Carla Miller [00:00:02]:
In this episode, I'm joined once again by the brilliant Elena Tweddle, coach and change consultant and author of the new book Another Door Opens. You might remember her from an earlier episode where we talked about her first book on redundancy. This time we're diving into her fresh take on navigating change, a take that acknowledges just how messy and human change at work really is. Eleanor introduces us to her five Step Change Mastery Model, which is a practical and powerful framework designed to help leaders process change themselves before they try to lead others through it. We explore why traditional approaches to change often fall short, the emotional complexity that leaders face in times of change, and how we can show up more intentionally and with more empathy during uncertainty times. I think you're really going to enjoy this episode. It's definitely got a different take on change from what I've heard before and seems to be a really great complement to what we all know in terms of the change curve. I'm Carla Miller and this is Influence and Impact for Leaders, the podcast that helps leaders like you increase your impact and build a happy and high performing team.

Carla Miller [00:01:20]:
Each episode delivers focused, actionable insights you can implement immediately to be better at your job without working harder. A little bit more about Eleanor before we start the episode. Elena is a coach, change consultant, facilitator, keynote speaker and author. After over two decades working in senior corporate management roles including Whitbread, Virgin Atlantic and Vodafone, she founded Another Door with the mission of helping individuals, teams and businesses navigate change and her book is coming out on the 4th of September. So not long to wait until you can read the book, which isn't aimed specifically at leaders. The book is really aimed at change as an individual. So if you're someone that wants to embrace change, navigate change the then definitely worth checking out. Elena's new book, A little bit of an update from me.

Carla Miller [00:02:17]:
It is school summer holidays where I have had a lovely week in Wales with my son doing lots of activities and as this comes out I will actually be just arriving in Austria for a single parent holiday with my little boy and we've got some friends going as well, so very excited about that. There has not been a lot of work done over the holidays, but that's okay. Who needs to make money anyway? But no, it's been, it's been fine.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:02:49]:
It's been a bit of a juggle.

Carla Miller [00:02:51]:
I'm sure nothing like as hard as the juggle of many of you that have full time proper jobs, but it has been really lovely to spend time together as well, okay, so let's talk about leading through change.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:03:12]:
Welcome back to the podcast, Eleanor. How you doing?

Eleanor Tweddle [00:03:15]:
I'm good. I am delighted to be here. Obviously coming to you from a rainy Cumbrian setting where everyone else right now in the UK is sweating. So I don't know, I don't know how you feel about it, but feeling resentful?

Eleanor Tweddle [00:03:30]:
Deeply jealous? Yeah. Yeah, deeply. I'm sure a heat wave is not that enjoyable, but I would really love some heat right now. We are sitting here in jumpers in our cold stone cottages, aren't we?

Eleanor Tweddle [00:03:42]:
I know. I mean, don't feel sorry for us, it's a good thing, but, you know, a little bit of sunshine. Come on, Cumbria, get the memo.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:03:49]:
Yeah, it needs to come out in time for my son's sports day this afternoon, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that. Anyway, we are talking today about change. So you've written a new book, so you come on previously and spoken to us about redundancy and your previous book. So what's. What's this new book all about? And how do they link together?

Eleanor Tweddle [00:04:11]:
Yeah. Thank you for inviting me back. So the redundancy book, why losing your job could be the best thing that ever happened to you. Still a tongue twister, even though I've probably said it so many times. That was kind of written from a place of curiosity. It was a blog. After I'd got made redundant all those years ago and it just happened that I managed to get a book deal. It was like one of those things that something all came together and the book came from there.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:04:43]:
After that came out, I kept getting messages from people on LinkedIn saying, I haven't really lost my job, but I really resonate with someone some of the things you talk about. And it just started me thinking, maybe there's another book which is a bit of a wider exploration of change. And by then I was already in the space of working with corporates in the deeper change. I've always worked in communications, but perhaps been more specialized in the last few years in change. So it felt like, okay, I need to write another book, but wider. So not just redundancy, perhaps more about when a door closes, what do we do, perhaps more about how do we do change better. So that's where it started.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:05:29]:
Excellent. And you have quite a different take on change, don't you? So you're not going to take us through that change curve that everybody already knows about. What's your take on change in this book? What's your angle on it?

Eleanor Tweddle [00:05:42]:
Yeah. So I full creds to Elizabeth Cooper Ross not ever going to, you know, diss her work because it's obviously game changing. And I love the change curve. Of course, being in the corporate change space. However, what I observe when people go through change and whether it is in a corporate setting and it's as simple as a new IT thing coming in and everyone's kind of, you know, getting a bit huffy about just a disruption to their usual or it's a bigger transformation or life stuff. There's a theme that actually as humans we're a bit messy. So it's not a beautiful curve. And us not understanding how we do change can often make it harder.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:06:28]:
So this book is a little bit about embracing the messiness of change, which not all corporates kind of like that idea because a smooth curve is a nice thing to think about. But actually we're quite messy with change and some days it's brilliant and some days it's, it's awful. And that's more where my angle is. It's kind of embracing that and not pretending that we're anything but complex humans.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:06:54]:
I think that's a bit of a relief for leaders to hear, isn't it? Because you're like, right, I need to lead this change. But people are messy. There's a lot of emotions going on. It's not happening in the order you think it should be happening in. And you don't always, certainly as a mid level leader you don't have a lot of control over the process. You're kind of stuck in the middle. And so there's so much in your book. But what we're going to explore today is that leadership angle, isn't it? So change mastery for leaders.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:07:21]:
And I understand you've got an approach towards this. Yeah.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:07:25]:
And it's using the same five steps that's in the book. But what I wanted to do was explore how can we help leaders to do change to themselves better. Because it was an observation that I saw. I was working on a really big transformation a couple of years ago for a company and the leaders hadn't got themselves into a good space of doing the work on themselves. They were, you know, and it's a really difficult conversation. Like I'm a comms person by trade so I was going in through that lens but you could see that they hadn't really got themselves into a space of what does this change mean for me personally, what will I have to do to change to adapt to this? It was almost like I'm the leader I'm still going to be me. It's just everyone else needs to change. And it just got me thinking about this sort of change mastery concept of, like, how do we own change a little bit better and know that we all have got to do the work? So that's where it came from.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:08:25]:
It's leaders have to start with themselves and how they're going to change in order to lead change. And quite often change change Leadership programs are all about how are you going to lead everyone else through it and pull everyone else through it. But you can't do that without really getting to know yourself.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:08:43]:
I love that. And so if a leader doesn't work on themselves, on that change, how does that show up? Like, what problems does that lead to?

Eleanor Tweddle [00:08:52]:
Well, I think the first one is this kind of disconnect. You know, people aren't stupid in corporate environments. We're on alert, and we're constantly looking for reinforcement messages of, do they mean this? Do I have to do this? Or are there distractor messages where it's kind of distracting us down a different lane? I'll give you an example. I often hear people in focus groups or when I'm talking about comms. They'll say, well, we can't really do anything until we have the North Star, until we have the strategy laid out, until we have xyz. And it's not true. Like, you can do things, you can start thinking in your own space face. But it's a kind of distractor.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:09:36]:
And I think it's because the leader perhaps isn't just being fully transparent with where they are. There's a little disconnect. And the leader perhaps is saying, I'll have all the answers and giving off the wrong message. And so I think that's where you get the first disconnect. The other part that I am certainly on the receiving end of is we put comms out. And I can do the best leadership message I could do. A beautiful strategic change narrative. I can do all of that stuff.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:10:04]:
Great storytelling. We can do all of that. There's thousands of people out there can do great stuff. But if the audience and the leader aren't in that change space to receive it and think about the impact and talk about it, all you're going to get is resistance. And resistance sometimes is interpreted as people don't want it or people are being. I don't know. I'll use the word disobedient, which. It's a harsh word, but it gets the point across.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:10:30]:
And then I'll get brought in and say, right, it's not working. More comms. People aren't understanding this. More comms. More comms. And it's not a comms problem. It's a conversation and connection problem. So I think that's where I see the difference.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:10:45]:
If leaders have done the work, they understand the human part of it, rather than it being a process part.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:10:51]:
Okay, so instead of sort of separating themselves out and this is something they're doing to other people, it's, I guess it also gives them empathy, doesn't it? Because they're going through it themselves as well, and they're doing that ahead of time. So they're perhaps one step ahead so they can support others as they go through it. Interesting. And so we're going to go through the five steps in a minute, if that's okay. But first, let's just set a bit of context in terms of what kind of change does this apply to? Like, there's a lot of restructures going on, obviously, so there's a lot of those kind of change programs going on. But what other kind of change could a leader apply these five steps to?

Eleanor Tweddle [00:11:31]:
I kind of feel like this broader approach applies to anything. It can be a micro change. So we all have really small things in life, even things that might change our whole day. I think I use an example in the book. We're on our way to work in the usual commute. Someone cuts us up, and we were all right until that moment. And suddenly we allow ourselves to have a complete catastrophe. And, you know, whatever comes out of our minds in terms of that person, ah, that they said, we bring that whole awful vibe into the office and we decide to, you know, first thing that we say is, oh, I got caught up today.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:12:09]:
Someone did this to me. And suddenly we're spreading this really bad sort of vibe throughout the. We've ruined everybody's day. We're making bad decisions off that point. That's micro change. And it's equally as important as big change. Because think about how many times we let micro change ruin our day or change the way that the day turns out. So this kind of knowledge of how you just grab hold of that and think about change and process it is really important.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:12:36]:
But equally macro change, like what you've said, big structures in companies, or whether it's thinking about what the work I do sometimes it's bringing in new things. It's not just kind of bad closures. It's good stuff as well. It's about new products, new innovation. At the moment, I'm thinking about all the new tech that's coming in for people and how they're having to get their heads around it. Just an acknowledgement of how we process change can help that because we're not all in the same space. And so just understanding that can already help you to have better conversations in the organization.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:13:13]:
Fantastic. So wherever you're at in your organization in terms of change and what's going on, this is going to have some really useful pointers and insights for you. So could we start by just giving the overview of the five steps and then we can talk to each one a little bit further? I just, in my head, I always like to see the five laid out first so that then I can pay full attention to each one as we go.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:13:36]:
Yes. And I do a lot of work in frameworks for that reason. Exactly. Like, where is this going? You know, when someone's got a talk or a book, I like to know, like, where am I going to end up? So, so what I wanted to do was slow the process down of change, but not in a way that you think, oh my goodness, you know, I'm impatient because usually we jump straight in, we jump straight into the end. And the end step is about how do we restart, how do we press that button and go, okay, what do we do? And so the five steps are. The very first one is we start by stopping and we pause. And it's exploring the importance of time to think, time to rest, time to stop. And it's so often that in organizations in fast moving environments, we don't do that because we think it's a waste of time, but it's the most important step.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:14:26]:
So that's step one. Step two is the mess. And this is the bit where we have to open up and acknowledge that there's a messiness to this. Everybody's going to be in different places, lots of emotions are going to come into this. And you don't see that a lot on the Gantt chart in the project room, obviously, but it's really important. And so it's an acknowledgement that we're all in different places and we all deal with change differently. So that's mess. Once we're in that space, then you can move into play.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:14:57]:
And again, I kind of see it in different. It depends on the culture of the organization, but it can come through in innovation, in experimenting, in people saying, okay, we're going to go with this, but we're going to be transparent that we might not have all the answers. So play is a bit of a space that you can very intentionally move forward but tell people we might not have answers or bring people into the problems, which, again, sometimes companies do that. Well, sometimes they just, you know, a couple of people go off into a dark room and find the answer and come out. So plays that important space. Fourth one is try and again. I feel like this is a really important step. Enjoy the process, Enjoy the trying.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:15:43]:
It's not all about the end outcome. So in an organization, it's about understanding that when you're trying, when you're in that phase, and it might be, you know, phase one, phase two, phase three, they're all really important moments to get insights, to understand what's going on, understand that you might be taking small steps to a bigger picture. So the tri space, again, it just slows it down, but it makes it sort of more deeper and intentional. And then the final bit is you restart with intention. This is who we are. This is how it's going to be. It's not the end, it's the start, but it kind of starts with a very clear intention of where you're at at that moment in time.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:16:25]:
Okay, fantastic. And I know I. When I listen to that, there are some of those where I'm like, oh, that sounds good. And somewhere I'm like, oh, maybe feel a little bit uncomfortable with that. I presume that that's not unusual, that there will be some of those where they play to your natural strengths and thinking style, and others where it's like, oh, this is a little bit out of my comfort zone, potentially.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:16:44]:
Yeah, exactly. And you can imagine that's why it's important to sort of understand yourself as a. As an individual. What is my change mastery? How do I deal with change right now? What's going on for me? Because there's so many different things at play, but also to layer that into the organization, like, what is the culture? What has been the backstory? What's the history? What's going on as a unit and as a collective? It's really important for that as well. Some organizations will be great because they've already built a culture of innovation. Others, they're always going to just go through the process. But I could almost guarantee they'll come up with the same problems because humans are involved.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:17:26]:
Yeah, absolutely. And humans are definitely messy. So let's start with pause. And in your book, I think you talk about the good pause. What does a good pause look like?

Eleanor Tweddle [00:17:39]:
Yeah. So one of the intentions of the book is not to tell anybody anything. And I almost do that. In my training and workshops now as well, which is a weird sort of selling point. But I'm not here to tell or train anything. One of the books that changed the way that I think is Time to Think by Nancy Klein. And this kind of environment, thinking, environment, approach, where actually that's what we need more than anything right now, time to think. And so often we absolutely disregard that whole kind of importance by filling time to think with, well, I'm going to say silly little things, talking from my perspective, jumping on Twitter and scrolling, you know, instead of just sitting and thinking about a thing or, you know, whatever we're doing to kind of, you know, just fill our minds instead of good quality thinking.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:18:32]:
So that's really was the start of that exploration in the pause. How do you do good thinking? What does it look like? And again, in all my research, it came up that people do pausing in many different ways. You can't just say, oh, let's all go meditate, because some people hate that. It will just never work for them. Let's all go for a walk. No, you have to do the work and you have to find out what good pausing looks like. And you have to understand what you need when we all need rest. But what does it look like for you? We all need time to think.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:19:03]:
What does it look like for you? So the very first step is about thinking about that from your point of view and having a conversation with yourself about, how do I do pausing and resting and thinking better?

Eleanor Tweddle [00:19:17]:
Okay, great. And then if you're doing this as a team of leaders, because I know in your change mastery for leaders, you take a team of leaders through this, how do you then manage that? And their different ways of pausing and their different levels of comfortableness for length of pause.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:19:35]:
Yeah. And it's something that anyone can do. You have a conversation. As I said, it's not for me to tell people we're not training how to pause. That's a. That would be strange. But it's having that space to think about it. And just the, you know, I've got a few little diagrams I love little frames and matrix diagrams to get people thinking and talking about, oh, what, what does this look like? For me, just having that is really powerful.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:20:02]:
Like, I've had a person text me saying it was one of the most powerful conversations they had because they'd never thought that stopping and just being still was part of them being productive. Like high performance people think that productivity is about output and constantly creating and, you know, if we're doing nothing, it's just a waste of time. So having that conversation about what does pause mean to us and what relationship do we have with it is just impactful in itself.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:20:33]:
I remember doing an episode on creating time to think ages ago, and it's still one of the most popular episodes because I think at some level we are drawn to that. Like, at some level we know that we. We want to reflect, we want to be more purposeful in how we do things. But that pressure to get stuff done is just relentless sometimes, isn't it? Okay, so that pause. I mean, the pause sounds quite fun to me. I like.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:20:59]:
Not everybody likes that, though. So it's a good point, isn't it? Some. I would probably. In my corporate days, I would have probably been really uncomfortable with that and not interested in joining in with it. I like to do get on with it. Like, can we stop all this nonsense? I would probably be that person, which is why I probably found it really interesting. And I went into all different kind of parts of research to find this out because I have a really bad relationship with it. So, yeah, really interesting that we all kind of have a different relationship with it.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:21:30]:
Yeah. And the next one, messiness. The next two are ones that I would find more challenging. So I think we all know that change can be messy, but there's that instinct to try and create order, to try and reassure, to try and put people and things in boxes to make them make sense. What do we need to know about this messiness phase?

Eleanor Tweddle [00:21:55]:
So this is where you probably need your L and D team a little bit more and activate, like, the proper kind of ways of going about this. But. And organizations do it in all sorts of different ways. As an individual, just today thinking about that, it's just as simple as get to know yourself. So you've paused and you've given yourself time to think. Now the messiness is acknowledging what's coming up in that space, and all sorts of things come up in that space. If we give ourselves time to think, we can just jump and skip and ignore it. And, you know, that's convenient sometimes, but what are we missing if we kind of not doing the work? So it's almost like we going a little bit deeper in the mess to say, okay, what are my values right now? We quite often in times of change don't even acknowledge values that are really at play.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:22:45]:
Some are dialed up very heavily and giving us all the feelings about what's going on, and we're not acknowledging that other times our belief system is on overdrive and we're telling ourselves stories, and that's what's giving us the narration of what's happening. Other times it's our strengths are being challenged and we think, well, everything I thought I was and I was good at, I now feel that's been taken away. So who am I without this? So the messiness is embracing questions that we don't really want to perhaps do. And I think there's a lot of that right now, especially. Especially with AI coming at us like, who am I if AI can write? I kind of sit with that a little bit as a writer. If AI could do the work, who am I anymore? And it'll either bring us lots of resistance and we just sort of think, huh, I'm going to ignore it, or we kind of get curious and dig into it. But you have to give yourself permission to get a little bit messy with some truths that we're maybe ignoring.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:23:41]:
It's making me reflect on a couple of coaching sessions I've had recently with leaders going through change, and they're not only implementing this change, but it's being done to them as well. Their jobs are at risk. And those conflicting emotions as well, in terms of, okay, fear of other people's emotions, fear of an unknown future and uncertainty. Also possibility and the hope that comes with that of something new, something better at the other side, some development opportunity. So I guess there's. That's sometimes messy as well, isn't it, Having conflicting emotions or conflicting values going on at the same time?

Eleanor Tweddle [00:24:20]:
Yeah, absolutely. That is the mess. And, you know, then we have the added layer of other people around us, which completely messes the whole thing up because we think, you know, it starts to give us signals that we're not doing it right or we need to be better. It brings out bad behavior. It's when we see bad behavior in moments of change. So how many times have we had messages from people who've been treated awfully through redundancy, like, oh, my manager did this to me and did that to me. Are they fundamentally bad people? Well, they might be. They might be quite toxic, I don't know.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:24:53]:
But that's come from somewhere. It's come from them not doing the work on themselves, them not being in a comfortable place themselves, them being operating from a space of fear. So just that moment to stop and embrace mess and be more transparent with where you're at can have a massive impact for people around you. So, yeah, it's a kind of interesting one. That's hard, but really important.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:25:17]:
I think what that's Making me think is about being human in that point in time because there's a lot of judgment of other people. People are judging upwards all the time, aren't they? In terms of. I'm judging how you're dealing with this. I'm judging how the senior leaders made this decision and some of that missingness. I've coached people where it's like the boundaries have gone out the window once you've announced a redundancy and people are turning up and being openly aggressive and vile to their line managers because they are so angry. But yeah, I think this is a really important part of the process because it is messy. So play is not a word. I mean, when you say play to me, I think playing imaginary ninjas and kings and soldiers with my son, which I have about a five minute tolerance for, and then I'm out.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:26:06]:
So I don't think I am naturally playful. But you've talked a little bit about what does play look like, but what does it help us to do in these situations.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:26:19]:
So I watched a talk by Gary Ware, who also wrote a book about play, and he was this kind of high performer. He is a high performer. I'm sure he's not changed, still high performer. And he was very much in this kind of space of like, I can't leave my desk, I've got to do, you know, produce all that. He was in a. A very senior position with lots of kind of responsibility and he got an opportunity to go to a comedy night as just this fun thing that the company were doing. And he was like, oh, seriously, I haven't got time for this stuff. But something made him do it and he went along and it just changed his whole outlook on this kind of play mentality.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:27:00]:
So that's where my curiosity started with, because it feels like it's the next step. You're doing all this heavy work on asking questions and then what you kind of will sit with is like, yeah, okay, I found this out about myself. Now what? So to ease yourself out of this heaviness, you have to step into this play space of curiosity and you just kind of touched on it there, the possibilities. Because none of us want to have a bad experience. None of us want to get up every morning and feel miserable. So how do we ease ourself out of that? Play starts to invite us to just play with ideas without sort of the heaviness of having an exact thing or having an exact answer. It means that we can just open up and get curious and think, well, what if I think differently? About this. What's the alternative to what I'm hearing? What if I thought differently about it? So it's, it's playing in a sense of you're playing with different thoughts and perspectives to ease yourself into a space where you can then start to see opportunities.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:28:01]:
Opportunity.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:28:02]:
Okay, fantastic. And then trying speak a little bit more about that for us.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:28:09]:
So once you've got into play, and what I find is people just really love this. Once they've got over the resistance, which you quite rightly sort of expert, you know, people are resistant first, but once you got in that innovator space experiments, you see things differently. That can then become overwhelming because you think, oh my goodness, now what do I do with all this stuff, these ideas that I've generated? So try means that you're sort of now into this space of implementation and it is this kind of, okay, what's a couple of steps that I can do that feel easy and achievable and again, slow down. But I'm making progress, but I'm just being a little bit more focused about it. So it could be as simple as I'm just going to try and get up this morning and think that I'm going to have a better day. It's as simple as that. You're just trying. So you're, you're being more intentional and more aware of what you're doing.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:29:00]:
You might not be everything worked out, but you're just trying something different. You might think, okay, I might run my meeting, my team meeting in a different way. I'm going to try. I've played with a few ideas and now I'm going to try it. But again, it's having that transparent conversation with people and saying, look, we're going to try something different. It might work, it might not come with us. So it's understanding risk versus benefit. Because we all know that with innovation, we get huge benefits from trying.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:29:27]:
But people often in a corporate world want everything kind of business cased out. And it actually reduces the amount of productivity because a business case kind of kills the energy. Quite often the try space is what can I try through a minimal viable product kind of approach that might get us a different result. So that's what try is all about.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:29:50]:
And the final stage is about restarting.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:29:53]:
Yes. So when you get to the end, it's time to start. That's the whole point of it. What it means by that is it's the intention of starting. You're more focused, you've done the work, you've got messy, you've played with ideas, you've found, you've sort of gone through all the alternatives, you've tried a few steps, and now you think, okay, we're going to run with this. So through the lens of perhaps like a project or something that you're doing, that is the moment you say, okay, we're going to give this three months, and these are the settings and this is the framework and this is what we're going to do. So it's really intentional from an individual point of view. It's getting to the point of being serious about something.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:30:35]:
Like, I think I've got to that point with something as simple as, okay, I'm going to do Pilates. I played around with a few things to try and get healthy, and I've tried this and I've tried that and it didn't work. But Pilates, okay, let's get serious. I'm going to do this for three months and then I'm going to review it, pause, stop, see if it's working for me. So that's the sort of subtle difference. Sometimes we stay in the try space because our personalities love new shiny things. And I'll put my hand up to that. But actually, if we really want benefit, you have to get into that final stage of, okay, I'm really intentional about this.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:31:08]:
I'm going to give this the best chance possible.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:31:11]:
Okay, so I like this. It's a really refreshing take on change. What would be super helpful? So I have two more sort of questions for you. One is, could you take us through how this could play out for someone in a situation? So you can choose the change situation, but how it plays out for them. Steps one to five. And then my second question is, how does this map on to other people? So if you're a leader leading change, like, when and where do the other people come in?

Eleanor Tweddle [00:31:42]:
Yeah. So the example is for, say you've gone through a setback. So perhaps that's a simple example because it could show up in all various different ways. If we've had a setback on something, a project, for example, hasn't got the sign off, really as simple as that. What we tend to do is just sit in the space of wallowing, sulking, you know, kind of like, ugh, they don't know what they're doing. And we sort of start this kind of messiness, but not very intentional. We allow the kind of bad, negative thoughts to come in. And so if you don't get the sign off for your project to set back, the first thing you do is you stop and think, okay, what is actually happening right now? What do I need to do? What are my needs? Because in the pause that's the first thing that usually comes to mind, your needs.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:32:40]:
What is in my control, what's not. So you just ask yourself really good questions in that pause. Don't just jump into being that gossip, being that miserable person, being that person. You know, we all know that, you know, oh, this is all terrible. The leadership don't know what they're doing. It's is typical of this place, blah, blah, blah. None of that helps. So stopping and pausing, giving yourself space kind of takes that away.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:33:03]:
Once you're in that next space, the messiness is, okay, how am I showing up? And I think it's the most powerful question, simple question, how am I going to show up to keep this on track, to keep everybody with this, to make sure I'm alright and I'm not being miserable about it. So just in the messiness, as we've talked about, you can get really messy. But simple, how am I going to show up today? Is really nice question. The play bit then allows you to bring in and it might kind of link to your second question, that mapping bring in other people. Because in your play you can say, okay, we're all in this space. How do we solve this? What's the possibilities if it's not in our control? What is in our control? None of us want a bad day at work, so how do we make it a good day at work? So play just invites you to have a little ideas session or you just think differently. It doesn't always mean that you're solving problems, it just might mean that you're having a conversation about what's happening. Try is the okay, who's going to go and put a proposal of how we move this forward? Maybe we could do something really small, but it will be really significant for us as a team.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:34:11]:
But then maybe there's something else that we could do do. So try is let's not just think that someone else is going to come and help. We're going to try something. And then the final bit is taking responsibility and ownership. So we started with a sort of grumbly person who's kind of miserable about somebody hasn't signed something off. And we end with, I'm taking full ownership of how I'm showing up, what I'm doing, how I'm kind of helping this to move forward. So that's kind of the example of how you can use it.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:34:40]:
Okay, fantastic. That makes A lot of sense. And I'm listening to this with two hats on. I'm listening to it with my hosting a leadership podcast, hat on. And also my Carla, the person going through transition and contemplating. Because you know me, I'm always going through some kind of change or transition or contemplating what's next or what needs to be different. So it's really interesting to see what maybe I've missed out on which of these steps I could be putting a bit more attention onto. Okay, so brilliant model.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:35:14]:
Really love it, I think, and I love that it can be applied as much to leaders or organizations as to individuals going through any kind of change process as we bring this to an end. First of all, is there anything that you that haven't given you an opportunity to say or talk about that you would like to share with the audience with some limit? We can't be here an hour.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:35:35]:
Well, where do I start? No, I think it's really useful to actually just talk out loud sometimes. Your own model and your own work. I mean, that's a good lesson in itself, isn't it? You know, just any thoughts and ideas that you have in the play space. For sure. You know, talk out loud and almost think, well, what if I was to share this to someone? So actually, it's been great to have this opportunity to talk out loud and share those examples. So I don't really have anything more than that, but just to invite people to play with the model. Because this has been like a five, six year thing that I've developed. It's not been an overnight thing that I've just chucked out.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:36:16]:
It's quite deep. And it's been kind of rooted in conversations with people going through change. Because like you, I kind of coach people who are going through change. Mostly redundancy, but, you know, all sorts. But also my work in change in organizations. So as I said, I've done some big transformation programs for people and watching and observing what happens. So, yeah, I would invite people to play with the model because I feel like it's kind of come from a space of reality and what I see and observe, not just maybe a theory that feels good, like Elizabeth Kuboros. We know the.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:36:53]:
The curve and it feels good. And of course it's really valuable, but there's maybe a little bit more complexity to it.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:37:01]:
Absolutely. Now remind me, when is your book out and on the bookshelves?

Eleanor Tweddle [00:37:05]:
The book comes out on the 4th of September. Another door opens. So, yeah, go and buy and play with it. See what you think it's kind of the book that I hope people get a highlighter pen and highlight and scribble. That's how it's been written. But we'll see. I'd love to see that. If people kind of scribble over it, that's success for me.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:37:27]:
I'm just thinking, I'm sure I scribbled all over your first one to show it to you.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:37:33]:
Success.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:37:33]:
I do love to highlight. Yeah, exactly. This is why we're friends. Scribbled all over your book. And then for those listening, like Eleanor has this amazing brain and ability to cut through and see solutions and ways of approaching things. So, Elena, if people want to work with you, what are the ways that they can work with you?

Eleanor Tweddle [00:37:54]:
Yeah, so I'm kind of transitioning in myself. I mean, we're kind of similar, Carla, that you have to adapt and shift and move. And as I said, most of my work in the last couple of years has been organizational change and going in with big contracts and kind of going through these big programs. I myself have changed this year and kind of moved more into workshops and day workshops with teams is coming out as a favorite. And this thing, as you mentioned, Change Mastery for Leaders, really talking to people about what does change mean to them and allowing people to have this time to process what shows up for them when they start thinking about it. So it's sort of like a disruption to the usual sort of program of leadership programs, perhaps, but it's foundational. It feels like it's the foundational conversation that can help change Teams to deal with whatever happens next. So that's.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:38:50]:
That's kind of been one of my favorite sort of products that I've been developing from all of this research from the book. So Change Mastery for Teams and Change Mastery for Leaders.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:39:00]:
Brilliant. We will put the links to all of that in the show notes so that people can go and look it up. And what listeners might not know is the first time I ever spoke to Eleanor was on this podcast many years ago now. And then when I was moving up to Cumbria, I remembered that she lived up here. And I was like, is this a good idea or not? What's it actually like living there? She has kept me sane. And it has been amazing to have her on tap over coffee to talk about whatever we want to talk about. We like to put the world to rights together. But yeah, if you have an opportunity to work with her, then do grab it.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:39:33]:
But thank you so much, Eleanor, for coming back on the podcast. Hopefully this will not be the last time we'll bring you back to your next book because I know you always have another book in you. But thanks for coming on and talking us through how leaders can approach change by looking at themselves and the role that they play in it and taking that time to pause, embrace the mess, play and do all the other great things in your model.

Eleanor Tweddle [00:39:56]:
Thank you very much for having me and see you on the fells if it stops Rain.