Healthy Teams Don't Avoid Change. They Learn to Navigate It Together.

In this rebroadcast from the Leadership Vision archives, Nathan Freeburg sits down with Dr. Linda and Brian Schubring to explore how teams experience change differently and why understanding those differences can transform the way people work together.

Rather than focusing on change management strategies, this conversation looks at the human side of change. Are you at your best before change begins, while it's happening, or after it's over? How do your CliftonStrengths shape your response? And what happens when teammates learn to communicate what they need instead of assuming everyone experiences change the same way?

Along the way, Nathan and Linda even give Brian some real-time feedback about his own leadership style during change—a candid and humorous moment that illustrates just how valuable behavioral awareness can be on a healthy team.

In this episode:

• Why change is the one challenge every team will inevitably face
• The difference between thriving before, during, or after change
• How your CliftonStrengths influence your response to uncertainty
• Why self-awareness leads to healthier collaboration
• The importance of identifying and communicating your needs during change
• How organizational culture shapes—and is shaped by—the way teams navigate change
• A real-life conversation about different leadership styles during seasons of transition

Key Takeaway

Healthy teams don't eliminate change—they learn how to navigate it together. When people understand their own tendencies, appreciate the perspectives of others, and create space to communicate their needs, change becomes an opportunity for growth instead of a source of frustration.

Transcript

New Intro here about Brian and Change...

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Freeberg, and welcome back to the Leadership Vision Podcast. As you may know, every once in a while we go back in our archives and rediscover a conversation that feels maybe even more relevant today than it did when we first recorded it. It's summertime here. We're taking a little bit of a break from normal episodes, and so this is one of those episodes. Now, as you know, over the past few years, we've spent a lot of time, and I mean a lot of time, talking about uncertainty, emotional health, thriving teams, and what it really takes for people and organizations to grow together. We've had some pretty unprecedented times here. But underneath all of those conversations is one theme or maybe one reality, and that is this idea of change. Now we think that change isn't something that we just experience once or maybe even once in a while. It's sort of this constant, this like underlying buzz or hum or rhythm or like a cool summer breeze. It's just kind of always there, it's always around us. It's sort of the environment that most of us, most leaders in particular, just are working in every single day. And as I was listening back to this conversation, kind of picking out different ones that might still be relevant today, this one with Dr. Linden and Brian Schubring, it just hit me. I was struck by how practical this all still feels. And so instead of asking whether change is like good, is it bad, is it whatever, they're asking in this episode here that you're about to listen to, they're asking a better question, I think. It's this question around how do you naturally respond to change? Are you like you're excited about anticipating change? Are you at your best while it's happening? Or maybe you're like, let's just get past it and then I'm good. I can adapt to that. And so maybe just as importantly, you know, what are the people around us? Like, what what do they need? What do you need in order to navigate this change process well? In this episode, again, that you're about to listen to, one of my favorite parts is kind of this unscripted moment where Linda and I end up giving Brian a little bit of kind of real-time feedback about how he leads through change.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

So for me, there's like I just don't want to be in it, um, just to be in it. I want to be all before.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

No, I would disagree. I totally disagree. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:19

You disagree with me?

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 2:21

Going back to the third, it's honest, it's, I think, a little funny. And it's just a great reminder that healthy teams, they're built when people understand one another, not necessarily when everybody approaches things like change in the exact same way. So whether you're leading through a major transition, be that at work, in life, wherever, or if you're just simply trying to kind of help your team navigate the constant push and pull and struggles and changes that come with your everyday work, I think that you'll find this conversation just as valuable today as it was way back in 2019 when we recorded it. Now, as you listen, I want you to notice how the conversation comes back to one simple idea. And that is that healthy teams don't eliminate change, but rather they learn how to navigate it together. Now, one little quick note here before we jump in is that this was actually part of a larger series we did around these four C's. It was part of a team engagement thing that we used to do. We don't really do it that much anymore. Um, we've kind of shifted and done some other things. We've changed, grown, and evolved. Um, but there are links in the show notes. If there's any references in here, they're like, that sounds interesting. What are they talking about? You can go back and listen to that. Here's our conversation on helping teams navigate change.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Enjoy. Well, we live in an environment and in a business environment where change is always, always, always happening. Conflict happens every now and again. Um, some teams have conflict more often than others, but one of the things that you cannot avoid is change. So we really say this one to last because it is an exclamation point on the entire process. And we also believe that teams that collaborate well, they can navigate change well. Teams that communicate well can navigate change well. Teams that can deal with conflict well can navigate change well. I think that everybody has dealt with change uh since their early childhood. So change is also part of something that we have as a natural rhythm. So it's something that we all can connect on, we know it's important. And so we we begin these sessions when we introduce this topic with the idea of how is it that we apply this to the to people, and we just ask this question why is change important and why is it important for us to talk about change now? And for a lot of the team engagement sessions, that's how we start this one is just with that question, let them turn to a neighbor and talk for a while. And the room typically just explodes in conversation just on this one topic, because everyone has an opinion on change.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

And the more that we hear people talking, the more we hear what part of change they're actually drawn to. So we can say the word change, and there's a lot of things that kind of pop up, like, oh, change is when, you know, the the seasons change, or change is when um, you know, it has actually happened, or change is when I'm actually preparing for it. And so a question we do ask, just you know, to get the ball rolling as well, is to say, when are you best in change? Are you best before, during, and or after? And uh usually people are wrestling a little bit, and people that love it will say all three. Uh sometimes people say like before, and you better include me.

SPEAKER_03 5:46

Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Um, or I'm I'm not gonna be helpful in that. And oftentimes we start with that prompt, and then after a full 90-minute session, we will end with that again. And after they have kind of excavated some of their thinking in this in this topic, we find that people say, Well, after after we kind of talked it through, actually I'm best during change. Um, I'm I'm super anxiety-filled before. Um, and maybe maybe I'm really, you know, much better after. And so even that kind of frame causes people to to say, Oh, when you define change, you're defining it at this moment in time, and I'm defining it at that moment in time.

SPEAKER_04 6:29

One of the things that I like doing when I teach this is actually have people get up and go to a corner of the room and say that's the before corner, the during, and the after corner. And often people will place themselves on a spectrum. It's like, well, I'm not fully before, I kind of like sort of the before slash middle line. And then that invites a whole nother discussion about, you know, again, the spectrums of of change and what's fully before, fully after. And then one time we had someone, uh I don't remember what he called it, but it was like, I like the process that goes because you're constantly changing, so the process of going from after back to the beginning, that's what I like. I was like interesting.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Yeah, I I like that. Um, we also asked people to think of a significant change that has happened in their life, and like when was their first memory when something significant changed and they had to adapt to it. So we so we asked them what prompted the change, who was involved in that change, and how did that change shape your attitude towards change right now? And so I think when people then go back, they may realize like once that event happened, I always dealt with change beforehand, or then that I made me realize I'm much better after. Uh, some people have had to actively adapt to change their entire life. So they're obviously the ones that come to life when it's going on. Those who are taken by surprise when change happens, they tend to swing towards the after. Um, so I think that that's really important to anchor experientially how it is that we deal with change as something that's happened maybe 10, 20, 30 years ago that really helps shape our perspective on change the and the importance of change.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

There's also a strengths application that we make when we're working with teams that are really trafficking in the strengths language, and we will say, you know, we'll have them list out all of their strengths and they will provide examples of when certain strengths are helpful during change and when they're degenerative. And so, you know, for me, I have connectedness and I know that, you know, during change, I connect intentionally, and that's how, you know, I stay alive, that's how I stay positive. Um, but if it is, you know, changing for the sake of change, some of the negative things that you were naming at the beginning, Nathan, um, I will disconnect on purpose. So my in my connectedness, I will disconnect on purpose, and that it it just it just changes a lot of things. So if you if you um add a strengths lens to the positive ways you navigate change and the ones that are you know not so negative, um, that's another way to deepen this conversation.

SPEAKER_04 9:13

Okay, so here's the part of the conversation that really made me rethink the whole way I was going to present this topic here. In short, Linda and I gave some real-time feedback to Brian, the boss, the president, and CEO founder of Leadership Vision about how he handles change. And as you'll hear in a second here, there were perhaps some different opinions about that between the three of us.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

It seems so obvious to me. Um, I'm a before guy. My strengths of connectedness and intellection. I want to think into what change is coming so that when the decision is made, then I get out of the way because I am not I'm not the guy that does well during the change, and after is like watching game film. I have no interest in that at all. Because once a change happens, it's on to the next change. So for me, there's like I just don't want to be in it just to be in it. I want to be all before.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

No, I would disagree. I totally disagree. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:10

You disagree with me?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 10:12

We're going back to the third conflict. We're going back, yeah, going back to conflict here. Linda, why do you think that's true? And this is this is fun. We're doing live, live time team engagement work right here with Brian and Linda.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

We're married.

SPEAKER_03 10:26

Please, Linda, share. I'd love to be enlightened on how I navigate change.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Well, I think there are times when if we think too much about it, you're already in the future. And so the before just, you know, sometimes more anxiety comes than it's than is needed. And it's just that moment from before to during where Brian is responsive and he is on and he is making magic right in that moment. And so maybe it's the like the beginning of during, because very quickly he's on to the next thing. His futuristic pulls him into those spaces. Would you agree or disagree?

SPEAKER_02 11:06

All right. I agree. There is that excitement right before and right at the beginning of change that just I feel like I'm on. Then on to the next thing.

SPEAKER_04 11:19

And I think sometimes you don't even get to the the during. You've this change is gonna happen happen. Check it off the list, and and then sometimes you're surprised that there is a a during or a middle.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

You're like, wait, what?

SPEAKER_04 11:33

I thought we made this decision and we moved on. It's like, well, Brian, but we cast we cast the large vision or presented the big idea, but there was like 150 little decisions that had to be made before we could say this is done. You're like, what are you talking about? And yeah, that sounds familiar to you. Over the course over the course of the last uh how long have we been working together? Twelve years? 10, 12 years, some somewhere in that. I and now some of our other colleagues have learned, like, of those hundred and fifty middle decisions, which are the half a dozen or a dozen that Brian's going to care about, and which ones are he is he not gonna care about, and how do you kind of bring you back into that so it feels like a beginning experience again, even though it's firmly in the middle of this one big project. Am I am I right, Linda? You are so right, and I think I feel there's a relational drift here of relational drift. No, this is all good. I say this all in love. Because and Linda pause, the point I want to make here too is that there's no right or wrong in any of these things. It's understanding and acknowledging this is where I thrive, this is what I like. And just because Brian is in one area and you and I might be in a different area, we need all the areas to make any kind of lasting meaningful change, correct?

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Well, I absolutely agree with that, and I also agree with the notion that you know we we all take a different approach and we need and we rely on Brian's entrepreneurial style.

SPEAKER_04 12:57

100%.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

100%. And so, you know, we can't judge him for some of the other areas.

SPEAKER_03 13:02

And so part of this is But we still agree that I'm right, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:08

No, hashtag I'm right.

SPEAKER_03 13:09

Uh go on, Linda. Sorry, I interrupted. Hashtag still sitting here.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

No, we we don't want to squash the entrepreneur. So this is not just all right, everyone needs to get better in the during category and everyone gets needs to get better in the after category. It's know who you need to hand off to. Have kind of um appropriate expectations, not just you know uh helping people just you know be average, but pushing them in a lot of different ways. And and I love that we can have these conversations here at Leadership Vision and on our team and you know, kind of push each other live time so we can all be better.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

And I think what just happened here is a great example of how teams successfully navigate change is through this unique behavioral awareness of how each team member responds to change. Because given the chance I could talk about Linda, Nathan, Sarah, Melissa, Heather, and stuff, just how it is that we each adapt to change themselves. Um, because it's in that that there's an invitation to a collaborative ad a collaborative adaptation which is unique to each team. It's like a mathematical formula. Every variable is different, every team is different, and how each team navigates change is determined by uh our self-awareness of the other members of the team. So I think that what we're talking about here is just an example of that. We've gone through so much change as a company, and we've experienced it together, and we're also very aware of what's happening in each other, and we're always always tending to navigate something in this realm. Um, but it's all based on our awareness of individual reactions when change is happening. Right.

SPEAKER_04 14:55

It's the old uh I don't know, truth of the only constant in life is change. So where do we go from here, Linda? Like, what is the like it's you know, there's some awareness, there's some kind of laughing about it and you know, pointing fingers in a in a healthy, productive way, but like where do we go from here? How do we actually change the way that we look at change?

SPEAKER_01 15:16

We contextualize it on a team, and so we we move from that personal preference, the personal uh comfort level with change, the personal approach, and then we move it into teams. And when we start to talk about change within teams, we often um lean into what are some of our needs around change, our needs to understand a variety of things, our needs to actually make a commitment and the needs that we have so that we can adjust. Because when change hits us, we can either, you know, just really struggle and always struggle, or we can learn to thrive. And we find that that thriving happens by naming our needs. Children name needs, they cry about it, you know. Nathan, your kids tell you exactly when they have a need. And I think as adults, we don't always have those same words or some of those same skills because we're just supposed to like suck it up and know. And when we talk about change in the context of teams, we are drilling into individual needs so that team members can help meet those needs and not, you know, every single time, but be aware of it so that that change can be a thriving place and not just a place of struggle.

SPEAKER_04 16:41

I think sometimes too, it's like I don't know if I have permission to state my needs. And so what I think we do in this process is we give people permission to say, I need structure in change. I'm okay if we're gonna end up somewhere, but this is what I need. Someone else to say, I need to know that the only reason we're doing this is because we want to get better, or whatever that need is. So giving permission to say, hey, I need this, I need this. It's when we feel like we can't express our needs in any topic or realm or context. That's when I think people start getting that kind of fight or flight mentality.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

Right. And that's why in this process we dedicate time to just going through an exercise that gives people the chance to name what their needs are. And I have to tell you that most of the time when we do that, this is the first time a team has heard other people's needs, or even the first time that they've considered what do I need to successfully navigate change? Like when do you need information? What types of motivation do you need to actually engage the the change itself? How how do you know when change is over or when it's okay to let go of that change or engage it even more? There's just several, several different ways that we begin to facilitate the teasing out of what a person needs. We can use strengths as a part of that. Um when a team is really deeply versed in strengths. When you're going through change, your strength of blank needs what? Um like your strength of futuristic needs to know where are we going? Your strength of empathy needs to know how is everyone feeling with this change. My strength of discipline needs to know what systems must be in place here for change to be successful. So all of that, no matter what the process is or what the prompts are, it's a get at one thing. What do you need to navigate change successfully? And what do you need to be a contributor to how the team navigates change? We never mistake that this is not one person's responsibility, it's a team's responsibility to successfully navigate change.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Because as you know, when needs aren't being met, frustration builds. And right?

SPEAKER_04 18:48

Um doesn't it ever? Holy cow. That's frustrating.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

And so even uh injecting this kind of uh attitude within a team saying, you know, tell me something you need. Um and and just making it okay in a really, you know, safe space. Uh because you don't want to be needy. There's, you know, there's no crying in baseball. There's all there's all these statements around it where it's it's like it's not cool to name your needs.

SPEAKER_04 19:15

You should just know or name them, but also have realistic expectations that we're adults and you don't always get all of your needs met all the time.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

I like it. Yep, that's that's right. But that that's one of the the ways that we really help people navigate change better, is is to naming the needs and and hearing, you know, other team members name those needs as well. It's the naming process is pretty powerful at this point.

SPEAKER_04 19:41

And I don't know where I heard this, but even the process of naming your needs, even if they're not met, there's something that is um makes it okay if you just stated it and someone considered it, but then was like, well, I appreciate you sharing that, but unfortunately we can't meet that. It's like, okay, well, at least it was out there and you thoughtfully considered it. So we've talked about individual preferences, what that looks like then on a team, kind of getting people on the same page. What about the culture then? Because ultimately it's the culture that perhaps matters because a lot of time it's the quote-unquote culture that is enacting this change or putting this change on top of people, and I don't want to say forcing it, but saying, hey, this change has to happen. So how do you bring this to a cultural level?

SPEAKER_02 20:35

Yeah, Nathan, and you set this up earlier by um just addressing when you have a need, name the need. When you're naming, you're making it known. And so when it comes to this idea of how does your team culture deal with change, uh, there are some things that we are always asking teams to begin to name. So one of the prompts is what team behaviors come to life when change happens? So you're naming behaviors. How do we behave? How do we act as a team when change happens? That in and of itself creates a crazy conversation. It's awesome. Another thing that we ask is, what are the norms? How does a team deal with change? Is there a process? Um, or isn't there you'd be surprised at people's responses? The third thing that pops up is what is the team culture's attitude towards change? Some team cultures get excited, some avoid, some ponder. So there's always some type of attitude that is already there. And then here's something that we always find interesting: is as your team is going through change, um, what does it say about your values? How are your values represented when you're going through change? I know that one of the values that we have is that we play as a team, we play our position. So as we're going through change, we tend to ask people questions like, well, what does this mean to us right now? Um, what roles do we play in the team? So that is one of the values. But some people may have the value of compassion, some people may have a value of purpose that change needs to align to their purpose. That that just depends. But all in all, we believe that as a team navigates change or even as they're dealing with with conflict, how does how do those patterns, attitudes, and behaviors reflect your organizational values? And as a team leader, I think it's a great time to remind teams like, hey, this is what we're about. No matter how this change may feel or what happens on their side, we are about these things, and this is what we value. Even change itself can be a value.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

One of the things that we ask teams to talk about when we are under trying to understand the culture a little bit more of the organization is what matters most to that team. And oftentimes, you know, Brian said, you know, they'll reveal the things that they value, but sometimes those values are in opposition with what the management's providing or what upper leadership is providing. And sometimes even talking about this allows them to not be passive aggressive or not be like, that's because our culture is toxic. Um, but once again, they're we're challenging them to take ownership and find a way to say, all right, I need to communicate in a way that people can hear that I need a certain level of support, or that I need to know that people's hearts are in the right place, or that they're considering the person, or they're able to answer the question why. And and even understanding those things is like, oh, you believe that too? You think that too? If there's a gap, then that's almost like it empowers the group to change the culture together and not be whiners about it, but do it in a very healthy way.

SPEAKER_04 23:44

A big thank you again to Dr. Linda and Brian Schubring for recording it back then and all the conversations that we've had about change and uncertainty and all of those things since then. I I really hope that it it gives you maybe even just a few practical tips or just ways of thinking differently about change, whether you are at the beginning of it, in the middle of it, at the end of it, whether you're leading a team, leading a family, leading yourself, or maybe just simply navigating some kind of change going on in your own personal life. If you found it helpful, we would appreciate it if you would follow us wherever you get your podcasts. You can sign up for our free email newsletter at leadershipvision consulting.com slash subscribe. There's a link in the show notes, and we would love it if you could leave us a review on Apple Apple Podcasts uh or in Spotify wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps spread the word on our podcast. My name is Nathan Freeberg, and on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening.