The New Beginning is the fourth phase of Adapting to Change.  When you arrive at The New Beginning, the emotions, self-talk, and behaviors from the previous phases are now part of your daily life. If not, then you are still in The Turning Point phase or earlier, learning how to adjust and course-correct from all…

The Turning Point can be a lonely and disorienting place.  It is when we realize what we used to do doesn’t work anymore and we haven’t developed new skills to become comfortable in our new skin yet.  It’s also easy to get stuck in the Turning Point phase.  Adopting new behaviors can be difficult, managing…

The Ending is the second phase of Adapting to Change, but it is the first part in our Transition period, which includes the Ending, Turning Point, and New Beginning phases. The Ending phase is an extremely powerful time during the Adapting to Change process because this is when you experience a significant amount of strong…

When you think about Change, what are some words that come to mind? Here are some answers other SMaRT Club members posted: exciting, frustrating, shocking, stressful, scary, marriage, fun, work, challenging, growing up, unhealthy to healthy, paralyzing. Were some of your emotions, thoughts, or situations listed? If you thought of something else let us know…

When you ask people to think of a process or journey they often think of the storybook formula: beginning, middle, and end. Phases of Change contain those components but are actually in reverse order: an Ending, a Turning Point, and then a New Beginning. Let’s take an example of training to run a marathon and…

Imagine… Your child comes to you and asks if they can have a friend over. You have a packed day with virtual meetings, but you move one or two things around to make it work. Just as you hit the final send button on the last email to switch your meetings, your child comes to…

Tests are seductive: you may look to them to uncover hidden information about yourself and others; you might rely on them to back up your judgment about job applicants or team members; you might consider them a definitive measure of your well-being, the likelihood for success, and self-worth. They aren’t any of those. And yet,…

The pandemic, like several crises before it, challenged the traditional definition of “manager.” Some managerial skills flew out the window, but others—particularly the need to manage communications, technology, and people—became more important than ever.  Looking ahead to the future of work and of your work, in particular, can be stressful. The good news is threefold: …

“If your first objective in the negotiation, instead of making your argument, is to hear the other side out, that’s the only way you can quiet the voice in the other guy’s mind. But most people don’t do that.” ~ Christopher Voss, FBI Negotiator & Businessman You may negotiate several times a day in both…

The Project Management Institute (PMI) has recognized the effect of stress on the success of a project by referring to the Yerkes-Dodson curve (below), which shows that moderate stress increases performance but high levels of stress cause it to drastically decline.  At any level, stress produces changes that, if prolonged, have the potential to damage…