Compliance, Compassion & Perseverance - All Needed for Change
The end of Q1 is also a good time to check in on our resolutions, for those of us still practicing this tradition. Change is what New Year's resolutions are all about, and most of us appreciate how difficult they can be, requiring commitment, perseverance, and enough practice to create new habits. Resolutions centre on making us a better version of ourselves, yet the process to meet these goals often includes a variety of negative emotions, and of course, some failure along the way. The need to balance compliance and compassion when making change is important for self, as well as for others, and I’m inviting you to reflect on how your approach to self compares when leading others through change.
I often view compliance as a check-box, the baseline essentials for having ‘done’ something. I’m thinking of those road trips where people get out of the car and snap a quick photo to ‘prove’ they were there. Or one of my favourites, saying you’ve ‘been’ to a city or country, because of a layover. Technically, perhaps legally, but not really. I once left the airport in Frankfurt and had an early breakfast in a cafe as the city slowly came to life, before rushing back to the airport.
When I think of this in terms of a resolution, it depends on the goal. Eating five servings of fiber a day can be easily monitored and adjusted if you’re keeping track on a kitchen calendar. But trying to apply a coaching approach with those you lead is harder to consistently apply. We can diligently go through the process of asking the set of questions that a resource provides, but not apply the active listening needed to respond with the right questions. If questions are asked consistently but not getting the recipient to reflect and respond, is there any point in asking them?
Then there’s the opposite end, with an overly compassionate approach. The thinking “I’ll do it tomorrow” is a default that we all adopt at times. It’s the weekend indulgences and Sunday night commitments to eat those servings of fiber starting (every week) on Monday. Or the repeated blame on others, as to why coaching isn’t working; they’re not coachable, they don’t need to be coached, we needed to focus on other things today. All of these can be reasonable at times, but when it’s the default perspective, the place to look for responsibility is our own reflections.
The polarity of compliance and compassion is where frustrations and emotions often land when we approach change. Just ‘doing it’ shows up as a hyper-focus, while effective, is not sustainable. Going easy on yourself is needed at times, but can lead to a complacency where nothing changes. Both are part of the journey of change, but getting ‘stuck’ in their vortex is what prevents us from achieving our goals; the need to apply both, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep going, is how we get there.
It’s here that I invite you to reflect on the similarities on how your own commitments to changes, as well as the ones you’re leading, requires the compliance, compassion and perseverance to keep going. The path is not linear, the conditions are ever-changing, and the left-field challenges can thwart whatever approaches were working at any given moment. That is what it takes to lead change, nobody said it was easy. So whether it’s changing self or mobilizing others, this reminder is to avoid going it alone.