Monthly provocations and practices for transformational leaders. This is how change (really) works.
Is this the moment you're avoiding?
|
I watched the series finale of The Bear last night, and I know I'll be thinking about it for days to come. Have you been watching? The whole series is a study in how people come together to transform something—in this case, a Chicago beef sandwich shop into an elevated, innovative fine-dining experience. The arc of the business is mirrored in the arcs of the people who work there, both individually—in the journeys they take from doers to dreamers to leaders—and collectively. The Bear is many things, but for me it is first and foremost the story of a team. How they collaborate, and how they compete. How they make assumptions about one another, and how they accept one another. How they teach and learn from one another. How they disagree—and how this makes all the difference. “You gotta break patterns to break patterns.”—Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto, The Bear TRUTH #6: CHANGE IS RELATIONALThe Moment We're All Avoiding[The following is an excerpt from my book-in-progress, and I'd love to know your thoughts. Kindly hit reply and let me know how this aligns with your experience and what it sparks for you. You may find yourself in the acknowledgements. 💛] There’s one moment that shows up more than any other in my coaching conversations. One moment that leaders spend an inordinate amount of time fretting and sweating over. It’s a moment we’re trying to find our way to, and utterly terrified of. It’s the moment that comes after we say the thing that needs to be said. We might need to raise an issue everybody else would rather ignore. Or offer constructive feedback without knowing how it will land. Or, horror of horrors, we may need to draw a boundary. We worry about what to say, not out of fear of saying it, but out of fear of how the other person(s) will respond. So we run through dozens of scenarios in our minds for how it will all go wrong, which only keeps us stuck in fear. Meanwhile the cycle continues and the problem gets worse. But then, eventually (hopefully!) we say the thing. What we say and how we say it depends on how much responsibility we’re taking for our 50% of the relationship, and we’re about to go deep into how to engage skillfully in these sensitive conversations. First, though, I want to make two important points about that moment we’re avoiding.
One leader, Daria, discovered this when she stepped outside of her own Appeasing trap pattern. In partnering closely with another leader, Margo, she’d found herself agreeing to take on most of the action items from their meetings, even those that fell into Margo’s area of responsibility. So in their next meeting, she said directly, “Will you take the lead on the presentation for the next all-hands?” The moment had arrived. Margo paused. Daria waited. Margo looked confused for a moment, then—in a tone that seemed both tentative and frustrated—said, “Sure.” Daria asked if that was a problem, if Margo didn’t have the time, but Margo quickly assured her that she’d handle it. The meeting moved on. Both of them left with clear action items that were appropriate for their respective roles. Reflecting later, Daria realized that she’d been trying to take responsibility for Margo’s part of the relationship—not only her tasks, but also her emotions. But the real insight came when I asked her what she thought was happening in Margo’s mind in that moment, after Daria had challenged her. ”I think she was trying to make it make sense.” When we disrupt a relational cycle by doing something new, we can expect the other person to feel confused and uncomfortable. And no wonder—by not doing the thing they’ve come to expect of us, we have changed the game on them! That discomfort we’re observing in real time, the discomfort we’ve been trying to avoid, is their own cognitive dissonance, the experience of having our expectations not align with reality. As we've discussed, this discomfort isn’t a problem—it's the most powerful catalyst we have for real and sustainable change. So it’s not our job to save ourselves or anyone else from it. More likely, it's our job to spark it. In Practice: From Us vs. Them to We (Starting with Me)Bring to mind a difficult person. This could be a longtime nemesis or someone you're having a bit of friction with right now. Either way, we can take a look at the pattern the relationship is currently playing out. What is the cycle that keeps repeating between the two of you? To see this pattern clearly, it helps to start with a specific moment in time. In that situation, what did you do? And then, what did they do in response? Then, consider this pattern as a cycle. Is it possible that their response causes you to take the same action again in some way? And does that repeated action produce more of the same—but perhaps deeper—response in the other person? Take a look at your own side of the cycle. Chances are you think you’re showing up in the only reasonable way, given the circumstances. That doesn’t mean you don’t have other options. Now it's time to make a list: What actions, however small, would disrupt the cycle? Let yourself consider even ridiculous things you’d never do. Then, take a look back over your list and see what it tells you. Which ones are worth trying? From there, it's about trying some of those new things and staying present to what happens as a result. We never know exactly what is going to "work." (And we can never be sure that what we're trying isn't working, under the surface.) All we can do is take full responsibility for our 50% of the relationship and trust that it's enough to shift the cycle. Because it is. [End of excerpt.] This month, in the Radiant Change community of practice, we’ll be exploring this notion of responsibility in relationship, specifically how to connect meaningfully and conflict creatively, even with our difficult people. The Mini-Retreat on July 10 will be particularly powerful as Tanarra Schneider, founder of Rebel 75, shares how she helps teams thrive by designing better relationships, rituals and routines. Not to be missed!👇 July Mini-Retreat: CREATIVE CONFLICT | Why We Need to Disagree (and How to Do It Well)Harmony isn’t the goal—alignment is. And we can't align until we have first disagreed. This month's mini-retreat will feature guest host Tanarra Schneider of Rebel 75, who will guide us in exploring how healthy conflict generates the energy needed for growth, innovation and transformation. Learn to distinguish between relationship conflict (which undermines trust) and task conflict (which sharpens thinking), and master the art of disagreeing in service of something greater. Friday, July 10, 2026 Zoom link sent upon registration
Reminder: Mini-Retreats are free for RadiantChange.co members, who can RSVP here. Mid-Year Check-In: Your Leadership IntentionSix months into 2026, pause to reflect on the leadership intention you set back in January.*
*If you weren't with us in January, welcome! You can set a leadership intention for the rest of the year here. And yes, everyone is still welcome to sign up for the 31 Days of Intention Challenge. Onward together. Kristen Lisanti |
Radiant Change
Monthly provocations and practices for transformational leaders. This is how change (really) works.
It was a real “oh $%#!“ moment. There I was, sorting through my inbox and scanning the headlines of various newsletters when a familiar phrase caught my eye. A group of BCG consultants had published a new book called How Change Really Works. Which, as you may recall, is the name of the book I’m currently writing. In a span of seconds, I had a whole range of thoughts and emotions: Sudden panic “Oh $%#!” followed immediately by… Surprising relief “Maybe I don’t have to write this book anymore”...
Any period of meaningful change—including this one right here—is defined by its liminal space. Liminal comes from the Latin limen meaning threshold, the space between what used to be and what will come to be. It’s the uneasy transitional period within a relationship dissolving, an organization merging, a technology emerging, a regime changing. Right now, many of us are living inside several liminal spaces at once. We no longer recognize the world as it was, and we can’t yet see what shape it...
I spent the first half of my career firefighting. Something would break, I’d fix it. Something would break again—usually in exactly the same way—and I’d fix it again. I thought speed was sophistication. I thought certainty was competence. It took me a long time to understand that I wasn’t solving problems; I was managing the most visible symptoms of complex systems I’d never sought to understand. Now look around. The systems we all depend on—organizational, political, economic, ecological—are...