Dramatic endings, new beginnings

Losing my voice was a painful, dramatic response to stress when a college I’d been working with for 10 years went through whole organisational restructuring. As a coaching leader, my highly successful job that I loved, disappeared — (‘You did great, now we want you to lead in another area’). I was offered the chance to apply for another one which didn’t meet my needs in any way. I now know what it takes to support staff and organisations through a restructuring process.

I want to explore what it takes to navigate yourself — and, if you are a manager, your staff — through restructuring.

Personally, I think these four strategies – from lived experience – are useful for staff and managers to remember:

• What feels personal isn’t personal: On the whole the organisational restructuring process isn’t about you. It’s about the organisation changing. But it can feel deeply personal and it can hurt a lot when a role that you are invested in personally, emotionally, socially and financially gets identified as being at risk. Or when it becomes really clear that that role is no longer going to be there for you. I found it really useful to remember that something that feels personal isn’t necessarily personal. This is really challenging thinking, but this small level of detachment makes a massive difference in my personal experience.

• Shift into an ‘I am employable in other places’ mindset: So many people in nonprofit, public, and charity sectors stay a long time in their role. Like me, you might have stayed 10 years or more. You can feel somewhat institutionalised and perhaps you haven’t applied for a role in a long time. Work on your mindset, investing in the thinking that you are employable in many places — you just need to work at identifying your transferable skills, learning to apply for roles, and learning to interview if that’s the route you take. From this mindset, a gentle confidence begins to flow. In my personal experience, I had to go through a lot of panic and stress before I reached this mindset. Perhaps that was avoidable, perhaps not. But the confidence that comes when I know that other people will value my skills, my talents and abilities — there’s a big wide world out there with other possible roles that people will want me for. That is a confident space.

• Map out your values and priorities: Are your priorities, for example, to pay your mortgage or your rent, to work in a role which is easy, or which challenges and stretches you? Do you value working in a place where there is lots of teamwork, or where there is more individual work? As a leader or manager, maybe your values are ‘being as transparent as possible’ even when you only have a tiny bit of information from more senior managers about the restructuring. Knowing your values really matters in tough times. These values can then be used to guide your decisions at this crucial time. We can’t always live our values, but we can use them to navigate the restructuring storms.

• YANA: You are not alone in this experience. Talk with colleagues, other managers, workplace support staff, a coach or mentor, your union, etc. Discuss how change feels, how you think the reorg is being managed, what your job/career plans might be. If you are a leader/manager, discuss strategies for handling tricky conversations and supporting your team. Find a space to chat so that you don’t do the restructuring journey alone.

About me

For the last 15 years I’ve been working with organisations – including UWE, Lewisham Southwark College – resourcing staff through restructuring teams, departments and organisations. I’ve been helping staff find their way forward in these complex times. If you’d like to chat, email me.