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Image two: Nixon family photo December 2015
This image to me has an emotional charge. It represents the celebration of life. I selected this image because it has a story of health, love, happiness, strength, and survival after brain injury.

The family photo is taken in December 2015 of my 41st birthday after one year of intense change and transformation. In 2014 I incurred a traumatic brain injury and lost my ability to function at the most basic levels: cognitive abilities, processing thoughts and language, speaking, executive functioning, movement, walking, essentially everything. I was no longer able to take care of myself let alone my children. This was obviously a forced change and unprepared without any understanding or knowledge of what was happening and why. However, rather than share all the details of the bad things about this event, I will share with you the amazing good changes that came out of it, and a story of an unexpected, emergent leader. I will do my best to shorten the story and stick to the highlights and link it to our learning in successful change.

In a time of family crisis, the unexpected leader that emerged and lead me back to health was my then seven-year-old daughter Georgia. As a leader, Georgia displayed high emotional intelligence, empathy, compassion, and vulnerability. She inspired a shared vision and she truly believed her mother would be healthy and well again. She had one consistent message which she wrote daily to me on a white board, a message of hope, healing, love and strength. She never gave up and she made sure I knew I was not alone in my journey back towards health. Georgia enlisted the help of others, she prayed and had others pray with her, she was spiritually grounded. She remained positive and smiled, laughed and made me laugh and brought humour to a situation that had high levels of uncertainty, anxiety, fear and stress.  Georgia remained calm and congruent to her goal and desire to have her mother healthy and well again.  Georgia exhibited strong leadership characteristics and skills that were instrumental in my journey.

My family as an organization at the point in time was in a state of crisis, and the other two members of the team, my son and my husband were frozen in fear and panic. Georgia took charge and acted on her own instincts.

As the individual going through the major transformation, initially, I felt helpless and hopeless. I had intense feelings of fear and anxiety in a time of high uncertainty. It took time, lots of time, from May 2014 to December 2015. I had to rest, I had to prepare and gain strength. I had to relearn the basics, and learn for the first-time new ways of being. I had to let go of the old me before a new me could emerge. I had to stop fighting myself and accept that I had changed. I was forced into the change, unready and scared, but it happened and I had to accept it before I was able to feel strong and safe again and return to normal activities. In fact, there are several activities that I have not been able to return to and I have changed.

There are many incredible learnings that have come from this experience, the first one is how incredibly strong my daughter Georgia is. The second is, by doing less I get more. I get more life. With brain injury, you are forced to slow down, you cannot try harder, or do more, you need to plan and pace appropriately. You need to learn how to do old things in new ways so as to not evoke brain injury symptoms. You need to allow yourself time to heal. To answer the questions below, I have listed a few of the things that come to mind to help make successful change happen. This list is not exhaustive and list some key principles, some share in my personal story.

What do leaders do to make change work?

·        Listen

·        Assess

·        Create a vision

·        Motivate

·        Set realistic expectations

·        Set expectations - establish as a group ways of working together

·        Set Working principles – participation, collaboration

·        Communicate early and clearly and check for understanding

·        Ensure consistency with one clear message

·        Share information and resources with their team

·        Use common language

·        Consider the individual

·        Model the expected behaviour

·        Adapt to the situation

·        Provide useful feedback

·        Identify and remove barriers

·        Review

·        Reward team

What do individuals do to make change work?

·        Listen

·        Learn and grow

·        Share ideas

·        Be open to new ways of working or behaviours

·        Make a commitment

·        Enlist others to help hold them accountable and responsible to their commitment

·        Recognize old behaviours and make a conscious effort to identify and change

·        Reflect and assess personal progress towards end results or goals

·        Recognize and reward their achievements

What do organizations themselves do to make change work?

·        Develop and communicate a clear vision

·        Define specific and realistic end goals

·        Communicate changes early

·        Set expectations

·        Create a safe environment for change, allowing for mistakes to occur and risks to be taken

·        Identify impacted people

·        Develop a team to champion the change

·        Allow appropriate time for change

·        Provide appropriate support including resources, tools, and time required to successfully embrace the change

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Image one: The Monarch Butterfly Metamorphosis

This image of a monarch butterfly metamorphosis represents to me a successful, naturally occurring change.

The concept is simple, but the process takes preparation and time. No leader is evident or required for the successful change to occur. What is missing from this image is the beginning, or the current state. This particular image starts at the transition period.

In the transition period the caterpillar abandons its previous form and begins the process of complete transformation into a butterfly. During this time a chrysalis is formed and the organism is in a period of rest and preparation.  I find the word “rest” used fascinating. We know preparation is required for successful change to occur, but how often do we think about resting for successful change to occur? We do not. Instead we often move forward, full speed ahead. We over work ourselves in hopes of getting to the end result faster, but again how often does that result in successful change. Usually it does not. Instead we see, cognitive and physical drain, burn out, change failures, stress, lack of commitment, and abandonment of change initiatives all together and regressing towards old behaviours.

There is no leader represented in this image and there is no organization, instead it is change at an individual level occurring in its natural occurring environment. The process, if successful, is inevitable, unless death occurs.

When I see this image the metaphors and models that come to mind from the reading are the flux and transformation metaphor, and Senge’s systemic model. The simple learning from these models to me are: change is inevitable, and naturally occurring, to acquire successful change stop, slow down, prepare, plan and pace appropriately.