Dealing with Change

Change is something that is guaranteed in the workplace, but it’s often difficult to deal with and manage.

Don’t get me wrong — I love the place I work. The mission and values is exactly what I want to be working toward and I love the impact that we have on people. But change is a pain sometimes. In the last couple of years at this place, I’ve had three different jobs, four new bosses, and two re-organizations of my department. It’s absolutely exhausting, but with the changes has come an opportunity to learn how to deal with these changes.

Change is going to happen, but one thing that I’ve found that has really helped me through organizational changes is finding the silver lining in the changes. It’s so easy to be pessimistic about decisions made, it’s so easy to tear something down that you haven’t given a chance — but what’s extremely difficult to do is to be positive about change, especially when it’s not your decision to make. Putting in the extra effort to be positive about change will have a compounding effect on the success of the change.

I’ve recently gone through another professional change but this one was my choice. You may find yourself in the same situation and you may also feel the same anxiety about change that I’m feeling. It’s a change that allows me to work more directly with students and can benefit my career in the long-run, but it isn’t my traditional marketing and public relations work. I still feel like it’s the right choice for me, but it’s going to take some time for me to feel 100% confident about it.

This leads me to my next piece of advice with dealing with change — be confident in yourself. Like I said, I’m not 100% confident in the decision yet, but I’m confident enough in myself and my abilities to do great things in this role. Confidence isn’t the easiest thing, but having a solid support network that allows me to be even somewhat confident makes these types of decisions ten times easier.

My last piece of advice is somewhat of a mix of both confidence and optimism. With change, you have the opportunity to do something new, to do something better, or hopefully, both. This is probably the most fulfilling part of change. It adds excitement to your professional life and allows you to do great things. To do these great things, you need to be confident in yourself and your abilities to accomplish them as well as the optimism to put in the work knowing it will be better in the end.

After looking back on the changes I’ve gone through, I can’t wait for more changes to come (just maybe not anytime soon). Change is nothing more than an opportunity to do something great and hopefully these small pieces of advice can help you through your next exciting change!