Adapting To Change In The Workplace: Practical Frameworks

In this episode, Simon Goode explores how individuals and leaders can effectively manage communication and conflict during periods of change, emphasizing the importance of self-regulation and support for others. He introduces frameworks like the circles of control, influence, and acceptance, and discusses practical strategies such as mindfulness and the GROW coaching model. Simon Goode also reflects on the nuances of acceptance, advocating for a more strategic approach to letting go or taking action as situations evolve.

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00:00 Adapting to Change and Conflict

04:02 Managing emotions in conversations

07:13 Five factor self framework overview

13:05 Creating Conditions for Success

15:54 Exploring Options and Taking Action

19:13 Discussing strategic acceptance

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Hi everyone,

Thanks for being part of the Conflict Skills Podcast community! In our latest episode, Simon Goode explores how we can better manage communication and conflict during times of change—especially from a leadership or management perspective. Here are some key takeaways and resources to help you face change with confidence and clarity.

Self-Regulation is the Foundation

Before we can support others, we need to manage ourselves. Simon Goode reminds us that true self-control isn’t always as straightforward as “just choose to respond calmly”—our physiological state and context matter. He builds on the traditional idea of the “circle of control,” introducing a five-factor framework for self-regulation:

The Five Factors:

• Thoughts: The stories and narratives we tell ourselves
• Feelings: Emotional reactions, from gut instincts to strong emotions
• Perception: Deliberately shifting what you focus on (like mindfulness exercises)
• Physical Body: Your physiological state; small actions like eating, showering, or moving can help
• Behavior: The actions you actually take

By addressing these factors—even something as simple as wiggling your toes or changing your environment—you can improve your self-regulation and set the stage for more effective interactions.

Circles of Influence (and Acceptance)

Once we’ve worked on self-regulation, we can turn to the circle of influence—the area where we can affect change, especially in our teams and relationships. Simon Goode references the GROW coaching model to guide conversations:

• Goal: What matters most right now?
• Reality: What’s actually happening?
• Options: What could we try?
• Way forward: What steps will we take?

Finally, the circle of acceptance is about choosing what to let go of and when. But Simon Goode invites us to see this less as giving up, and more as strategic acceptance: What is okay to let go for now? What still needs your advocacy or action, even if it can’t be changed immediately?

Reflect & Connect

• How do you manage your speech, tone, or expressions during stressful transitions?
• What triggers make self-control most difficult?
• Where can you create better conditions for yourself and your team to thrive through change?

Simon Goode would love to hear your thoughts! Reply to this email or write to podcast@simongood.com.

Additional Resources:

• Listen to the latest episode for a deeper dive into these frameworks
• Free resources and upcoming online courses available soon—keep an eye on your inbox!

Thank you for being with us. Remember, being present and mindful is a conflict skill in itself.

See you next time,
The Conflict Skills Podcast Team

Transcript

0:03

Hello. Welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator Simon Goode. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict. So if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful for you, please consider pressing subscribe Apologies for the gap in between episodes this time around. I'd been trying to at least publish an episode every week at the beginning of the year, but the last couple of months have unfortunately got away from me. So I'm I very much appreciate any of the loyal listeners who are deciding to stick around. Despite all of that, I'm probably not the best person in terms of the consistency front, but my hope is that I balance it out, at least in terms of the creativity. As to whether or not that's something that's useful for you, I suppose it's in the eye of the perceiver I wanted to talk in today's episode about a topic of adapting to change and particularly how we can manage communication and conflict in in the midst of change. Here I suppose that I'm thinking about slightly from a leadership perspective, somebody who's a manager and their team are affected or a small business owner and they're trying to manage their staff adjusting to something else that's going on. So I guess I'm thinking through first of all how you can regulate yourself and look after yourself throughout change, but also how you can provide support for others. Now obviously that would all depend on your role in your context and any existing relationships, etc. Sometimes when I talk about these kind of episodes, I worry that people think this is going to be a very specific how to guide. I often think that it's challenging to prepare for events like I don't know how my staff will respond when I let them know that this is something that's going to affect them, but I can expect that they'll probably react somehow and that might be angry or it might be distressed and worried, but either way I can plan for potentially needing to do some de escalation. So I don't know specifically about what they'll do, but I think that it's likely that we'll need to spend some time at the beginning of the conversation letting them wrap their head around the change or sort of figuring out how this would apply to them or whatever else it might be. It's not a magic wand, quick fix done in a moment, kind of snap your fingers thing. I was fortunate enough to be invited to travel to Sydney last week and I gave a presentation as part of a seminar with One of my favorite clients, actually for quite a few years now, the CCA nsw. This is a group of very good people, to be frank, who work in cemeteries and crematoria. And so of course they've got quite a unique perspective in terms of helping people adjust to change, which is why, in collaboration with some of the organizers, I thought that could be a topic that could resonate. So I used this particular framework to anchor the talk that I gave and I think that this is still probably quite a helpful way of thinking about the change. This is an example where I'm looking for functional frameworks that would help me figure out options to manage it, etc. I'm not necessarily looking to diagnose or analyze things down to the nth degree. So in that circle of influence or circle of control framework, you might have come across this before if you've ever done leadership and management kind of courses. The idea is that there are three concentric circles. The outer layer, the outside circle, is what you might call the circle of acceptance. And I actually want to come back to that during the podcast episode today because it's something that I reflect on quite regularly. In the middle we've got what's called the circle of influence. These are the things that you can do some things about, but you're not fully in control of it. Often we would put other people's behavior into that category of influence. And then the inside circle, the one closest to you, so to speak, is what's sometimes referred to as the circle of control. So I know there are many psychologists and counsellors that get told this and then they just parrot it off sort of by rote. They've been told that this is how it works. So this is how it works for me. I tend to think quite carefully about even those three different labels, like the inside circle is the circle of control. And I suppose to some extent that is what we think is going on during conflict or difficult communications. I am in control of what I say and what I do to some extent. But at the same time there are very obvious limitations to my self control. There are times when my volition becomes affected and I'm quick to react, even though I know as the words are coming out of my mouth that this might be a career limiting move or this might be digging myself into a hole and it's probably not worth it. Sometimes I just get stubborn and I don't want to back down and so I blurt something out and then around and around we go. Are you the kind of person that blurts something out or shows on your facial expressions what you're feeling. Like maybe you're annoyed at this request that's come in. Maybe you're the kind of person that projects a little bit of the stress that they're experiencing to the other people around them. Like maybe you work yourself up into a bit of a frenzy and you're moving very frantically around the office. This of course would have this reciprocal effect on the other people around you. So are you in control of your behavior? Well, I suppose it depends on how escalated you are. As our sympathetic nervous system activates, our heart rate increases, blood pressure, blood sugar, this is all about getting us ready for action. What you might have heard of as the fight or flight response previously. So it's not just that there are other activities that our brain tries to get us ready for. If you're spending a romantic time with a particular partner, that could be one example where it's very similar symptoms. Your voice gets a bit quavy, your face goes a bit red, you might be shaking in your hands a little bit, you feel butterflies in your stomach. I mean that's actually a very similar set of physiological symptoms. As if someone was following me back to my car and, and I was worried that they were going to mug me after a night out with my wife or something. So my body's, my brain is getting me ready for action. That's why we have this release of cortisol, adrenaline, testosterone, estrogen, these all effectively act as metabolic regulators. So it's an overly simplistic way that psychologists often talk about this because they'll say your dopamine was low. That's why you felt the desire to go to the fridge and get some chocolate. But all they're talking about is a correlation there. When someone engages in those search hunt, you know, those kind of activities, they can measure dopamine changes. At the same time, it's not like our brain is this invisible little being sitting in our head controlling us. Like with a remote control of our hands or my feet that walk me over to get another beer from the fridge or something. I often wish that I didn't do the things that I do in hindsight. So for me it's not true, it's just not true at all that this is the circle of control. There are some things that I have control over some of the time. So for me, one of the ways of improving this self control, the self regulation that I'm probably not naturally inclined towards, was to think about the other factors that are connected to that behavior. When I talk about self care and burnout prevention and these kind of areas, I often talk about the five factor self. This is a framework that I've actually developed myself based on CBT and then including some other emerging interventions, as well as thinking about the process of perception itself. So what I do, my behavior, and my level of self control, that's going to be directly related to what I'm thinking, the story that I'm telling myself, the emotions and what I decide to do with them, that initial reaction that comes up, that could include things from a gut reaction or a skin crawling kind of feeling all the way through to what you might describe as anger or fear or disgust or those kind of areas. So I have a thought or I have a story that again, might take very different forms that could be mentally rehearsing a situation that you anticipate being in, for example. So it's not like I'm writing a story like I am worried about tomorrow. And yet my brain continues to ruminate on it and I have these intrusive thoughts. Maybe I'm remembering particular stressful events that happened over the past week as I'm almost metabolizing it as my body adapts to this new state of being. So I've got my thoughts, my feelings, your behavior, and your level of self control over your behavior is also connected to your physical body and to your perception. When we focus on something that's quite painful, a lot of the time, it can feel overwhelming, and we almost get swept up in that experience. But if we can pause and adjust what we're paying attention to, Wiggle your toes and feel the feeling of your socks and your boots. Listen to the other sounds outside of the lecture that you're listening to. Name three things that you can see, name three things that you can touch, etc. Those kind of mindfulness activities are so important because it helps us to tune in to the present moment. And that's good because a lot of the time when our brain is focused on the past and the future, we're not living in the present moment. And what's actually going on is we're winding ourselves up in a very subtle way. That's the pattern of behavior that's associated with threats. If there was a bear outside your campsite, it's good that your brain keeps reminding you about the bear. It's not good at 2am when my brain keeps reminding me about the work meeting. But to a large extent, that's what we've inherited through this process of evolution. So we can understand how it works, but perception is this funny thing where we can deliberately manage it. We can choose to tune in to the feeling of your toes in your socks. So it naturally happens subconsciously. A lot of the time we, our brain are selecting what to focus on and it's based on really what it perceives to be priorities about what we need to do next. But I can take control of that by running my finger over the grain of wood on the desk or something similar. So it anchors us in the present moment. I think the other reason that perception is so effective at self regulation is that it moves us away from craving and aversion. These are the two areas that Buddhism talks about. Ultimately, it's the underlying source of a lot of our suffering. Life will be suffering. You will go through difficult times. But craving and wishing it was better than it is right now, or aversion like, I can't take this anymore, I just don't know what to do. Those mind states are effectively what causes a lot of our suffering. So when we tune into our perception, the other thing it does is it's just being very detail oriented and mindful, which inherently would activate, you know, would be correlated with, so to speak, the prefrontal cortex, particularly the left hemisphere. And just by focusing on that, it changes our brain chemistry and we feel more composed and more calm as a result. The other area that I mentioned was our physical body. Having something to eat, having a shower, going and doing a workout, having a massage. All of these can be things that change how we're feeling as well. And then they change our level of self control too. If I've been sitting in a really uncomfortable, cramped condition all day, it's 45 degrees or something and all of the guys are really stressed and pretty sweaty and stinky. It's not surprising if tempers might fray when they're asked to go and get one more thing or go and do one more thing. The same is true for me. I'm much more easily rattled when I've just hurt my wrist picking up something and my son comes and says to me, dad, do you want to play handball? And I'll say, not now, and really snap at him. And it's nothing to do with the request being out of line, it's just that my wrist is hurting at the moment. So becoming more comfortable going in the air conditioning or something, having a shower, changing out of your work clothes, gosh, it can make a difference in terms of that self control. So that for me has been much more helpful than just Thinking about this inner circle of what I can control. It's not always true that I can control it, so it doesn't really serve my best interest by pretending that I can. But what I can do is to manage those other four factors. My thoughts, my emotions, my perception and my physical body. And maybe that's all that I can do. Maybe that's just setting the foundation or setting the bottom layer of the scaffold that I'll need then to deal with other people involved, for example. Which brings us to that second circle, that circle of influence. We really need to have done all that we can inside of this circle to make much progress as the next one moves out. What I mean by that is if you're frantic and frazzled and you're all over the shop, it's going to be very unlikely that you'll have a calming influence on other people. We effectively co regulate each other's nervous systems. So the emotions and the mind states that I'm deciding or inadvertently displaying you will pick up on them. So the calmer that I can remain, the calmer that the other people around me will be able to be as well. So I would concentrate on that low tone of voice, slower speed, slightly lower volume, not rushing, not jumping from one task to the other, like really explicitly single tasking, if you know what I mean. And then I might look at what are the conditions that other people need to do the same. I'm often quite intrigued to learn about successful leaders in companies or sports teams or that kind of thing. And I've noticed that there can be a huge variation of the different approaches that leaders take. But a lot of the time when we think about high performing teams, one of the things that the leaders often focus on are the conditions. I remember listening, I talked about this in the presentation that I gave last week. I was watching that Formula one show on Netflix and Flavio Briotoli, I can't remember his last name, Flavio, the guy with the big bright glasses all of the time was on the screen and they said to him, what's your job? What do you do as the boss of this kind of a high performance team in a very demanding environment? They're kind of traveling and setting up this whole roadshow every single week in different countries around the globe, and yet still manage to perform down to the point where it's 0.01 of a second or whatever. So Flavio said, when they asked him, what do you do, how do you support your team and why are you succeeding this year? He said, my job is just to create the conditions that they need to do their best, that they need to win. And it always struck with me that he couldn't directly control the outcome, but what he was doing was sort of laying the foundation in terms of what his team needed. So what are the reporting structures? What's the communication? How do decisions get made? It would be considering all of those different elements. So in that middle circle of influence, first I think we need to control our own emotions. Then we need to think about the conditions that the people need and then we can think about actually doing something directly with them. I really like a coaching approach of that grow model. So I might ask them questions about the goal, like, where is your head at at the moment? What's the priority on the to do list? Right now I'm getting them to articulate what we should be focused on. And then I might talk about the reality. That's the R in the grow. How have things been, what's going on at the moment, which parts of this change are particularly challenging, how has it impacted you, etc. That's really just exploring with them. And there's no right and wrong to that part of the coaching process. It's often about adding detail, helping them to define the texture and the nuance and all of the specifics about what's going on. It's not that every single time I deal with this person, they're a nightmare. But I can think about a pattern in the last few phone calls that we've had, and that then helps me to more specifically calibrate the options that I come up with. So the goal is the first. Then we ask about reality. The third step in that grow coaching model is options. What do you think might work, etc. What have you tried in similar situations previously? Who do you know who's good at dealing with these kind of situations? What would they do? And then we talk about the w, the way forward. What are the steps that you're going to take? Often the more specific that people are about the actual steps, the more likely that they are to follow them. So we can really expand that model of the circle of influence. Thinking first about the circle of control, the middle layer of that influence, the final layer traditionally is referred to as the circle of acceptance. But I have to say, like many things, I've reflected on this over the past few years and I don't know that that's actually the most articulate or not articulate, but I don't know that it's true. Like, do you really Just accept things that aren't okay. For me, it's almost like there's an ethical question there of some things do need to be fought for. Others, I guess, that we can let them go. My friend Helen talked about this is when you choose to be an upstander or when you feel like it's appropriate just to be a bystander. I think that also is connected to this idea of just accepting it. But even when you're a bystander, I think that there can be some benefit in adding specifics. If not a lot of the time, people still feel guilt or shame or something like that because of something that they did previously. I know that that circle of acceptance for some people, it really does rub them up the wrong way because they think that it means just moving on, getting over it. That kind of a. What would you say, like a connotation. I do think there are some clues in that Buddhist idea that I talked about of avoiding craving and aversion. I do think acceptance, probably in its most healthy form, often is not wishing that things were different or craving that something was there that you don't have. At the same time, maybe it's more about putting things in time frames. For this week, I'm focusing on the things that I can control. Maybe after that I'll focus on my relationship with others. Longer term, though, let's work towards continual improvement. I want to hear options. I want people to come and talk to me about issues that are there because then I'll be much more readily able to take advantage of those or tweak and fix the things that are holding us back. Whereas if all we're doing is moving towards acceptance, I suppose part of it might be just, I give up, I surrender. And I don't know that that necessarily needs to be the way that it's perceived. Like it might just be. This isn't the time and place to deal with it. So that's a different way of thinking about that circle of acceptance, isn't it? Maybe it's not forever, or maybe it's not across all different situations, or maybe it's not with the whole team, but there are a couple of people that I do still want to talk to about recent performance or something similar. Like many things, I think once we can pause and just consider what's going on, what's at stake, what's going to work here, then it really does help us to feel more confident, feel more composed. Whereas if it's just this thing of I wish it was different, ah, well, there's nothing I can do. Well, I mean, that's not necessarily the kind of thing that everybody sits comfortably with, especially when you care about other people that are involved and the change is negatively affecting them. So for me, it's almost like strategic acceptance. What are the things that it makes sense to let go and is that permanent? Maybe not. Maybe it's just for now. And then what are the things that it's worth fighting for? And even though immediately they're not within my control or I don't really consider much in terms of my influence, maybe the priority right now is to expand that circle of influence so that next time this change comes up, I'll be standing in a better, powerful position, able to look after those around me. But what do you think? How does that framework sit with you? Thinking about the circles of control? Do you feel like you're somebody who naturally has the capacity to regulate your speech, for example, or your tone of voice, or your facial expressions? And what are the kind of moments that you find that more difficult than others? I'd love to hear from you. If you'd like to email me, you can shoot me an email. It's podcastimongood.com I've got a newsletter that I send out potentially a little bit less frequently than the podcast, but I'm working on that one as well. And I'm launching a few different online courses over the next few weeks too. So if you'd like more resources for dealing with conflict, the free stuff is the newsletter in the podcast, and then we've got those other options if you're around reflective kind of person that wants to go a layer deeper. Anyway, thank you very much for watching Listening if you're on audio, and I'll hopefully see you again in a future episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast. Bye for now.