Most of us have been trained to hide our true feelings and do things in spite of them for fear of appearing unprofessional. There’s certainly a need to manage our emotions so that we can be professional. But there’s also a need to experience and be conscious of our feelings so that we can be skillful, intuitive, effective leaders.

It’s helpful to come in with coaching as soon after “chaotic change” as possible. Coaching can help that grieving process happen more quickly, with less angst. The coach’s presence serves as a permission system to have emotion because those feelings actually contain important information that will help guide you from here to what’s next. The coaching and facilitation work we do can help people harness the power of that emotional experience. You know, the term “emotional intelligence” was created for a reason. There’s a lot of smarts in those feelings.

A large percentage of change initiatives fail … and fail miserably. That’s why it’s so important to provide strategic resources for support. The good news is after more than 30 years of looking at change management and change theory, there’s a lot more data and research to tell us why success or failure happens.
So in [...]