Episode 127: Change Brings Out the Worst in People

Change Brings Out the Worst in People.

Here's What Leaders Can Do About It.

Change sounds a lot better when you're talking about it than when you're actually living through it.

We're told all the time to embrace change, seek discomfort, and accept that change is inevitable. That's easy to say when nothing is changing. It's a lot harder when your company gets a new boss, rolls out new technology, goes through reorganization, grows faster than expected, faces layoffs, or gets bought or merged with another company.

That's when change can bring out the worst in people.

People become resistant. They get angry. They become suspicious. Communication drops. Trust falls. People start wondering what is really happening and whether they need to protect themselves. Underneath much of that behavior is fear, but the bigger issue for leaders is what happens next.

Change Has a Real Cost

When serious change hits a company, people aren't just thinking about the new organizational chart.

They're thinking about their job, their pay, their bonus, their equity, their health insurance, their retirement, their career, and their family's security.

That's why people react so strongly.

A merger or acquisition is a good example. Shane discusses how employee turnover can explode during major organizational change, while stress, uncertainty, and distrust increase. People show up to work, but a significant amount of their attention isn't on the work.

They're wondering what's happening.

They're talking to each other.

They're questioning what they're being told.

They're watching what leadership does.

They're thinking about whether they should leave.

And while all of that is happening, the actual work isn't getting done.

Engagement drops. Productivity drops. People start looking for other jobs. People leave. Then the people who stay are affected by the people who leave.

The uncertainty keeps feeding itself.

That's lost time. That's lost productivity. That's turnover. And that's money.

Leaders Are Going Through the Change Too

The people leading the company aren't standing outside of the change watching everybody else react. They're in it too.

The company still has to perform. Customers still have to be taken care of. The work still has to get done. Results still matter.

At the same time, leaders are dealing with people who are resistant, angry, suspicious, distracted, and considering leaving.

Managers can end up spending their time answering questions, dealing with rumors, calming people down, and trying to convince people to stay.

Sometimes the leaders don't even know exactly what's going to happen.

The leader who needs people to stay engaged ends up unintentionally pushing them further away.

You Can't Stop Change

Here's the important part.

The answer isn't keeping everything the same.

You can't.

AI is changing business. Companies grow. Markets change. People change. Leadership changes. Teams change. Reorganizations happen. Companies merge and get acquired.

Change is simply part of business.

So the question isn't:

How do we stop change?

The question is:

How do we stop change from creating so much chaos, lost productivity, turnover, and cost?

That's where leadership matters.

Trust Has to Exist Before the Change

Communication matters. Honesty matters. Giving people information matters.

But none of those things work very well if people don't already believe you.

The relationship that existed before the change matters.

The antidote to fear is trust.

And trust isn't created when the merger is announced.

Trust is created by how you treat people every day before you desperately need them to trust you.

You can't wait until the layoff, reorganization, acquisition, or major change and suddenly say, "Trust us. We value you. Everything's going to be okay."

Trust has a cost.

You establish it over time.

Judge the Work. Protect the Person.

This is where The Worth Work System comes in.

Protecting the person does not mean pretending nothing bad can happen. It doesn't mean avoiding difficult business decisions. It doesn't mean lowering standards or refusing to judge performance.

Leaders still have to run the company.

They still have to make hard decisions.

They still have to judge the work.

But they can protect the person while they do it.

When people know they're valued before the change arrives, they don't suddenly have to figure out whether they can trust their leaders when things get difficult.

They already know.

What Changes When Trust Is Already There?

Instead of uncertainty automatically turning into more distrust, people are more likely to believe what their leaders tell them.

They spend less time wondering what leadership is hiding.

They're less likely to immediately start looking for another job.

They stay more engaged.

They communicate.

They contribute.

More work gets done.

And leaders spend less time calming people down, dealing with rumors, trying to convince people to stay, and managing unnecessary resistance.

They have more time to actually lead the company through the change.

That's easier on the people.

It's easier on the leaders.

And it's better for the business.

Building that kind of trust takes time. That's part of implementing The Worth Work System. But compare that investment with the cost of trying to create trust after everything has already started falling apart.

Change is coming.

The question is:

What level of trust will exist between you and your people when it does?

Shane teaches leaders how to Judge the Work. Protect the Person.

If you're leading a team and change keeps turning into resistance, distraction, turnover, and lost productivity, this is the work Shane does

Learn more about Shane Jacob's keynotes and training at shanejacob.com.

Episode 127 Full Transcript: Change Brings Out the Worst in People

Transcript Introduction

Change is one of the biggest challenges leaders face because change doesn't just affect the business. It affects the people inside it. In this episode, Shane Jacob explains why change can bring out the worst in people, what happens when uncertainty changes workplace behavior, how leaders can unintentionally make things worse, and why trust established before change matters when change finally arrives.

Welcome to this Episode

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the How People Work Podcast. My name's Shane Jacob, your host, and I thank you for taking your time to be here with me today. So yeah, well I've got some earth shattering news. I know this is gonna devastate really some of y'all.

And that news is that I'm contemplating, really planning on bringing additional guests. Guests back onto the podcast. Now I know some of you have got used to hearing my voice and you appreciate every word and principle and and all the tremendous wisdom that I have.

And it would be simply dilute and weaken and destroy this precious amount of time that we have together if I brought on a guest, and I feel for you. And I hear you. And I want to know that I do hear you.

That being said, I've got some guests that that I want to bring on in order to just really to become more familiar with some of the marketplaces and for you as a listener and viewer to be able to experience just a wider perspective. And so we'll try that for a little while and see how it goes. Today, lucky you, it's me and you.

Why Change Is So Hard on the Brain

So, today we're gonna begin with an idea, and that is is change. Now, change is a big change management and change is a big topic, and we don't like change. Really it's said that change brings out the worst in people.

And so what I want to talk about is is change and what leaders can do about it, what we can do about it. Okay. Because change sounds a hell of a lot better when you're talking about it, when you're actually living through it.

I mean it's kind of just like any difficult concept, and it is difficult, a difficult concept. We're told a lot that we should embrace change and embrace the difficult, seek the discomfort. I say that, I tout that, I promote the idea of seeking discomfort. Change is part of that.

Change is inevitable. We know it's gonna change, so why the hell wouldn't we embrace it? What are we gonna do? Fight against it?

I mean argue with it, deny it, just be upset about it. It doesn't make any sense to do that logically when we think it through, but it's much easier said than done when it comes to change because our natural brain, without intention, the way that we're wired, the way that we come onto this earth, or we got the emotional triad, I think they call it, which is our brain is priorities are to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy. This falls under conserve energy by keeping everything the same, just like routines.

Once we once we learn something, once we learn a process, for example, in the workplace, once we go through the whole getting a job getting hired, we start a career, we start into this into this with this organization and we have this job, okay, of whatever scope it is. And in the beginning it's a hell of a lot of change. It's difficult and it's hard and we get to know the people and we get to know the processes and the symptoms and how we do things here.

And we try to adapt to the culture and and we're trying to perform and do our job well so that everything works out here and we kind of fall into a groove where hey, everything seems to be like it's working okay, and we and we form habits of how we do things and then we just like to stay the same and conserve energy. Don't go outside, don't do anything extra, don't do anything different, and then change comes along and it's like holy shit, right? A new company, a new boss, a new whatever, you know, and then we we panic because the stakes are so high and because we're naturally wired to have things be easy and simple and to conserve energy.

Change is the opposite. It gives us total uncertainty. That is, uncertainty creates fear.

New boss, new company, merger or an acquisition comes along. New company. Somebody else is writing my paycheck. I mean, I better start looking for a job right now, right?

What why is all this happening? What has it got to do with me? There's so much uncertainty and risk.

With any change, things that we've depended on, all of a sudden they're not dependable to us anymore. And that feels risky, it feels, and that makes us afraid. We think it creates thoughts that make us feel afraid.

We create thoughts. We react and have thoughts, that that's what happens. We have a circumstance because this is the way our brain works.

We are presented with a change, that's a circumstance outside of our control. We have a thought about it. That thought is automatic. And unless we override the thought or think something on purpose about this circumstance of change in this example, whatever the change may be, unless we think a thought on purpose, we're gonna automatically feel uncertain, and that uncertainty is gonna make us have fear, okay?

That feeling, that thought of we don't know what's gonna happen in the future anymore, causes us to have fear. So and then when we act, usually what we do is panic. We don't do our job well, everything goes bad. We start to act in a fearful way. And that's why change, it, that's why it's easy to say and believe and think the thought that change brings out the worst in people.

How Fear Shows Up in the Workplace

You know? Because of all the that is going on inside of us when changes happen. And that a big part of that I've mentioned is reorganizations, new technology, AI. Am I gonna lose my job? Am I still gonna have a job? Is AI gonna be doing my job?

A new boss is a big change in companies, just a growing company and expanding. What's gonna happen to me? How does this affect me? You know, the potential for layoffs.

Mergers and acquisitions, I've mentioned a couple of times. People just they become resistant to change, angry, difficult to deal with, suspicious, trust goes down, if the communication doesn't stay high. And underneath a lot of this behavior that I just described is what I said earlier, is is based in fear. Okay.

And fear is real. Okay. Now, it may not be necessary because when we think about what we're afraid of, we might not want to choose to be fearful. But the feeling of fear is real.

And part of that is driven by thoughts of the stakes, meaning the importance that it is to our lives of our job. Okay? Because when a company goes through serious, a serious change, you know, the employees aren't just, we're wondering like what's the new, what's the new organizational chart gonna look like at the new company, right?

Where am I gonna get fit in? Am I getting the axe? Am I getting my pink slip? The we're thinking about our people are thinking about our lives.

We're we're thinking what happens my job, what happens with my pay, what happens my bonus, what happens to my equity? What about my health insurance? What about my kids and family's health insurance?

What about my retirement, my overall career, and my whole family security is based on is is riding on this thing? So that's why it's such a, that's why this, I say the stakes are so high. And that's why people react so strongly to this kind of change.

The Real Cost of Mergers and Acquisitions

So if we just look at one M and O, mergers and acquisitions, or did I say that right? MA. Mergers and acquisitions. Nearly half of employees, nearly half, I think it's 47%. 47% of employees leave within the first year of a merger and you can just know that going in. 75%, an astounding 75% of employees leave within three years of merger and acquisition. Okay?

Studies also show in mergers and acquisitions, and this is just an example because it's such a massive change, I'm going to use this as an example, but studies show 25% in a year, 75% in three years are gone. The people quit and move on and leave because of the instability, the uncertainty, and the fear.

Studies also show that there's increases in people's amounts of stress, anxiety, depression, and also the medication that we're using to cope with all these feelings, okay? Psych, so what do you call that? Psychiatric medication use. Okay.

People don't trust their leaders. Okay. It's when people don't trust their leaders, uncertainty turns into fear. I'm gonna say that again. When people don't trust their leaders, the uncertainty goes to fear quicker. Okay.

And then the fear starts costing your company big time. Not in in all the things I just mentioned. Hell, 25% of them are gone first year. And then the other another 50% for a total of 75% are going to be gone the first three years. So there's your first expense, because the turnover cost is tremendous.

And if you've ever experienced a merger acquisition, you know what it can look like for the first, I would say practically ninety days, practically no work gets done. The only thing that's happened is all these out of bounds phone conversation or communications, we'll call it. What I mean by out of bounds is I mean off the company grid, right?

All the private conversations between, you know, all of a sudden the trust is shot because probably they didn't announce this thing until they're right in the middle of it and ready to, you know, totally take over, so we kept it a big secret from all the people. So that feels like people don't trust that kind of situation just to start with. And and so everybody's panicking and there's lots of conversation between each other in the panic. But not really, not a lot of that is productive communication.

Okay, people are just wondering what's gonna happen. They're just talking to each other, not to the, not necessarily to leadership, and really not to leadership. There's another study I'll have to think of to see if I can remember the statistic, that the communication goes way down and people leave, that I think it, I think it's something like the statistic I was looking for is that a, like sixty-one percent of the people that leave during an emergent acquisition the first three years say that the primary cause or one of the most important causes was a lack of communication.

People question what they're being told. That means that they don't trust what they're being told. Okay. If they're questioning it, they're worried about their jobs of course.

They're watching every move what leadership does and hanging on every word. They're thinking about whether they need to leave, they're updating their LinkedIn profile. They're contacting that recruiter that's been pestering them for the last six months that they've been blowing off because they've been happy at their job. And they're so they're showing up to work, but a significant amount of that time and attention is not on the work.

It's on everything else. It's like what's gonna happen to this, that, and the other, and the panic. And so the work isn't getting done, hardly anything. If you've been through it, you know what I'm talking about.

How Long the Chaos Lasts

Nothing is happening during this, no work is getting done, okay, during this really, I c, I won't say ninety days, so maybe it's longer than that, maybe it's a little shorter, but it's a long time where nothing is really is really happening. During this period of time, however long it is, I'm saying minimum ninety days, that's what I'm gonna call it, the engagement drops.

So that's what I mean. People are having their own back outside comp, underground phone, you know, they're communicating with each other but not. They're not engaging with the company as far as their job or direct communication with the leadership, so therefore the productivity goes way down.

And people start quitting. And then that fuels the, you know, do I need to quit too thing? Why did you quit? What do you know that I didn't?

And the the people who stay are affected by the people who leave. And the the uncertainty just keeps feeding itself. And that is, and it comes as a tremendous amount of lost time and lost money.

What Happens to Leaders During Change

Now let's look at, and that's one example of change, okay? It's a big one, but it's it's one example of change and the cost of change. Let's take a look what's happening to the leaders, okay? Yeah, in this example.

Leaders going through, leaders are going through the change too. They've got a tremendous amount of pressure on them to keep the company profitable, to hit its goals, to show why we had this evaluation, and that's why we got acquired. So the company still has to perform.

The board of directors is still, you know, wanting to see what, you know, is still requiring results or pressing for results. Customers still have to be taken care of. The work still has to get done, so the results still matter.

And so the all the leaders are feeling all this pressure while everybody else is checked out. Checked out because the people are afraid and they're angry and they're resistant and they're suspicious and they're distracted and they're threatening to leave and they're trying to talk into not leaving and you know, trying to mitigate the loss.

So managers are spending their time answering questions, trying to calm people down, dealing with rumors, trying to convince people to stay, promising retention bonuses, and just trying to convince everybody that, hey, everything's gonna be okay. And sometimes the leaders themselves don't even know what's gonna happen. So that they've got that going on sometimes.

And this is where leaders can make things worse because that's easy, it's pretty easy for them to do under this high pressure situation. Because if you put enough pressures on the the leaders to produce results, you know, they're also human beings, you know, they get frustrated and they get impatient, and they want everybody to quit complaining and get back to work because they're pretty sure that their job's gonna be okay.

And they may communicate less because they don't have all the answers. And they might try to be more controlling because things feel out of control and they they can, they begin treating people's fear and resistance as a just another problem that they have to deal with instead of really being empathetic because they really don't know how to deal with what's going on with people. They're just not equipped to know how to handle this degree of a problem.

And what does the employee see? As the managers over there getting frustrated, what do you think the employees seeing? Hey, they're not listening to me, man. They don't give a sh, they're not, they don't care about us. They're hiding something, you know.

And I, that, you know what, that it translates a lot of times to, hey, I'm not important in this deal. Okay? And I better protect myself because they don't care too much about me.

Okay. Now, the leader who desperately needs people to stay engaged is unintentionally alienating his people when they need them the most. And that happens just all so often because this stuff is it's so difficult on people, okay? On human beings.

And the whole thing feeds itself and it's just this cycle of, you know, this change. We're trying to do change management and everything's deteriorating and going to into a hell in a handbasket fast, faster than you can imagine.

Fear changes people's behavior, you know, when they have less trust and more distracting and less engagement, people are consider considering leaving it. It just puts so much pressure on the leaders and so they have more people problems, more time managing the reactions of the people, like I said, less time doing the, the subordinates will call them, the people that you're leading have, what they're doing spending less time on work, you're spending less time on work, more pressure to get results, and the frustration just keeps rising.

And people, what it comes down to is people feel less understood, because people want to feel understood. They feel less understood and less valued. And the trust is declining every moment, every day. It's just like chipping away at the trust.

And as the trust goes down, the fear is going up. Meanwhile, like I said, not a lot of work is getting done, just a lot of chaos, and it's so expensive. Okay.

Now we're not gonna eliminate change. Okay, it's gonna be there. It might be a merger and acquisition or acquisition, it might be a who knows what the hell it's gonna be, but it's gonna be there. Things aren't gonna stay the same. They are not going to stay the same. We've established that, you know that.

Change is inevitable, and that's an important part to know, okay? Because the answer is not in keeping everything the same. Okay? Because that's not the possibility. You know, AI is changing businesses, that's just a fact of life.

Companies grow. I mean, they're they're made to grow, hopefully, you know, so that markets change, people change, their situation changes, leadership changes, your teams change, reorganizations happen, pump companies merge and get acquired, and the nature is the nature of business is that it's going to continue to change. It's just like the nature of life. So the question isn't how do we stop change?

The Antidote to Fear Is Trust

The question is, how do we stop change from creating so much fear, so much chaos, so much lost productivity, and so much turnover and high cost? How are we going to do all that? The antidote to fear is trust.

And communication matters in establishing and maintaining this trust. Honesty matters. Giving people information matters. But none of these things work very well if people don't believe you.

If they, if they don't trust in you to start with, these strategies aren't going to work as well as they could. And that's why what I promote is, and that's why the relationship that existed before the change matters to the change.

So change management, according to me, is not just about managing change and what could happen and what is likely to happen or any of that. It's about beginning today, right now, with what we have right now. Okay. The way that we react to change is based on the relationship, the relationships in the company, the quality of the relationships that existed before the change comes.

That's what the key is. That's my message. Okay? Because when people already believe that, hey, I'm valued here, when people believe, hey, I'm important, I, when they believe that they're important to the organization, to the people in the organization, when they believe that the the leaders care about them, when they believe that their leader respects them, when they believe that they can trust what's being told to them, when they believe that no matter what they do or what they don't do, I'm not going to be judged as less than a less valuable person.

No matter what I do or don't do, they're gonna, they're gonna look at me as a valuable human being. Okay, when people believe that, in the beginning, you're starting, this change is starting from a, in a completely different place. Okay?

And like I said, the antidote fears trust. Trust is created over time by how we treat people. We can, people can extend to us trust.

In other words, here's what I mean by that. When people come to work for me, I tell them, you have my trust. We hired you, you have my trust. Until such day that that trust is breached, I will trust you, I trust you now.

In other words, I'm gonna give you, you haven't really earned it because you just started. You haven't earned my trust, but I'm gonna trust you until you, it's kinda like starting into any relationship, right? We start into relationships with people and we extend trust. And then if the trust gets damaged or breached or we feel like there's a problem, then we we don't feel as trusting towards those people.

Extending Trust From Day One

So people, and we asked, and I asked people, not only am I going to extend trust to new people, but I asked them to extend trust to me. Now, people may or may not do that to some degree, but if they do trust a little bit enough to take the job and see how this goes, over time, we need to not reach the trust. We need to have a pattern of trust, respect, and regard, and holding value in people's, pre valuing human beings.

Okay, they need to feel valued and important. They need to have some of their emotional needs being met, such as I feel like I belong, I feel like I'm significant, I feel like I'm important. And these are basic human core emotional needs that we can help facilitate as leaders by being respectable, by by doing all the implementation of the worthwork system.

Okay, because trust doesn't come for nothing. You can extend it, but way that we interact, the way that we show up and interact with our people on a daily basis is what I'm talking about. That's where this is, where the foundation is going to be created.

You can't wait until a merger happens or a layoff or a reorganization and then announce, hey, we we need you to trust us and we value you and everything's gonna be okay, because if you wait to that point, it's not gonna have very, your words aren't gonna have very much value. Okay. Trust has a cost. There's a cost to doing it. It does take time.

But the amount of time that it takes, these little deposits into people's emotional bank accounts over time is so minuscule compared to the massive time cost and money cost of when there's a low trust environment, is is incredible. It, what I'm telling you is is it, this a small investment in time is time well spent. Okay. And you establish it over time.

And you actually have to believe what you're telling people. You can't just tell some bullshit slogan. And if you don't live it, believe it, because if you don't, they won't, they won't accept it. They won't believe it's true.

We Like You No Matter What

And therefore the truth, they trust is, my motto, our motto at my company, and the motto that I suggest in the worth work system that I promote is this, is kind of, this is a big one. I want you to, I want you to listen to this part because this is, I don't know, for some of you it might be out there, it might be, I don't know, edgy on the edge or something. Here's what it is. We like you no matter what. You come to work here, we like you no matter what. Period.

You know, this this whole idea that hey, you don't have to like each other to be able to be respectful and get along to people and all that, bullshit. I think that is the biggest crock of shit that I've heard. Here's the deal, you don't have to like people to be respectful for, no, you can bite your tongue and grit your teeth and pre do a fake ass smile and think that everybody's not gonna feel that. Horseshit. Horses feel it, that when you're being insincere, and so do people.

So it's not, we're actually asking people, now we're human beings, so we're gonna have feelings, we're gonna get our feelings hurt, we're gonna make value judgments, we're not gonna like people for a minute, but what we're asking people to do is move towards an idea that I like you no matter what you do or don't do. Period. End of story. No matter what you do to me or this company, or what you don't do for me or this company, we're gonna like you. Now, that is separate from liking what you do or don't do.

We don't have to like any of that. Okay? We don't, we don't like that. We don't have to like that. We, because we're that, like or don't like is a judgment. And we judge the work, we judge the behavior and not the person.

So this idea that, well, you and I'm gonna, this is a whole nother, coming up on next week's podcast. I don't want to kill it, you know, crush the, you know, spoil the story. But what I'm talking about is is we like you know matter what, and when people believe, when people believe that the trust is up and the cost is down, okay, because that's protecting the person.

We value you regardless of what you do. When people experience enough of that, they believe it. And then when something scary happens, like we're talking about, when this massive change comes along, they don't have to suddenly decide, well, I wonder if we can trust them.

Because when, if they have to decide at that point, I can tell you what the answer is gonna be, and you already know what the answer is gonna be. Okay. What is protect the person look like during change? Well it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean that it doesn't mean pretending that nothing bad's gonna happen. Okay, we have to be honest with people. And if you don't know, you don't know.

Judging the Work, Protecting the Person

And if there's uncertainty, there's uncertainty. And if things are changing, they're going to change. And if difficult decisions and hard decisions and ones that I don't want to make and ones that I even feel bad about have to be made, they have to be made. Okay. But in order to do that, we're going to judge the work.

We're going to protect the person because we're not going to be judging people and how we make those decisions. Okay. We judge the work. And how that works is is we run the company.

We make decisions that need to be made based on the performance and the history of the work and based on what's happening. But we always protect the person. We give people information instead of you know withholding it. We treat people with respect.

We always hold people in high regard. We let them know that they're important, that they're significant, and we do our very best not to turn their fear or not to have them into a judgment about them or to have their judgment about to to have people feel like they're being judged in any way about their person. If we're, if you're the leader, we're gonna do our best to not allow the pressure that we're under to cause us to alienate our people that we're trying to lead. Okay?

Now, if we've laid the foundation for the worth work system and we've been protecting the person and judging the work, and if we have made these little deposits into people's emotional bank accounts, I got that from Stephen Covey, if the trust is high, okay, instead of uncertainty automatically turning into more distrust, people believe what you tell them, okay? They and they have less fear.

And they spend less time wondering what your leadership is hiding. They're more likely not to rush out and find another job. They're more likely to stay engaged and communicate and contribute and ask questions and make suggestions and and participate in the work of the moving the company forward during the change, and therefore the more work is getting done.

Okay, and then leaders get to spend a whole hell of a lot of less time trying to calm people down, less time dealing with rumors, you know, and less time trying to convince people to stay, less time just managing all this unnecessary resistance and we have so much less turnover because people aren't bailing out automatically.

Why This Investment Pays Off

And we have more time to actually lead the people through the change. Okay, that's what I'm talking about. We have more time on our hands to be able to do the work of the company. Okay? Because we're not dealing with all the rumors and trying to hold people's hand and make sure that they feel okay.

Now we still need to make help people feel the best that they can, but it's gonna be so much easier if we've laid this foundation of trust by judging the work and protecting, always protecting the the person. This is so much easier on people. You know it's so much easier on people to establish this foundation now and get prepared for change.

The essence of change is fear. Okay. If according to me, it it's all gonna come down to some amount of fear. And you can reduce the fear by increasing the trust, and that really is the bottom line.

So it's so much easier on the people, it's also easier on the leaders, you know, and it's better for the company because we're not losing so much. It doesn't come at such a high cost. And this is where the investment pays off.

Okay. I talk a lot about implementing the worthwork system. It, like I said, it takes time. Creating high trust doesn't happen overnight. It's gonna take some time.

The amount of time invested compared to the savings is really not a fair comparison because you're gonna be investing in comparison with the time and money saved, the investment is worth it, I don't know, a hundredfold.

Treating people in a way to trust that they're safe from value judgment, it, it takes time. And it 'cause it's a new idea. It's contrary to what people believe and think and what we've been taught and socialized for our whole lives, and some of us have been around for a while, you know what I'm saying? I just turned fifty eight a, I don't know, a few weeks ago. So I've been around, okay, that long.

And we have been conditioned and believe that what we do and what other people do determines how they are, what kind of people, what we make moral judgments about people automatically without thought. It's not like we're intentionally judging people. We just don't, most of us don't really thoroughly completely understand the whole concept of judging and hardly anyone's heard of the the idea of separating who we are from what you do, from what we do, from separating behavior from, or behavior from worth or value as a human being.

So I mean this takes time for people to to practice and have it and and accept and understand and internalize and then and then practice. Okay. Not as much time as that's going to cost you on the other end, but it takes time.

I mean just think about how much time gets lost to fear, how much work doesn't get done, how much management time gets consumed in all this change, how many people leave. And how much it costs to replace those and retrain those people that left, okay? And what happens to everybody who stays, what happens to companies' performance, you know, how what's going on here?

The time that you invest establishing trust before you desperately need it, okay, this is another Stephen Covey's concept. He said to practice, spend your time on the important but not urgent. This falls into that category because it's gonna become urgent when the change happens and the change is coming.

It could come tomorrow, or it could come next month or next year. But the time to prepare, the time to do the important but not urgent is now. And actually, you could make the case that this is urgent because it's going to affect things tomorrow.

It's not just the change, it's going to affect the overall, the overall relationships inside of the company of how we treat people. Okay, so the time is now.

Seeing It Play Out in His Own Company

I've seen the results of this in my own company. Now my company has not been through a merger acquisition, but I've seen that experience then elsewhere and plenty of other changes. But we go through massive changes at our company. And one of the biggest changes is people.

Different yard managers, different coworkers, and so things change in our company. And what I see is that when the trust is high, first of all the the turnover is lower, that's a big thing for us in the lifting hay business in the Las Vegas heat kind of organization, keeping turnover down where turnover would normally be high is a big thing.

The people that know that I and the people that work here are always gonna protect the person, and when they know that we're gonna like you no matter what, the changes that come along are easier on everybody. The employees, the leaders, less wasted time.

And the really the bottom line to this, and I've said it, but that the worth work system is about how we treat each other. Okay? Because we're all the same, we're all human beings, employees are all dealing with fear, leaders are all dealing with pressure.

But when there is a foundation of trust that has been established between the employees and the leaders, fear has less control over the employee. Pressure has less control over the leader, there's less chaos, there's less wasted time, there's less turnover, more work getting done, and all that translates into dollars.

Closing Message

Hey my friends, change is coming. I'm not sure what it's going to be for you or when the next one is, but the question is, here's my question for you. What level of trust will exist between you and your people when the change comes? I think that is a question worth asking yourself. Remember to judge the work, but protect the person.

And if you get nothing else from me, ever, I'm gonna ask you to do one thing, and that is to remember that nothing that you can do, nothing that you do, or nothing that you've ever done, nothing that you can do or will do, nothing that has been done to you can ever change your perfect value. Your value is non-negotiable. Stay with me.

Transcript Summary

How Leaders Can Make Workplace Change Easier

Change is unavoidable in business, but the way people respond to it can create significant costs. New technology, AI, new leadership, growth, reorganizations, layoffs, and mergers can create uncertainty, resistance, distraction, turnover, and lost productivity. Shane Jacob explains that leaders cannot eliminate change, but they can build trust before it happens. By communicating honestly, treating people with respect, protecting the person while judging the work, and establishing trust over time, leaders can reduce chaos, keep people engaged, and spend more time leading the business through change.

Questions This Episode Answers

Why is change so difficult for people?

Because people naturally seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy. Once they learn a process and form routines, they settle into a groove. Change disrupts that familiarity and creates uncertainty and risk.

Why do employees resist change?

Change disrupts things people have come to depend on. A new boss, new technology, AI, company growth, layoffs, reorganizations, mergers, and acquisitions can all create uncertainty about jobs, pay, careers, and family security.

How does change affect workplace productivity?

When people become distracted by what is happening, they spend less attention on their actual work. Engagement and productivity can drop, people may begin looking for other jobs, and turnover can create even more uncertainty.

How does change affect leaders?

Leaders still have to produce results, serve customers, and get the work done while dealing with resistance, questions, rumors, and people considering leaving. That pressure can cause leaders to become frustrated, communicate less, or become more controlling.

Why can leaders make workplace change worse?

When leaders feel pressure and things feel out of control, they may become more controlling or treat people's resistance as another problem they have to deal with. Employees can then conclude that leadership isn't listening, doesn't care, or is hiding something.

Why does trust matter during change?

Because the relationship that existed before the change determines the starting point for the change. If people already believe they're valued, respected, important, and able to trust their leaders, they enter the change from a completely different place.

Can leaders eliminate change?

No. AI is changing business. Companies grow. Markets change. People change. Leadership changes. Reorganizations happen. Companies merge and get acquired. Change is part of business.

How do leaders make change easier on employees?

By building trust before change happens, communicating honestly, giving people information, treating them with respect, holding them in high regard, and protecting the person while still judging the work.

What does "Judge the Work. Protect the Person" mean during change?

It means leaders still run the company, make difficult decisions, and judge the work. But they don't allow the pressure of the moment to become a judgment about the person's value.

Why doesn't simply telling employees to trust leadership work?

Because trust has a cost and is established over time. Leaders cannot wait until a merger, acquisition, layoff, or reorganization and then suddenly tell people to trust them. People need to experience trust through the way leaders treat them before change arrives.

What happens when trust already exists during change?

People spend less time wondering what leadership is hiding, are less likely to rush out and find another job, stay more engaged, and continue getting more work done. Leaders spend less time dealing with rumors, calming people down, and managing unnecessary resistance.

How can The Worth Work System help during change?

The Worth Work System creates a way to treat people as valuable while still judging the work. That protects the person without lowering standards and creates a foundation of trust before major change arrives.