In today’s episode, Taylor is joined by Marché Pleshette, a leadership and transition coach. Together they nerd out on one of Taylor’s favorite topics - organizational change! From the predictable change journey to how you can navigate it as an employee or leader. This episode explores:
Tune in for valuable insights on navigating change effectively!
Mentioned in episode
Meet today’s guest
Marché is a leadership and transition coach who helps clients excavate their greatest capability and achieve a heightened state of personal and professional accomplishment. She acknowledges that organizational goals are far more likely to be accomplished when communication, value of every contributor, and effective leadership are in sync. The process of this begins with developing individuals, and that’s where she is most impactful. Through skillful coaching, Marché empowers leaders to envision their most powerful style of leadership and supports them in understanding what will facilitate personal change.
With eighteen years as a senior delivery consultant at Franklin Covey, she has significantly influenced many individuals and organizations. Marché holds a B.A. in Journalism, a certification from the Coaches Training Institute, and is a certified coach through the Hudson Institute of Coaching. Additionally, she is the co-author of the book "Change – How to Turn Uncertainty Into Opportunity" and is a sought-after keynote speaker.
Connect with Marché Pleshette
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
You're listening to Inner Warmup. I'm your host, Taylor Elyse Morrison, founder and author of Inner Workout, ICF certified coach, and fellow journeyer. In 2017, I set out to build a life that didn't burn me out, and I found my life's work in the process. On Inner Warmup, we talk about how self-care and inner work show up in your relationships, your career, your schedule, and then the conversations you have with yourself. We get practical, we get nuanced, and we're not afraid to challenge wellness as usual. So take a deep breath and get curious. This is where your inner work begins. Today's guest is Marché Pleshette.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Marché is a leadership and transition coach who helps clients excavate their greatest capability and achieve a heightened state of personal and professional accomplishment. Marché's also been a senior delivery consultant for Franklin Covey for 18 years. And in that capacity, she's impacted thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations. She's the co-author of the book, "Change: How to Turn Uncertainty Into Opportunity". And today on the show, we talk about change at work. We talk about the surprisingly predictable change journey, five common reactions to change, plus how change impacts us, and what we can do about it no matter where we sit in the organization. There's always something that's going to change at work, and this conversation will help you navigate that change. Marché, thank you for being on the show.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
I'm so excited to have you.
Marché Pleshette:
I am excited to be with you, Taylor. Thank you.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
So today, we are going to be talking about organizational change, which is it's got a lot of people involved. I wanna make it more personal before we zoom out. So can you tell us a little bit about your career and what led you to co-author a book on change?
Marché Pleshette:
Thank you so much. So my career now I'm dating myself, but I have actually been in public relations. I have done community affairs. I've worked in human resources. I have been manager of employee retention at the last, the last role that I had before my current role as a consultant, a delivery consultant. And, you know, it's funny as we will talk about change, studies actually show that the average American has about six careers. Not six jobs in a lifetime, but six careers in a lifetime. And I think what I've just shared with you really falls into that.
Marché Pleshette:
And then then I'm also a coach. I am a leadership coach, what anybody would call an executive coach, but I like to call myself a leadership coach. But in my role as a delivery consultant really in my role as a delivery consultant at Franklin Covey, I was asked to be one of four co-authors to write the book on change. And I think that it had a great deal to do just with the human aspect of change that I just love and probably a bit to do with my role and career in coaching. And, you know, I think different ones of us, the co-authors, are all very different. We have a couple of executives. We have another delivery consultant. But for me, I think that I might have just been asked to be a part of that project because I just love people.
Marché Pleshette:
And as we approach change, it really is very much about the human part of change that happens in any organization or with any individual.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
I'm really glad that you brought it to this people part of it. So listeners may or may not know this, but my academic background is in leadership and organizational effectiveness. And I have worked in change management before. I nerd out on some of these things. And when you're learning about it from a theoretical perspective, it's easy to lose sight of the people part of it. Like, everyone can just become a number and these numbers are moving into a different function, and you forget that these are people's jobs, and you're maybe shaking up the way that they their whole process works or the way that they relate to patients or whatever it might be, you lose the humanity of it. And to take it even further, for us as individuals experiencing change, we used to spend so much of our time at work. The majority of our time really is spent doing work, but I see people not drawing the line between the time that we spend at work and the impact that that time can have on our well-being.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
And so to bring that to the change conversation, you've experienced a lot of change throughout your career and you've observed a lot of change in working with other people. How have you seen the change impact well-being?
Marché Pleshette:
Taylor, I love the work that you do, and I love that no matter whether it's a business environment or the work that you do as a coach. I love the human part of what you do. I mean, it's very much that. So to speak to that, change is a human phenomenon, period. And you just said that when people in the workplace experience change, like, it impacts their jobs, it impacts them. And when people go through change, oftentimes, one of the biggest things that I hear is people talk about sleeplessness. People call off of work oftentimes when they are going through change in the workplace because they feel stressed. They feel sick in ways, primarily like headaches, which are probably stress-related migraines or headaches, it impacts their clarity because it becomes stressful to do whatever they have been doing and adapt to whatever they're supposed to be doing.
Marché Pleshette:
And change, it's a psychological experience that we have because our brains it's psychological and it's I would even say neurological. Because our brains get used to patterns and get used to a process happening, like, routinely. And when change actually happens, this is very much a brain experience that we have. We're jarred. Even if we're not scared of change, even if, you know, it's not a bad thing, it's jarring. It actually causes us to pause because we're used to patterns, and that protects us, actually. And so for so many of us, I just said, like, some people are okay with change. Some people, in fact, like change.
Marché Pleshette:
They don't like grass to grow under their feet. They want something different often. But what we found is most people, historically speaking, most people don't allow change. And so it really can be something that can really put us in a tailspin when change happens. And for me, I'm my own best example because I used to really resist change. I liked things the way they were. And I'm a very compliant person, so I would always get with the program and actually adapt to change beautifully. But initially, it's like, oh, my gosh, no, I don't want it.
Marché Pleshette:
It was stressful for me. But I learned over time that I've gotta adapt to change because it's not gonna stop. It's the one constant. And it has been helpful for me to figure out how to do it.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
You brought a lot there. There's the element of change interrupting our patterns, interrupting these neural pathways where our brain's like, this is how it goes, and all of a sudden, it's not how it goes anymore, which can manifest, like you said, physically, and not being able to sleep, and having headaches, or having other physical ailments. And to continue the conversation, I wanna bring it on what you said towards the end about how you are your own example. And you hinted at it. You didn't say this exactly, but you talked about how the way that you feel about a change can change as you are experiencing the change, which really speaks to one of the models that you introduce in the book. You've got this change model. I would love if you could walk us through this model.
Marché Pleshette:
So one of the co-authors of the book, Curtis Bateman, actually worked very closely with Spencer Johnson, who was the author "Who Moved My Cheese". And so he found, he and his old business partner actually found that when they talk to people and they realize, like, people got like, okay. We know that the cheese get moved, we've gotta accept that, but what do we do with it? So we kinda pick up there. Like, what do we do when the cheese gets moved? And it's based on the model that they came up with. But the model there's a predictable pattern of change that if we can understand it, really can help us get through it. Because remember, our brains get used to patterns, and there is a pattern to change no matter what it is. So the first part of change is the zone what we call status quo. And it's where we're doing business as usual.
Marché Pleshette:
We know how things work. We're masters of whatever it is we're doing. And in some ways, we might be bored with what we're doing. We might take for granted and not be have as much quality in what we were doing in the zone of status quo. And it could be that we're experts and we do excellent. Right? But that's not always gonna be. And so when change happens or when change people start to talk about change, it kinda starts to take us to this place where it's the zone of disruption and there's gonna be a drop in results. And the zone of disruption, it's when oftentimes it feels like the rug has been snatched from beneath us.
Marché Pleshette:
When people have questions, they wanna know what is changing? or what just changed? Why did it change? and what does that mean for me? And by the way, I'm saying that, but I also wanna put on the minds of those who are listening, it also applies to change that we come up with. But oftentimes, particularly in the workplace, it's change that somebody else has come up with. But in the zone of disruption, people have questions, and it's so important that we get as much clarity as we can. Because until we're clear about what's happening, we're not as eager or not as open to moving forward. So there's this thoroughfare, if you will, that we call the point of decision. And we can only reach the point of decision when we get enough information to have a little bit of confidence to try to indulge in the change. So if we get to that point, we can get enough information, we go through the point of decision, and that puts us into the zone of adoption.
Marché Pleshette:
And in the zone of adoption and by the way, there's this curve because you just heard me say in the zone of disruption, there's this dip. And it's a dip in results. You're not gonna do things as quickly. You know, the time and results are gonna be different. The quality may be different. The time it takes to do something may be different in the zone of disruption. So we don't want that to be so deep, and we certainly don't wanna stay there so long. So we wanna get, you know, to the next phase.
Marché Pleshette:
The next phase, obviously, as I've just said, was zone of adoption. The zone of adoption, we agreed to try to work through change, but it doesn't mean that we're gonna be masters, like, we don't know yet, but we're gonna try. So we call it the spaghetti bowl because it's not such a smooth upward curve. It's kinda like I tried and it didn't work so great. And I tried something else and it didn't work so great. And by the way, a McKinsey study actually shows that over 70% of organizations change initiatives fail. They fail to reach the goals as they initially thought they would be. That's a lot.
Marché Pleshette:
That is a lot. And they fail, actually, in the zone of adoption. And not in the zone of disruption do people say, Hey, I'm out. I don't wanna do this. It's like sometimes people do, but it's in the zone of adoption where people are trying. So it's a lot of work to do. We gotta persevere. We gotta do practical things to persevere.
Marché Pleshette:
As leaders, we've gotta really encourage people and really be present, and communication is a big part of all of this. But if we could do that in the zone of adoption and stick with it ourselves, and if we're leaders, help people to stick with the process. It gets us to the zone of innovation. And the zone of innovation is where I call, it's leveling up. It's where you don't waste that energy that you had, that all that it took to get through change. It's where you look around and you see and you explore what's possible in addition to this not being hard anymore and having mastered whatever the change is. What else can I get from this? And most of the time, there's something greater that we could get. Like, COVID taught us we could do all kinds of things that we didn't know.
Marché Pleshette:
People got innovative. They wrote many people wrote books, started businesses, got creative and did things more. We're doing tele-health even today, that started to be very popular during COVID. All kinds of things. So in the zone of innovation, it's where we figure out, how do I level up and what have I learned from this change? What can I get more and what have I learned about my capability of getting through change? So that's the model. And if we can understand that, and there's some things to do, some skills that we could master in that process, and even understanding our reactions to change. That in and of itself can be very helpful to navigating change.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Yeah. There's something about knowing I like that you said there's a predictable model. And when you were talking about that dip at the bottom, like, you could stay out in that dip for a long time if you wanted to, or you can choose to take some steps both proactively and reactively to move towards the adoption. I also heard what struck me as you were saying that is we don't always get to choose whether or not change happens to us. Like, change is going to happen. Sometimes we get to initiate the change. A lot of times we don't. But what I heard through that model was a lot of places where we get to make decisions.
Marché Pleshette:
Sometimes we feel like change happens to us. And sometimes we feel like change happens with us. But a lot of times people really do feel like it's change imposed, and you feel helpless. And there are strategies and there are tips and skills for us to be able to get through it when we feel that way.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Yeah. I like that. And I I would guess that there are a lot of people listening who have at least one change that they've recently experienced that does feel like it is imposed on them. So what advice would you give to someone who is hearing about this change model and is like, yeah, I guess I should learn about this because people at my work or people in my family keep imposing these changes on me.
Marché Pleshette:
So oftentimes, change happens. It wasn't our idea. But we're a part of the team, the company, the family, the institution that is saying, this is the new. This is what we've got to do. And the first thing that I would say, and this sounds so simple, but we need to be reminded, it really is to pause. Pause and just get a feel for how am I feeling, because the impact of change can be dizzying. It can get our brains offline for a moment. It can be jarring.
Marché Pleshette:
So it really is pause and be easy with ourselves and ask ourselves, breathe, like get our brains back on track, and then ask ourselves, like, how am I feeling? And I do wanna share the reactions with you because there are five common reactions to change. One reaction is to move. Some people, like, they like change, so they're ready to go. Some people, they resist. And those are persons who don't like the change. They sometimes secretly or covertly say to people, I don't like this. This is silly. I could tell you it's not going to work.
Marché Pleshette:
And sometimes they're very overt, and they're very vocal with it. There are people who wait, and that used to be me. Like, they are looking at how are other people doing with the change. And so they're just trying to see, like, how does this work? And then they'll get with it. And then there are those who minimize. They don't really love the change, but they'll move as much as possible, as little as is necessary. And then there are those who quit. They think, like, this isn't for me.
Marché Pleshette:
I didn't sign up for this, so. So, it's helpful to be able to name how are you feeling. What is your reaction? And by the way, we could feel all fiveof the ones that I've just named in one change experience. But how am I feeling? And then ask yourself, is how I'm feeling on my reaction to this, is it helping? Is it helping me or is it helping others? Or is it am I preventing progress? Am I causing more challenges for myself? So then we encourage you to work within your circle of influence. Do be honest, be easy with yourself, and get it off your chest. What are the things that are really bothering me about this change? Get it off your chest, and then think, what can I do something about? What is within my circle of influence? And then when you do that, like, get as much information as you can. Because the more information you have, like, that is just orienting what I've just shared. Like, what's my reaction? How am I feeling? Get my head back straight.
Marché Pleshette:
And then, what can I do something about? What you can do something about is get as much information as you can. Get, use all of the resources that you can, whether it's given from the powers that are telling you to do this change, or has someone just recently said they have a sign in their office that says, don't ask me, Google it. It's like, use your resources to find out how is this best done, how have others done it. Those are some simple things that we and practical also, I might say, that people can do.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
I love that. Thank you for breaking down those different reactions, those five different reactions that we can have to change. I also loved hearing you share the steps that we can take to examine our own reactions, which are so rooted in mindfulness and self-awareness and bringing us back to the present moment so that we can see to use your language what's within our circle of influence. I wanna push on that circle of influence a little bit further because we have people listening who are at all different levels of organizations. Some people are individual contributors. Some people have teams that report to them. Some people are business owners. So as you're looking at people who maybe have different circles of influence, what is some advice that you would give to someone who is more of an individual contributor who's doing work on their own? And what advice would you give to leaders who can hopefully influence their employees' experience of change?
Marché Pleshette:
So for individual contributors, I encourage you to do exactly what I've just shared. And I will add, again, be easy with yourself and also committed to being a part of the solution. Now I mentioned quit as one of the reactions, that sometimes people feel like I didn't sign up for this. This is not what I want to do. And in the zone of disruption in that space, some people decide, this is I don't wanna be a part of it. Like, I don't want I wanna remind us all, even when and that's anybody's right, and it shouldn't be judged either because sometimes it makes space for people, and there's something better or something more desirable for the person who makes the decision to quit. And by the way, in the book, we have a parable that actually personifies all of those reactions, So and that's a little bit fun. But it's even if we decide to quit and move on, there's still gonna be change.
Marché Pleshette:
It's just that it's a change that a person is desiring. It's more than what's at hand. So that's always an option, but I'm not encouraging that at all. I'm just sharing that because it's important for us to realize that no matter what we do, there's change. But for the individual contributor, you wanna just think about, like, how can I be a part of the solution? Change is changing. It's not going to stop. How can I get as much information as I can? How can I be helpful for myself and also for the people who I work with? Because if we're all going through this, we're doing it together, and it could be helpful just to understand what's working for them, what isn't, how do I get as much information as I can, who are the powers that be? Communication is so key. Don't feel bad for asking questions and just do it in a way that helps whoever it is you're asking understand you're wanting to understand so that you can get the clarity that you need to try to be a part of the change.
Marché Pleshette:
So that's the big thing for any individual. Get as much information as you can. Ask the question, what am I doing? What have we been doing that we're going to be doing differently? Find out, like, how is that going to impact how we operate. And a lot of times, leaders can't share everything or they may not have all of the information. But just kinda get curious and be okay with you may not get 100% clarity, but if you can get more clarity than just, this is where we're going, just get with the program, get on the bandwagon, and just make it happen, that can be very helpful for you. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Be curious, ask questions. And just be introspective and committed to being part of solutions.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
I love that. And I'm gonna pause you before you go on and talk to leaders and just reflect back to the listeners. Your organization is probably not going to use language related to self-care and well being and personal development, but so many of the tools that you learn from Inner Workout and from your other whatever other endeavors you do to support your well being and inner work are so well suited to be applied in these situations. So use those things, incorporate them, and it will change the way that you experience change.
Marché Pleshette:
You have just inspired me just for - I find myself working in a lot of environments, and you've just re-encouraged me to say in the simplest of terms. When I mentioned it just a little while ago when I talked about getting our brains back on track, I really meant that. Like, this is not always the easiest thing. And so for the very work that you do, Taylor, with Inner Workout, I do want to encourage to pause, breathe seriously. And just, like, I might even say, like, for me, meditating. So I wouldn't go into every work environment, you know, and say this, but it really is translated what I'm trying to say without having said it, but I could say it here. Meditate. Do whatever gives you calm.
Marché Pleshette:
Because it's just about getting our heads straight and getting the calm enough to move into change is really the whole definition of change really is doing something different, perhaps, that was not previously done. As it relates to leaders, for any leader who is listening to this, this is so important. As I talked about that change model, oftentimes as leaders I ask this whenever I teach a class on change and whenever I do keynotes on change. I ask people, what is it that you appreciate most about leaders who implement change that you've been a part of? And what has been most challenging to you? The biggest thing that I get is and I'll switch the way I'm saying it. What they are most challenged by is leaders that just tell them, convey, this is what we're doing, change, make it happen. And they sometimes feel like the leaders aren't as clear about the change themselves. What people really appreciate most is leaders who are empathetic about change and the fact that change is a process. By the way, I teach leaders about change as well as individual contributors.
Marché Pleshette:
And with the leaders, we approach it just as if they were individual contributors. And when I ask them to finish the statement, change is, they're saying things that individual contributors do. They say scary, daunting, hard, constant, all of the same things. So I have to remind them, for all of the reasons that you said change are these things, you know, change is these things, for all of those reasons, we've gotta be empathetic when we tell people we're about to embark upon change. In that model that I mentioned, at the start, if you can imagine, if you can envision for those who are listening, at the zone of status quo in the zone of status quo, a ladder where a leader is standing at the top, kind of stop top stairs, and they're pointing to the zone of innovation, saying that's where we're trying to go. You see the end that you're trying to get. By the time it got to the leaders and sometimes the leaders are where the change comes from, but oftentimes, even for the leaders, by the time it gets to you to give to the people, it's already been analyzed. It has been strategized.
Marché Pleshette:
And somebody has thought about this for a long time, and then we're asking individual contributors to just do it. We can't just convey change that way. We can't just dump it off on people and point to that. It's important for us to make sure we understand, come down the ladder just a little bit, get with them, get a compelling case that you can convey. Communicate, that's the better word that I'm wanting to use, then convey. You wanna communicate to them. Think about what's happening, why is it happening, and what it means to them. Be able to convey that to them.
Marché Pleshette:
Communicate that to them. I wanna use the word communicate. So make sure you communicate well to your team members what's changing. And give them some empathy. Let them know, I know this isn't easy. And you don't even have to be covert and secretive about, it was hard when I first heard it, and I realized we can do this. So you gotta be encouraging, you gotta be inspiring, you gotta work towards yourself as leaders. And then every step of the way, that same model in the zone of disruption is gonna be important to communicate, communicate, communicate, because you're trying to just get people to say, I'll try.
Marché Pleshette:
Get them to that point of decision. In the zone of disruption, you still can't leave them. You want to communicate. Let them know you're in it with them. And make sure that they are inspired and they are a part of the change, and you get their ideas because they didn't have anything to do with it. So you gotta start getting them, like, what do you think can work? What's one thing that you think we could do that could make this a little bit easier? Like, get them engaged, get them involved. In the zone of innovation and in the zone of disruption, it's important for us to celebrate small wins. Don't wait till it's all over because that's a bummer.
Marché Pleshette:
Like, you wanna really encourage people. So it's a process. That's what I would encourage leaders to do.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Thank you for that. And I love that you tacked on celebration. It's something that I work on all the time with 1 on 1 clients, but it's something just generally, societally, as a human species, we struggle to celebrate. We always wanna go on to the next thing, especially in change. So many of the changes that we're seeing at work are changes that take a long time to fully happen. I remember I left an organization, and they were just starting to talk about implementing something. I was gone for, I guess, close to a couple years. I came back, and the change was still happening.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Like, it can take a long time. And so if you're not celebrating within it, it's really, really easy to disengage.
Marché Pleshette:
Yes. Yes. The and the entire time, small wins. Celebrate the small wins because that's what keeps people wanting to be a part of it.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Yeah. It reminds us, like, okay, this feels hard, but we're further along now than we were before. So I wanna end with a fun little question. So if you could wave a magic wand, and this magic wand gives you the power to change one thing about how all organizations approach change. What would you use that magic wand to do?
Marché Pleshette:
That magic wand would inspire leaders to understand that the human part of getting through change is as important as the change initiative itself. And they may see it as soft skills, but it's really power skills. It's that one thing that we approach anything with that makes all the difference in our leadership. Leaders are leaders because they're smart and they've accomplished some things. But a lot of times, that people part, we kinda blow off. So that magic wand would be, don't blow off the people stuff. It's the cutting edge of really moving forward with change.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
I love that note to end things on. It's really a full circle. Like, change is about people as individuals moving through changes in organization. And if you have a team and even if you are not leading the team, you're seeing how your teammates are responding to change, and there might be opportunities for you to lead from your seat to help share information or to create space for people to say, yeah. This is hard, and then encourage each other to find new solutions and move forward. So even if you don't technically have people reporting to you, you still can be adding that people element into the change experience. Marché, thank you so much for coming on and letting me nerd out a little bit about organizational change. If people want to learn more about you and stay connected to the work that you do, where can they find you?
Marché Pleshette:
Thank you so much for asking that. I can be found on LinkedIn, and you can find me under Marché Pleshette, and that's M a r c h e. And Pleshette is spelled Pleshette. Or I can also be found on Instagram under extraordinary outcomes.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Lovely. We'll make sure that both of those are linked in the show notes. So if you didn't catch it, don't worry. You'll be able to find that in the show notes. And, Marché, just thank you so much for a great conversation. And I hope all of us got some tips that we can use to navigate change at work. But honestly, this change curve and this change model applies outside of work too.
Marché Pleshette:
Thank you so much, Taylor. It's been a joy talking to you as always.
Taylor Elyse Morrison:
Inner Warmup is a collaborative effort. It's hosted by me, Taylor Elyse Morrison, Danielle Spaulding provides production support, and it's edited by Carolina Duque. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend. And if you're looking to continue your inner work, our free Take Care assessment is a great place to start. On that note, take care.