Yes, ‘Change Exhaustion’ is a real thing

Hello, everyone, I read a practical HBR article that asks the question, what are managers doing about change exhaustion, and that’s right, change exhaustion. The article references a Gartner study that states that employee’s ability to cope with change is 50% at the level it was pre-pandemic. I mean, there’s a drastic drop. And they talk about things like resilience, fatigue, work from home fatigue, zoom fatigue, constantly changing, work returned to office fatigue, and so on. These are absolutely real stressors. And they offer a few suggestions to deal with these in our current environment.

Number one is to pause to acknowledge the change and the discomfort that comes with it. I like this, because instead of just jumping into action, as an impulse to create momentum, it’s really positing knowledge, the reality of what’s what’s happening.

Number two is to give yourself a break from perfection and state, I am a person who’s learning… and fill in the blank with whatever your situation is, for example, I’m learning to be a great manager in a remote environment, or for me, personally, I’m learning how to be a great keynote speaker.

Number three is be realistic that you have a plan that will change it’s going to happen, it will happen.

And the last one, number four is invest in rituals. Interestingly, the research states that it doesn’t matter what the ritual is doing the same thing at the same time improves your mental health. It provides a level of comfort.

The reality is is that leaders and organizations sometimes don’t have everything figured out. And that uncertainty can be unsettling for everyone around. Here a Fierce, we advocate to interrogate reality to provoke learning. This is to get curious and ask questions to garner a deeper understanding versus sitting with a feeling of not knowing or not understanding. However, you should absolutely be prepared to learn that this uncertainty is real, as well as inevitable that constant change is a staple of the current environment and the world that we live in today.

We are with you and we completely understand this exhaustion. And we want you to always remember that the conversation is the relationship and it is the culture. Thank you.