Change is a muscle: how to change yourself, your team and your organisation

How do you change yourself, your relationships or a whole organisation? You train it, the way you train a muscle. You start lighter than you want to. You fail a rep. You recover. And you keep choosing the change long after the motivation is gone, until one day it sticks.

Nobody benches 120 kilos on day one.

We all know that. We start lighter, we fail a rep, we recover, we take some time, and after some training we might get there.

But when it comes to changing our mind, ourselves, our relationships, our business, our organisations or our community, we expect it to happen in one go. We read a couple of books. We watch some videos. And then we wonder why nothing changes.

I don’t think it’s because we are weak. I think it’s because nobody ever trained it.

I see change as a muscle. In this article I share how to train it: in yourself, in your relationships, in a team, across teams, in a whole organisation and in your community.

Why can’t you change other people?

There is one thing I have learned across all areas of my life.

I can’t change my partner. I can’t change my friends. I can’t change my boss. I can’t change a team or a whole organisation.

I can’t do their reps for them.

What surprises me, every time, is that the moment I change myself, everything around me starts moving.

It starts with us. How we show up every day. How we speak, how we listen, how we act. And how we deal with people when things are not going the way we want them to.

Nobody is keeping us prisoner. Whether you are in a relationship or working for a boss, you can stay or you can go. You might have a mortgage. You still have a choice.

How to change yourself: where do you start?

In 2013 I was lying on the couch. Young, and feeling fat. I was so done with it. I asked myself: why is it that I’m fat?

Then I started walking. I started going to the gym. Within six months I was at 75 kilos and fitter than ever before.

What I noticed is that change doesn’t start with saying “I want this” or “I want that”. I want to be rich. I want to be fit.

It starts with saying yes to the result you really want, and making it specific.

Not “I want to be fit”, but this body fat percentage, or this weight, by this date. Or: I will run 10 kilometres by 21 December this year.

A clear, tangible goal is the first step. And it needs commitment. Once you sign yourself up for something, that’s when you start acting and doing the reps that are needed.

What works for me is writing it down. Whatever goal I have in my life, writing it down is the first step. Once it is written down, I can commit to it. And then my actions actually start to change.

Try this: pick one change you keep talking about. Write it down as a result with a number and a date.

Why doesn’t change stick?

We all know the moment. New Year and a list of resolutions. A new strategy for the business. A reorganisation. For the first couple of weeks you are fully motivated, you put the work in, things are moving.

Until they aren’t.

Motivation is just the warm-up. The real work happens after that.

Those are the moments I fall back into the old me. And the old me has all these stories, reasons and explanations of why certain things are hard to do.

Why does the same problem keep following you?

Have you noticed the same thing happening again and again? The same conflict with a different colleague. The same problem in a different company.

We tell ourselves these are different situations. They are not. Whatever is in you goes with you, wherever you are. It shows up in your relationships and it shows up at work.

Same facts, two stories

The same facts can carry two stories.

The first sounds like this: the market is against us. The team doesn’t get it. I never had the chances. I didn’t come from a rich family. I didn’t have the opportunities.

That is a disempowering story. It hands your power away and puts you in a place where you see no possibility to act. So you resign. You lie down on the couch, or you go through life on autopilot.

The second story, with the same facts: we are doing okay as a company and the team is progressing. I see opportunities for us to improve. To get there, we need to take these actions.

That is an empowering story. It gives you room to step up, go out there, act and find new ways to learn. Instead of blaming the market, you look for the opportunities in it.

Do you hear the difference? One story keeps us stuck. The other keeps us moving.

In the DARE framework I use (Define, Acknowledge, Reauthor, Execute), this is the Reauthor step: you keep the facts and change the story you act from.

And there is no guarantee the empowering story will stick. Some days you wake up and feel terrible. Those are the days you choose the story again. And again. And again.

Just like the reps. You keep doing them until one day you lift the 120 kilos. You keep doing them until the change sticks and stays. Even then you might fall back. That’s okay. You wake up, and you choose again.

What if the people around you don’t like the new you?

Many of us fear change because of the people around us. What will my partner, my friends, my family, my colleagues think?

Most of the time they will love it. Change towards something better, where you are kinder, listen better and are happier to be around, is something people welcome.

Some people might have been using the old version of you. They might not like it. That is your chance to set boundaries, in a loving way.

How do you change a relationship?

When I wanted to change a relationship, I used to look at the other person and list everything they were doing wrong.

Until I started looking in the mirror.

Now, when I want to improve a relationship, I write down everything I did wrong. Then I go to that person and say: “Hey, looking back, these are the things that I didn’t do well, but I’m really looking forward to start over and have a better relationship with you.”

The same works at work. With colleagues, with managers: instead of blaming them, take more accountability for your own actions.

How should a new leader change a team?

One of the most common mistakes I see leaders make in a new team: they start changing things straight away and tell everyone all the possibilities they see.

What works better is to listen first. Most good consultants do this well. Listen to everyone. Understand the dynamics, who needs what. Then propose change.

Not change for the sake of change. And not change that is mainly good for you as the leader. The change should be good for the people in the team, and they should benefit from it.

How do you lead change across teams that don’t report to you?

With people who report to you, it can be easier: you can invest in them, train them, coach them, guide them.

Across teams, people don’t report to you. You can still coach and guide them. But some won’t move.

Just like at the start, everything begins with saying yes. If someone is not coachable, try once or twice, then let them be. Maybe they are not ready. Maybe they are going through something.

Put your energy and time into the people who want to make the change bigger. Once there is a bigger group behind you, the others might join. Or not. That’s fine.

Why don’t new structures transform an organisation?

A new vision, new goals, new structures: in a transformation, that is the gym membership. Having a gym membership doesn’t make you fit.

So next to the membership, you guide your people, train them, coach them. You show the ones who are coachable that they now have access, and can start doing what is needed to change themselves.

Organisations are where they are mainly because of their people and their culture. Great organisations know that investing in people and culture comes first, if you want great results and innovation.

They invest by listening, enabling, coaching, giving people room to discover new things and supporting them when needed. At some stage some people might not fit that culture. That’s fine too.

To change a culture, go back to the basics we somehow forget:

• Integrity: say what you will do, and do it.
• Trust between people.
• Ego in check, and a real commitment to move in the same direction.
• Difficult conversations, had with compassion, when something isn’t working.

At the end of the day, organisations don’t change. People do.

How do you change your community?

One of the most powerful ways to change your community is by changing yourself.

Then, instead of telling people all the possibilities, you show them. Organise something with 10 people that gives back to 100, and they see what it means to be part of that community.

Change starts with you

We all want to change the things around us. Our partner, our boss, our teams.

But we can’t do the reps for them.

The only reps we can do are our own. And when we do them, we start dealing with the people around us in a different way. That is where everything else starts moving.

Change is a muscle. Let’s go train it.

If you want to start with yourself, the free DARE app at dareframe.ai helps you see where you stand. And if you are leading change and want someone to think it through with, have a look at executive coaching.

Stuck on a change like this? The DARE Framework is how I work through it with leaders.