How To Lead When Everything Is Changing: A Practical Guide

There’s a lot going on in the world just now - turmoil, upheaval, uncertainty - and a lot of people are suffering the impact through anxiety, stress, burnout and conflict.

This week’s article is about how to navigate through all this change and how to thrive in it rather than survive in spite of it.

The first thing to recognise - to take on board - is that whatever you think and feel about the situation you find yourself in, is not you. We tend to go through life identifying with the thoughts and feelings that we’re immersed in, paying more attention to the experience than the witness who is experiencing it.

Just sit with that for a moment - in reality, you are the witness of the experience, not the experience itself. That means that however turbulent your circumstances, you are not impacted by them. Of course it often doesn’t feel that way - you may well feel deeply affected by what is going around you, but the truth is that you are not any of those things and when they have all passed - and they will - you are the same life as you always have been and always will be.

Look at this way: you’ve paid good money to see a west-end or broadway production of a play. It’s a drama that has comedy, tragedy, romance and farce. You have a front row seat and can see everything up close. Within minutes, you are immersed in the emotions that the actors create. You laugh at the jokes, you fall in love with the star, you weep at the heartbreak. Everything is felt and you are moved. That is why you bought the tickets - you wanted to feel the impact of the play on you - you wanted to feel all the emotions and be moved by them.

And yet you knew all the way through that none of it was real - it was just a play, just make-believe.

Well guess what, your human life is no different, except that you have a part in the play. You are on stage and not only that, you are the central character in the play. And the play is your play that you get to write and direct.

Perhaps the greatest playwright of them all said the very same:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,

You have many parts to play and if the play is half-decent, you’ll be playing them all: the hero, the villain, the victim and many others.

The trick is simply to know, always, that you are an actor in a drama that is not reality. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t play your part nicely. Alexander Pope the English poet said: Act well your part; there all the honour lies.

Paradoxically, knowing that you are simply an actor in a drama makes playing your part - or navigating your life - so much easier and more effective than believing it to be the reality that we’re told it is.

So, how does this perspective play out into a practical approach to living your life?

The first thing is to remember that you are the protagonist in your play. You are directing it. This means that you take direction from yourself and you do not allow others to set the direction for you. You do what you want to do, over and above what others want you to do.

Now, that doesn’t mean that you ignore your boss and do the opposite of what she says. It means that you play the part of employee willingly and wholeheartedly whilst you are employed. But if and when you feel like a change of role, you honour that desire and follow it.

The next thing is to tune into the natural ebb and flow of activity. There are times for intense work and there are times for deep rest. Good work only comes from good rest. Today there is an epidemic of hyper-activity and it’s all based on the premise that the more you do the more you achieve. This is dangerous nonsense and the cause behind the exhaustion and much of the dis-ease that you see all around.

Plays have scene changes and intervals. They also have a beginning and an end. If the energy of one scene runs into the next it risks ruining it, rather like laughing at a romantic dialogue. So the practical upshot of this in your life is to find every opportunity to stop and do nothing, even for a few seconds. Otherwise we risk our days becoming a blur of activity with no discernible meaning. Meditation is an excellent practice in this respect. The difficulty you may have in stopping the activity - even briefly - is an indicator of how addictive it is.

The third shift we can make from seeing life as a play is to focus on the process, not the outcome. You don’t sit through a play just for the final act, just as - hopefully - you don’t live your life just to get to the end! There is no one moment of the play that is any more important than any other. And yet we spend much of our lives focused on the result we want, not on the journey to it. Which is weird because it’s the journey where we learn and grow - the result is just the icing on the cake.

So if you’re beside yourself just now with all the change and uncertainty - rather than centred within yourself, stop what you’re doing and start taking regular breaks when you do absolutely nothing. They don’t have to be long - 3 deep, long breaths is a good start. Interrupt the incessant activity and know that it’s the quality of the rest you take that will determine the quality of your work.

If you’re a leader and you’re struggling with your role, do my Leadership Scorecard, link in the description and do signup to my channel.

Thank you for reading and see you in the next article.