p>\n Now, you have to make a mindset choice, right? Which is, I think it\u2019s very natural to feel profound grief after loss, right? My husband and I\u2026 This is something I talk about in the final chapter of the book kind of unexpectedly. I went through my own change as I was writing it, which was we had been on this long journey to try to start a family and were met with heartbreak after heartbreak. I should mention, I spent a lot of time feeling really sad and really grief-stricken and did not know what a happy future could look like for me in the absence of being a parent. And so it does take time and patience, but I, seeing the evolution within myself, I now really believe that the brain is wired to adapt to change.<\/p>\n We might not like it. It might feel very uncomfortable. It might fill us with all this unease because of the uncertainty I was talking about, but by virtue of living on planet earth, change is the name of the game. So it would make sense that our brains evolved to try to make the best of it.<\/p>\n That said, I do think it\u2019s important to engage in more deliberate mindset shifts because I think if we leave our minds to their own devices, if you will, they can run away with negative thoughts indefinitely, right? There\u2019s a whole chapter of my book focused on rumination and how, in the aftermath of a change, our minds can just keep spiraling and looping over the same negative thoughts over and over again and catastrophizing the future or marinating in our regret. And so it is important for us to introduce healthy mental habits so that we can guide ourselves towards a better future.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t know a lot of these habits when I was a teenager dealing with the violin, so I was probably just a mopey recalcitrant teenager that was really annoying to be around, but now I feel like I have a much better toolkit that I can use in these moments to make sure that I\u2019m avoiding the pitfalls, right? Avoiding the stuff that would just lead me down a path where I\u2019m just feeling self-pity and sorrow all the time, and towards a slightly more productive, healthy path.<\/p>\n ADI IGNATIUS: There\u2019s another business trope. We constantly tell ourselves to celebrate failure, that if you\u2019re not failing, you\u2019re not trying hard enough, and then you need to learn from it, but you need to let go and move on. So failure\u2019s a little bit different. Failure, I guess, it\u2019s something you do and it doesn\u2019t work as opposed to something that just sort of befalls you. Does that idea\u2026 Learn from failure, but let go of it and move on, does that resonate with your research?<\/p>\n MAYA SHANKAR: Yeah, it\u2019s so interesting. This past summer, I actually served as Chris Hemsworth\u2019s brain coach on the show Limitless with Chris Hemsworth. And it was all about exploring neuroplasticity and how we can insulate our brains from some of the negative effects of aging.<\/p>\n One of the biggest lessons to come from that TV series is the importance of challenging yourself enough that you do fail. And that\u2019s because it\u2019s only when we fail that we send a signal to our brains that this current system\u2019s not working, that the brain needs to rewire itself in order to achieve the task. That\u2019s how you tap into the brain\u2019s capacity for neuroplasticity and how you keep strengthening it and boosting it over time.<\/p>\n When we fail at something, our brains release this really powerful cocktail of neurochemicals that really help drive growth and learning. And so I think it might be more of a metaphor in the organizational context, but I absolutely believe that when a company fails, think about all the lessons they\u2019re learning, all the mistakes they won\u2019t repeat, and also the fact that they tried something hard, right? We don\u2019t often fail at easy stuff, and so it can be an indicator that a company was really pushing the limits and testing out something very ambitious.<\/p>\n ADI IGNATIUS: This may be another way of getting at the question, but there are many leadership cultures that reward emotional control, fast action without a lot of introspection. I\u2019m interested in your thoughts. What gets suppressed or distorted when leaders feel they shouldn\u2019t do that kind of introspection and should just bull forward?<\/p>\n MAYA SHANKAR: Yeah. I mean, I think introspection and observation of others is so critical because when you\u2019re going through rapid change; maybe the company has a new mission statement, maybe the company has new leadership, maybe we\u2019re in a really difficult economic time and the company has to adapt; you need to get indicators along the way of how internal dynamics are shifting as a result of the changes you\u2019re making. And if you\u2019re just powering through, just steamrolling over the change or steamrolling through it, you aren\u2019t going to get all of these pieces of data that can inform the path forward.<\/p>\n And so I think that\u2019s true on an individual level as well. I mean, if you\u2019re going through a really intense change, but you never reflect on the ways in which you\u2019re changing, those changes can go unnoticed. I found myself doing that. I alluded to the fact we struggled to start a family, and there was a point where we\u2019d just been trying and trying and trying, and we\u2019re so goal-oriented that there came this moment where my husband and I thought, \u201cWe have to press pause on this process just for a little bit. We have to take stock of everything and evaluate our own minds and our wellbeing.\u201d It turns out that when we did that kind of investigation into our own psyches, we learned really important things about how we had changed as a result of the six or seven years that we had been trying to achieve this goal and had been in the trenches, so to speak.<\/p>\n And so I do think that taking a step back and having moments of reflection alerts you to the ways in which you\u2019ve changed and also helps you to actually not make the same mistakes again and fall into those same traps.<\/p>\n ADI IGNATIUS: From a management perspective, how can we tap into what our employees are experiencing when their sense of who they are is shaken by a dramatic change, possibly in their work life? Are there ways to pick up the signals and then to try to be helpful?<\/p>\n MAYA SHANKAR: There\u2019s obviously many ways in which that discontent can express itself, but I think what\u2019s even more important is being discerning and really listening to what people are telling you so that the solution you put forward is actually the right one.<\/p>\n One thing that I\u2019ve experienced as a manager and leader of my team is a feeling of\u2026 Someone will come to me and say, \u201cI\u2019m feeling really burnt out. I\u2019m feeling really exhausted.\u201d And sometimes it is just because of work overload. But sometimes it\u2019s actually because they no longer feel like their work is aligned with or is contributing to a bigger mission statement, and what they\u2019re actually lacking is meaning and purpose in their day-to-day lives.<\/p>\n That\u2019s been an aha moment for me as a manager leader. My instinct initially is like, if someone\u2019s coming to me with those feelings, you think, \u201cOkay, just take work off their plate.\u201d But actually, sometimes the signal is telling us more they\u2019re not feeling as connected anymore with the company\u2019s goals. They\u2019re not feeling like they\u2019re chipping away at the company\u2019s North Star metrics or what have you.<\/p>\n ADI IGNATIUS: So we know that one of the biggest sources of anxiety among the workforce now is about AI. And some people are just running with it, but a lot of people are sensing, \u201cI need to change. I don\u2019t know if I can. I don\u2019t know if I like this technology. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m up for the change that\u2019s required.\u201d That\u2019s a real tangible thing that I think millions and millions of people are facing now.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t need to be an expert on AI, but when faced with, in this case, a tangible, it\u2019s not just a theoretical resilience, but a tangible, \u201cI need to change because there\u2019s a technology that\u2019s reshaping my business.\u201d What is your advice for people who are just not quite sure how to do this? How do they cope with this looming change maker?<\/p>\n MAYA SHANKAR: Well, we talked about this before, but humans are exceedingly resilient and we\u2019re also very bad affective forecasters. So we\u2019re extremely bad at predicting how we will respond to events in the future. We know from decades of research that we overestimate how bad the bad stuff\u2019s going to feel and we overestimate how good the good stuff\u2019s going to feel. That\u2019s one of the many ways in which we get it wrong when it comes to how we think some future change will affect us.<\/p>\n And so my advice actually in this space is to have a profound amount of humility when it comes to change, both good and bad, because I think you\u2019ll be surprised by the spillover effects that certain changes have on your life, the unexpected consequences, and sometimes the unexpected silver linings that a particular change carries.<\/p>\n ADI IGNATIUS: So for people who are listening to this podcast who think, \u201cAll right, this is all pretty interesting,\u201d if you had to give one piece of advice advice to the general listener for how to be a more resilient person, be more receptive to change, to adaptation, what would you say?<\/p>\n MAYA SHANKAR: I think it\u2019s that we can come to see change, especially unexpected negative change, not simply as something to endure, but as an opportunity to reimagine who we can be. And that\u2019s an insight that I glean from, again, all the people that I interviewed for the book who at the outset could only see the negative, right? And then remarkably tapped into unexpected possibility that lay underneath the surface but that radically changed their life and the way they see the world. And so if we can be observant of where that possibility may lie, then we can extract a lot more value from change and we can have a much more positive relationship with it.<\/p>\n ALISON BEARD: HBR \u30ea\u30fc\u30c0\u30fc\u30b7\u30c3\u30d7\u306b\u3064\u3044\u3066<\/em>\u00a0will be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation from Harvard Business Review.<\/p>\n This episode was produced by Mary Dooe.\u00a0On Leadership<\/em>\u2019s team includes Maureen Hoch, Rob Eckhardt, Erica Truxler, and Ian Fox.<\/p>\n If this episode helped you, please share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. While you\u2019re there, consider leaving us a review.<\/p>\n \u30dd\u30c3\u30c9\u30ad\u30e3\u30b9\u30c8\u3001\u8a18\u4e8b\u3001\u30b1\u30fc\u30b9\u30b9\u30bf\u30c7\u30a3\u3001\u66f8\u7c4d\u3001\u30d3\u30c7\u30aa\u306a\u3069\u3001\u4e16\u754c\u30c8\u30c3\u30d7\u30af\u30e9\u30b9\u306e\u30d3\u30b8\u30cd\u30b9\u3068\u30de\u30cd\u30b8\u30e1\u30f3\u30c8\u306e\u5c02\u9580\u5bb6\u306b\u3088\u308b\u30b3\u30f3\u30c6\u30f3\u30c4\u3092HBR.org\u3067\u3054\u89a7\u304f\u3060\u3055\u3044\u3002<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n #Build #Resilience #Face #Tough #Change<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ALISON BEARD: Welcome to\u00a0HBR On Leadership. I\u2019m HBR Executive Editor Alison Beard. On this show, we share case studies and conversations with the world\u2019s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. We carefully curate this feed from across the HBR portfolio, aiming to help you unlock your next level of leadership. I hope you enjoy the episode. ADI IGNATIUS: I\u2019m Adi Ignatius. ALISON BEARD: I\u2019m Alison Beard, and this is the HBR IdeaCast. ADI IGNATIUS: So, Alison, I want to start today by talking about identity, and specifically our identity at work. So, you and I think are both people who […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-management"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n