She’s a coach, a change agent, and author of the recently published book Forward: Leading Your Team Through Change. In this episode of the Life + Leadership podcast, we speak with Dr. Elizabeth Moran, whose mission is to help simplify leading through change for organizations and their leaders.
Dr. Moran shares her science-based insights on change leadership, including how leaders and teams going through transformation can avoid overwhelm when leading change initiatives, achieve measurable results for sustainable change, and increase success by reducing complexity.
When researching and writing her book, she tried to think of what would be most helpful to leaders if she were in their shoes. As a result, she focused on the four toughest questions you’re going to encounter as a leader when you’re leading through change—and she provides a script on what to do in each situation.
Unlike many books about change, Dr. Moran’s data-backed approaches help people actually implement the concepts and put these practices into action immediately. She also guides leaders in addressing the emotional side of change, with the help of neuroscience.
Dr. Moran notes that while many organizations are doing pretty well with the project management side of change, that’s not the only thing that matters during a transformation. “Where I found leaders really struggling was the emotional side and that awkwardness of coming against resistance, and then just feeling really uncomfortable having those conversations,” Dr. Moran says.
She explains that when she started to really dig into the neuroscience, she found it life-changing. “What was so important was it explained, why do humans react in very different ways and contradictory ways when it comes to change?” she says. “The neuroscience just explained a lot of these reactions and also gave credence to a lot of the frustrations that many leaders feel.” The neuroscience reveals that people generally view change as a threat, so they freeze up. If leaders recognize this reality, then they can treat resistance as normal. “It’s not a problem, it simply is,” Dr. Moran says.
Whether you’re a leader or an individual contributor, most people want their work to have positive impact and want to make a difference. Dr. Moran’s findings revealed that what often makes change so difficult is the emotions it brings up when the change isn’t your own idea. Since leaders are usually the ones who decide to make changes that others are tasked with implementing, that’s what I found created most of the struggle with people.
“So when leaders would traditionally announce a change, they would forget that they actually had the time to research the problem,” Dr. Moran says. “They had the data and the information. And so they already decided to make the change. But when they announced to the organization the change, they forgot all of that.”
With this in mind, leaders need to understand how to get other people on board with the desired change. “Part of it is convincing the brain of why they should, why we should, change the way we do things, because the brain is an organ of efficiency: If it worked well this way in the past, it should work this way in the future,” Dr. Moran says.
Another aspect of the neuroscience behind people’s reactions to change is negativity bias. This means that people tend to prefer what’s familiar, even if it’s not working well for them, over what they might gain in the future, even if it’s better. This is because the human brain is predisposed to having a negative outlook. “Our brains give at least three times more psychological weight to the negative,” Dr. Moran explains. “And then we project into the future, especially if there’s a change.”
This is why when a leader introduces an organizational change, many people will perceive it as a threat. “Our brain starts to go to, my gosh, I can instantly pull up all the things that have gone bad in the past,” Dr. Moran says. “Am I losing a sense of mastery or expertise over something I have? Am I losing a boss? Am I losing a team? Am I not doing the job that I wanted to do? I mean, whatever it is, it’s all the ‘what could go wrong,’ and that’s hardwired in.”
Dr. Moran recommends that leaders use what they know about negativity bias to back people up from that catastrophic thinking. Having a thoughtful leader with strong communication skills can make the difference by helping people recognize that it’s normal to feel the negativity bias, and to think to themselves, “I’m nervous, and just because I feel this way doesn’t mean it’s going to be a disaster.” Part of the leader’s role during transitions is to help course-correct people’s negatively-biased brains back to neutral, saying things like, ‘Things are going to be challenging and it’s uncomfortable now, but we don’t know what the future holds, so we can work together to plan for that.”
During organizational transitions, leaders are also going through the company-mandated changes along with the people who report to them. Dr. Moran pointed out that this situation challenge a leader’s feelings of authenticity. “The authenticity, especially when you’re leading a team, is very powerful,” she says. How do you maintain your own authenticity as a leader when communicating with your team if you have your own reservations about the company’s transition? Dr. Moran suggests being honest with your team by saying something like, “Look, I’m a little concerned about this change too. I’m not sure it’s great, but the organization is going in this way. So what I’d love for us to do as best as we can is, if we do foresee obstacles or reasons why this might not work, let’s talk about it. And I’m happy to bring that forward.”
Dr. Moran emphasizes that before communicating with your team, it’s important to start with yourself as a leader. If you realize there’s a change you can’t get on board with, then you need to decide if that organization is still the right place for you—and if the answer is no, whether for you or for a member of your team, then that’s okay.
Harvard-trained psychiatrist Dr. Srini Pillay brought the concept of “switch cost” to Dr. Moran’s attention. Switch cost is a subconscious process in which your brain constantly calculates whether your effort to do something different is worth the cost of changing directions. For example, if you want to play an instrument, you may begin by thinking about the fantasy of playing on stage and how good you believe it would feel. But when you actually sit down and start learning how to play, your brain may find it exhausting and decide that the cost wasn’t worth it.
The same type of analysis plays out in your brain when there’s a change to absorb. “It’s understanding first that you’re asking them now to do something different that for them may have been working fine,” she says, adding that when there’s a switch cost, there’s discomfort, and there’s more likely to be behavior change. “So as a leader, you’re helping somebody through that discomfort. Most of the time when we have discomfort, our brain goes, ‘Ooh, ooh, ooh, there’s a problem.’ And what you’re helping people do is say, ‘No, I’m just pushing my edge or learning something new.’”
To wrap up the podcast, host Tegan Trovato asked Dr. Morgan what single thing she would recommend they start with that would be most impactful. Dr. Morgan honed in on the concept of what she calls the “negativity piece” in our brains. “Because we give three times more psychological weight to the negative, that becomes a well-worn neural pathway,” she says. “That well-worn neural pathway then becomes habit, and people then confuse habit with reality.”
The solution, she said, is optimism. “It’s practicing scanning for the good,” she says. At first, choosing a more optimistic perspective may feel phony, but Dr. Moran says it helps when you ask yourself, why is the negative view always the correct one? “If you were to go forward or backward and remember all the things you thought were going to be so bad, some of them might have been painful,” she says. “But usually, it’s not as bad as we thought, and oftentimes we get into a better place.” Research shows optimism isn’t just the feeling you get when something goes well—it’s the fuel needed to make things go well. “Now we know from a research perspective that positive vision is much more likely to happen,” she says. “But you have to be able to imagine it first.”
Dr. Moran encouraged listeners to trust the wisdom of their emotions and feelings. “There’s nothing wrong with feelings of concern, and usually if you have them as a leader, you use that to understand how your people may react,” she said. “So it’s not about labeling something as bad. It’s not about not feeling something. It is trusting the wisdom of you and your team and engaging in two-way conversation.”
She concluded that leaders don’t have to spend a lot of time, when they’re already feeling uncomfortable, trying to figure it out. Instead, they can use the strategies shared in her book and in this podcast to lift others, and hopefully create a better conversation when emotions run high during times of organizational change.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran: LinkedIn
Tegan Trovato
Dr. Dr. Elizabeth Moran, thank you for joining us today and welcome to the podcast.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Thanks so much, Tegan, so happy to be here.
Tegan Trovato
Yeah, I am so pleased to help evangelize your book forward leading your team through change. So as someone who I’ve personally worked along the change lines inside of organizations, of course, we’re both coaches, so we help humans and organizations change. So I was jazzed about this book and the amount of science that you backed real life scenarios and examples with. So I’m excited to talk with our listeners about this today.
And you know, in the spirit of like, let’s hit this thing on the head, there’s a million change books out there. If I may say most of them are so science that people can’t really digest and apply them in my experience. So I’m curious what your experience was that inspired you to add to the list of books on this topic.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Hmm. Yes, so I feel like there are amazing books on the topic. My challenge often was the actual operationalizing of the material. So when I was inside organizations, I never had met a leader who was able to do all of the things that Cotter and, you know, stacking the deck and many of the other proponents and people who’ve written books, people had a really hard time operationalizing it.
So the concept in general of change management or change leadership, I couldn’t care less what people call it, I call it change leadership, was usually very overwhelming for people. So what inspired me was when I was inside organizations partnering with leaders, how do I take the best of the change management research and data and best action steps, titrate that down to the most essential? That was one.
Tegan Trovato
Yeah. Hmm.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
To then operationalize it. How do I put these actions in order that a busy leader, potentially leading a large organization who’s already time and resource challenged could actually implement? The other thing was the emotional side of change, which you dug into the neuroscience. And that’s pretty powerful stuf
Tegan Trovato
Hmm.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
So whilst I like to consider myself someone who is open to the intuitive or the mystical and the emotional, I have quite a quite a serious practical streak. And I found for me, the neuroscience has been life changing. And then when I applied that to the change work, so many leaders who maybe they had an engineering brain or a finance brain, they were much more able to relate to the importance of the emotional side of change when I brought that in. The folks who are the HRs or the traditional leadership and learning folks who are already more comfortable with the emotional side also loved it because it just confirmed a lot of their experience and intuition.
Tegan Trovato
Yeah, wonderful. Yeah, as you mentioned, Cotter and stacking the deck, and those were the exact folks I was thinking of when I opened and said there’s so much science, but it feels like unattainable for and when I was reading your book, I just felt like, gosh, this is what’s been missing. You know, to hone in on a team’s leader and say, you, as this individual, this is your role, because so much of change science is written programmatically or enterprise level, right? So I think this was just a brilliant framing. And for our listeners to know, what would you say makes your approach more unique?
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
So I think we mentioned one was everything that I do is grounded in the neuroscience, at least what we know now. And I try to keep that really simple. So here’s the concept and so thanks. And here’s the concept and here’s what it means for you. That’s one. Two, I was like, please don’t make me read another 300 page book. There’s wonderful stuff, but I don’t have time for that. Please use a bullet point. So I did that.
Tegan Trovato
Well said.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
to try to make things very clear about here’s what you’re gonna get in this chapter and let’s just make it a very easy read. And then finally, I think that I provide, sort of I put myself in that leader’s shoes. So the goal was no matter what your organization is doing from a change management perspective, and many organizations are doing pretty well with the project side of change
But where I found leaders really struggling was the emotional side and that awkwardness of the, you know, coming against resistance and then just feeling really uncomfortable having those conversations. So what I was thinking of is what if I was in their shoes, what would be most helpful? So I really articulate here that maybe the four toughest questions you’re going to encounter as a leader when you’re leading through change. And I provide a script
Tegan Trovato
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
So here’s how to answer that question. Here’s the approach. Here’s a turnaround conversation. Here’s a celebration conversation with people. And I think people really like that as well.
Tegan Trovato
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love that every section that’s action focused starts with introspection first. So yeah, like all the things you mentioned, you gave them some ideas on how to work with others. But I appreciated the anchoring into the self first about each conversation that was ahead of them. So so that leads us to the neuroscience. And I’m curious why you prioritize that in the book as early as you did and as much as you did.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Exactly.
Tegan Trovato
when we focus so much on change across an organization and much of it is relationship oriented, that I appreciate that you chose a very clear path of neuroscience. Why was that? And before leaders read this book, what do want them to know about the neuroscience component of change?
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
So when I started to really dig into the neuroscience, honestly, it was life changing for me, both as a human and then as a practitioner. And so I think the most important thing is the brain is incredibly complex and we’re learning so much about it. So this idea of, for me, what was so important was it explained why do humans react in very different ways and contradictory ways when it comes to
Tegan Trovato
Mm.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
change. And the neuroscience for me, it just explained a lot of these reactions and also, I think, gave credence to a lot of the frustrations that many leaders feel. It’s like, OK, I’m the boss. I’ve told you we need to make this change. You can clearly see I’m trying to explain that if we don’t make this change, we might not be successful. We’re responding to market conditions.
We are responding to our clients who are saying they’re wanting something different from our products, whatever it is. And so why, why do so many humans then instantly, right? they, they freeze up exactly. And they say, So it was really understanding and helping to say to people. So you remember that old adage, which you’ve probably heard is people view change as a threat. Guess what? It’s true. And here’s what happens.
Tegan Trovato
Freeze up. Yeah. Neurologically, it’s true, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Yes, and that’s hardwired in. So what if, what if that just became normal? So when I think about the book and the main concepts were one, you’re already a change expert leader. You’re a human, you’re here reading the book. Guess what? You’ve survived a ton of changes. So have your people. So let’s use your expertise. Two, what if you treated resistance as normal? It’s not a problem. It simply is.
Tegan Trovato
Yeah.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
normal so you don’t need to get all stressed about it. And then three, part of it was then using the neuroscience to help people understand why leveraging strengths and optimism was so important. So I think those are the things that really made a difference. Plus bottom line, every time I spoke about it to leaders and in workshops, people loved it. And so I think people were like, okay, it’s me, but it’s not just me, right? This is the brain. This is what’s happening. Exactly right.
Tegan Trovato
Yeah. Yeah. Right. It’s the human experience, right? We say at a really generic level, not neuroscientific enough, but we always say in coaching that, you know, resistance is either a sourced in fear, impatience or ego. Yeah, it’s nice and simplified that way. But security is what I think most of us feel concerned about during times of change. And that’s a fear, right?
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
100%.
Tegan Trovato
And when I think about you just described, like this book is written for leaders of change. We are wired for change more than the average bear. We’re also incentivized for change. And when you think about the people we’re leading, they are not compensated for change most of the time. They’re not incentivized for change, not the way leadership is. And so it is a true art then to be able to inspire people into a change experience.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Mm-hmm.
Tegan Trovato
Make them comfortable when they’re not naturally or motivated by the organization, for example, to want that for themselves. So there’s such a systemic disconnect in all of that for me that’s fascinating.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Mm-hmm. Yes. So I think I’m just going to slightly add or tweak what you’ve just said. What I have discovered is that most people, whether you’re a leader or an individual contributor at organizations, you want to have positive impact with the work that you do. You have clients that you care about. You have work that is fulfilling one hopes and you want to make a difference. So what I ended up finding was it was less the
Tegan Trovato
Hmm? Please. Absolutely.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
People didn’t want to do a good job or didn’t want, right? Like they didn’t want to try to contribute even if their organization was changing. What I discovered, what was so hard for men to humans was when it’s not your idea. So this was a thing coming out of, know, from which is foundation of organizational life, right? That this is usually leaders.
Tegan Trovato
Sure. Yeah.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Will who are leading the organization will decide to make changes that most of us are tasked with implementing. And that’s what I found was most of the struggle with people. So when leaders would traditionally announce a change, they would forget that they actually had the time to research the problem. They had the data and the information. And so they already decided to make the change. But when they announced to the organization the change, they forgot all of that.
Tegan Trovato
Mm-hmm. Right.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
And so what it was is helping people understand how do you get somebody else’s brain on board with your change? And that usually was, and Cotter was right, right? You have to have a burning platform. You don’t have to write paragraphs and paragraphs about it, but part of it is convincing the brain of why they should, why we should make, change the way we do things, because the brain is an organ of efficiency.
Tegan Trovato
Hmm.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
If it worked well this way in the past, it should work this way in the future. And so that, I think, was helping people understand why this is so important to get people on board with what you’re trying to do.
Tegan Trovato
Right. Yes. Your point there reminds me of the bridges transition model. Are you familiar with it? Yeah. Where, yeah. Where so for those of you listening who aren’t familiar, there’s, you know, essentially I’m going to just be really layman’s terms on all of this, but essentially we experience change, in a nonlinear fashion and that we don’t just move forward in our change experience. We may move forward and backwards and forward and backwards in our emotional experience of change. And the whole concept is that change happens fast. So to Dr. Moran’s point,
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Exactly. yes.
Tegan Trovato
Leadership makes a decision. The change is there. The transition emotionally is slow. And adoption then is correlated to the emotional transition. it really makes me think about that. It also brings me to one of your points on the neuroscience chapter, in the neuroscience chapter, on the negativity bias. I feel like this is a great time to bring that up on the heels of what you and I just talked about. So.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Mmm.
Tegan Trovato
I’d love if you would share with listeners at least a high level snapshot of this concept.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
There are two pieces to negativity bias. One of the pieces is we tend to give more weight to what we know, even if it’s not working so well for us, in terms of losing that, then what we could gain in the future, even if it’s better, right? So that’s again, that sort of, it worked well in the past, we’re going to hold on to it. We feel more comfortable because again, our brains hate uncertainty more than anything. So at least we know this and now you’re asking me to give this up. So that’s one. The other piece is, as best as we can tell, is that our brains set us up for a negative outlook. And why is that? And again, I think most people will understand this, but this, when I, in my coaching work that I do, and also as a human, as again, this was probably the most life-changing thing for me when I realized, Hey, wait a second. Wait, what? So, our brains give at least three times more psychological weight to the negative. So that’s negative experiences in the past. That’s currently what’s going on. And then we project into the future, especially if there’s a change. The ego never goes back or the brain. When I say ego, I’m not saying anything negative. The ego has a place and the ego really should be coming out front and center when we are in a fight or flight situation.
Tegan Trovato
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Unfortunately, if people don’t have kind of that observing self, the ego is what rules the day. So somebody introduces a change to us that we did not decide on. We’re instantly like, wait a second. And then to your point, right, because we didn’t decide on it, we don’t have all the details instantly. It’s a threat. And our brain starts to go to, my gosh, I can instantly pull up all the things that have gone bad in the past.
I’m now maybe going to lose, to your point with bridges, am I losing a sense of mastery or expertise over something I have? Am I losing a boss? Am I losing a team? Am I not doing the job that I wanted to do? mean, whatever it is, it’s all the what could go wrong. And that’s hardwired in. That is always going to be that way. And that’s a good thing. That keeps us safe.
Unfortunately, if we don’t have a way to check that either with a very thoughtful leader or ourselves to say, you know what, I’m nervous, that’s okay. I’m nervous and just because I feel this way doesn’t mean it’s going to be a disaster. And so what I like to say to people is this is why communication is so important. Oftentimes as a leader, you’re going through the change yourself. So you might also be nervous but your role is oftentimes to help course correct somebody’s brain back to neutral. So what happens is in the negativity bias, we can kind of go along with that story that it’s gonna be bad. So then what tends to happen is the unknown, which is a future state, is technically neutral. But when we have the unknown, the unknown becomes bad. And so part of the importance when it comes to negativity bias is talking to people to say, things are going to be challenging and maybe even it’s uncomfortable now, but we don’t know what the future holds. So we can work together to plan for that. But in essence, it’s the unknown, which again, for many people is scary anyway. And so usually you’re trying to use what you know about negativity bias to back people up from that catastrophic thinking.
Tegan Trovato
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. Well, and manage their own while they’re leading others. Because as a leader, when I think, my team is going to be so hurt and upset, that’s a great story to connect to from a negative to negativity bias standpoint. Right. So I feel like we need a moment of silence to respect consciousness. You know, like humans have the modern humans have the hardest gig right now. And I don’t think we give it enough credence. You know, we’re running around having very natural thoughts. Our ego is there to keep us alive.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Exactly. Exactly. It’s so true.
Tegan Trovato
Many, many years ago, we would just do what it said and we stayed alive as often as possible. Now you slipped in the part, the, you know, the self that observes the self used a different phrase, but so I call that consciousness, right? Generically speaking, our ability to observe what’s happening within us is the hallmark of modern humanity. That’s our consciousness. And so this like,
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
We did.It’s like great.
Tegan Trovato
Life we live in our heads of my brain is making all this up to keep me alive and keep me safe the part that observes my thoughts needs to limit my action on those things that aren’t real and it is exhausting work yes
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Exactly. It’s exhausting. You know, the other thing from a neuroscience perspective that I found fascinating when I heard about this study is so yes, in our modern life, we are also bombarded with more negative, right? Because we know clickbait or all of that stuff, the negativity, negativity. This was so powerful when I saw this study. So people who are cortically blind,
Tegan Trovato
Yeah.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
That means at one point they were able to see, but then something happened. Okay. They did studies with people who are cortically blind where they were showed images of, not nice things that say bad things. And they were watching what happened in people’s brains. They were surprised that their brain was still firing unconsciously. Their brain was taking that in when it even never registered at the conscious level.
Tegan Trovato
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.Mm-hmm. Wow. that’s so fascinating.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Right. Yeah, so if you think about that, this is why being very conscious about what you’re taking in, because this is the the miraculousness of humans and our brains, and really, as you said, keeping us alive, is we are constantly scanning and those types of inputs are impacting us, but they’re not necessarily registering to our conscious brain.
Tegan Trovato
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Which is when you understand what that means, it’s incredibly powerful. Then the other thing you said was these leaders, right? They’re going through it themselves. One of the myths that leaders have is they can’t lead through a change if they’re not 100 % on board with it. And this is where I think as a coach, you understand this as well. One of the things we try to do is help people tap into their authenticity.
Now that’s a scary thing because it doesn’t mean you don’t need to be thoughtful about how sometimes that’s communicated and also be mindful of what type of culture are you in and actually is it safe and okay. But, right? But the authenticity, especially when you’re leading a team, is very powerful. So to say something like, look, I’m a little concerned about this change too. I have, I’m not sure it’s great.
Tegan Trovato
Right. Right. what a great point. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
but the organization is going in this way. So what I’d love us to do as best as we can is understand if we do foresee obstacles or reasons why this might not work, let’s talk about it. And I’m happy to bring that forward. Right? But this is the challenge in organizational life until your name is on the awning, right? Part of that is we need to do what other people say. And to your point in the book,
Tegan Trovato
Yeah.Mm-hmm.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Before I get into anything of communicating with your team, the chapter is start with yourself. So how are you feeling about the change? And maybe there’s a change you can’t get on board with, then you need to decide, is this the right place for you? And sometimes the answer is no. I mean, that happened to me, that’s happened to you in different points in our career. that’s okay. And also for a member of your team, if they’re not able to get on board. So while I say resistance is normal,
Tegan Trovato
Mm-hmm. yeah. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
It’s not a permanent state. And so I have a conversation guide in the book with somebody who, you know, as a real life example, is someone who just could not get on board. But you can still treat somebody with dignity and respect and clarity and allow them to make a choice. And if that means leaving the organization, then that’s what it means and that’s okay.
Tegan Trovato
That’s right. Wow, I wanna play with that for a minute because one of the things we often see in senior leadership is if there is misalignment when it comes to change and there is a leader who feels they need to opt out, I watch them need to make the organization wrong on their way out or make the CEO wrong on their way out and vice versa. The CEO might need to make them wrong. The team may need to make that executive wrong because they won’t get in alignment.
And I really appreciate you saying like, can lead change. We can lead change as executives and leaders without being fully bought in. If we have the emotional maturity and it isn’t conflicting with our values, we can do that. And sometimes we really should. But it’s okay for us to say this isn’t right for us and no one else has to be wrong for it. And that is such a new concept, I think.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes.
Tegan Trovato
For senior leaders and I’d love to see us all exercise that more, that we can leave with grace and not burn the house down on the way out, not bad talk people who do believe in the change on our way out and expect the same kindness and return on our way out. We don’t have any control over how others behave, but we certainly have control over our choices in that matter. But that is another example of managing our
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Tegan Trovato
neuroscience right in the process.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Yes. Well, you, yes. And what you’ve just said, I mean, it’s just thinking about humans in general, thinking about somebody that you love that you’re no longer with. And many people, when there’s a breakup, there’s pain. And so I think oftentimes speaking negative is an expression of one’s pain. But there is that sort of caught, what they talk about conscious uncoupling. So whether that is from an organization, a leader, an experience.
Tegan Trovato
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.Mm-hmm.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
If you feel not happy about having to leave or not being on board with it, that’s usually how it gets expressed. And so again, there is a level of maturity that I think it is better for everybody. And it doesn’t mean that maybe you did get treated well, or maybe it’s not the right decision. But again, that’s organizational.
Tegan Trovato
Yes, it is. Humans in our systems, they’re very complicated mix. So we’ll talk a bit with listeners about switch costs. That’s another concept I found really interesting in your book on the neuroscience.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Yes. So one of my mentors is somebody named Dr. Srini Pillay. he, I did a neuro transformational coaching certification with him and he’s just this amazing human. he’s a Harvard trained psychiatrist, but he’s also this mystical being. And so I’ve learned a lot from him. So he brought this concept to my attention, but I just applied it more directly to change.
Tegan Trovato
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
So switch cost is this unconscious, you know, again, so much of the stuff happens below the surface part of our brain that is constantly calculating is our effort to do something different worth the quote unquote cost, the switch cost of doing something different. So an example I use is you want to play an instrument, right? You have the fantasy of, you know, playing that and being on stage and, that feels so good. That feels so good. And then you actually sit down.
Tegan Trovato
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
And you start having to learn how to do it and the music. And at least for me, you when I tried some of those things, I’m not necessarily gifted that way. So my brain was like, literally that is the, it was exhausting. So the cost wasn’t worth it. I couldn’t make the convincing thing. Well, it’s same for a change, particularly again, not somebody’s idea.
Tegan Trovato
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
It’s understanding first that you’re asking them now to do something different that for them may have been working fine. And so how are you going to convince their brain that that let’s just say this dip in productivity that happens with every change is going to be okay. So you do that primarily for one, rewarding people for trying versus perfection.
Tegan Trovato
Hmm.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
So you also could do it if it’s somebody who has been skilled, they know about the change, walk them through or talk with them about, okay, you’re going to be doing this differently. And how might you get this done? In other words, when there is switch cost, there’s discomfort and there’s more likely to be behavior change. So as a leader, you’re helping somebody through that discomfort.
because it is uncomfortable. And most of the time when we have discomfort, this goes back to the threat part, our brain goes, ooh, ooh, ooh, there’s a problem. There’s a problem. And what you’re helping people do is say, no, I’m just pushing my edge or learning something new. So how wonderful to reward somebody for trying, even saying, hey, let’s have a contest. Who tried and it didn’t work? Whoever had the most spectacular, it didn’t work.
Right? You win. Right? So a lot of it is helping people play with this idea, knowing that, listen, it’s going to be uncomfortable when you try this, but your discomfort is okay. If there’s no discomfort, there’s no behavior change. Does that make sense?
Tegan Trovato
Hmm. Yeah, it totally does. It’s a great explanation. If we move past the neuroscience piece before we go, what would you say, if we were to focus our listeners on one part of their neuroscience or their behaviors that often come from that as a source, what single thing would you like to see them start with that would be most impactful?
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Yes.
Tegan Trovato
I feel like this is a tough question, by the way, maybe even unfair, but I’m curious if you have a an initial gut thought there.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Yes. No, I think it’s beautiful. And this goes back to if our brains give three times more psychological weight to the negative than the positive, that means we all have a well-worn neural pathway of the negative. What gets messy for humans and really leads to anxiety and depression and all of that is that then creates this habit of negativity.
Tegan Trovato
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
And what I mean by that is this habit of negativity is, okay, so Tegan, I’m going take a pause here. So I just want to answer this again. So I’m going to come back, right? So, yep. All right. So let me start. So one thing builds on this concept of what I call the negativity piece is that our brains, because we give three times more psychological weight to the negative, that becomes a well-worn neural pathway.
Tegan Trovato
Yep. So we’ll edit and restart. Yep. Great.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
That well-worn neural pathway then becomes habit. People then confuse habit with reality.
Tegan Trovato
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
And that is very powerful. And so for me, it’s optimism. It’s practicing scanning for the good. At first, when people do that, it’s going to feel weird. Choosing a more optimistic perspective starts to feel like, that’s fake. But when people start to understand that why is the negative view always the correct one? And guess what? If you were to go forward or backward and remember all the things you thought were going to be so bad, some of them might have been painful. But usually it’s not as bad as we thought and oftentimes we get into a better place. So it really is practice as often as you can celebrating and scanning for the good. It’s going to feel awkward at first, but that will create much more peace over time.
Tegan Trovato
Mm. Yeah, and to your point, it builds a whole other muscle neural pathway. For our clients who are big ruminators, I know I make that same suggestion where I’m like, that’s fine. Let your brain run amok on how bad it’s gonna go. And then consciously choose to spend at least 30 seconds imagining it goes great. I…
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Yes, and that is it. That’s it right. You’ve just said it perfectly because now we have research that says the optimism is not just the feeling you get when something goes well. It is the fuel needed. You’re putting something in the quantum field, however you want to frame it. That’s something that could be a positive future state. But guess what? Now we know from a research perspective that positive vision is much more likely to happen. But you have to be able to imagine it first.
Tegan Trovato
Right. And let’s talk about the nervous system results for a sec, right? So when I have clients pause and I’ll say, okay, now retell that as if it goes perfectly. What do you feel in your body? They’re like, I just felt my body relax, or I just took that breath or, know, so we know it has real physiological changes on us, our thoughts do. And some of which we can really skew to our benefit and give ourselves peace.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Exactly. Yes. Yeah.
Tegan Trovato
Even if it’s 30 seconds of a nervous system break, which leaders will sometimes kill for in times of change, right? So what a beautiful thing. Yeah, yeah, well, there you go. Yeah.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Exactly, exactly. And just remembering, yes, remembering the beauty of that. Yes, and thank you for sharing that. That is, you just explained it perfectly.
Tegan Trovato
Thank you. Well, at this point, Dr. Moran, is there anything else you’d want to share with our listeners? Any parting advice or thoughts as we’re concluding our time together?
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Yeah, so trust the wisdom of emotions and feelings. And so there’s nothing wrong with feelings of concern or, and usually if you have them as a leader, you use that to understand how your people may react. But so it’s not about labeling something as bad. It’s not about not feeling something. It is trusting the wisdom of you and your team. Engaging in conversation, two-way conversation, and hopefully the book will give people more confidence, including the words to say, when they are in one of those difficult conversations. So you don’t have to have made it easy, you don’t have to spend a lot of time, you know, when you’re already feeling uncomfortable trying to figure it out. You can lift and use and hopefully create a better conversation with you and your folks when emotions might run.
Tegan Trovato
Thank you. I just want to say for those of you listening, you have to get a copy of the book. And Dr. Moran, just big compliments to you for being able to take as much as you know about science, which is breathtaking, and distill it into something that’s really reachable and applicable. I really appreciated how you modeled the messaging in the book for leaders to be able to literally take a sentence that I would pay if every leader would use in an opening of a tough conversation.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Hmm.
Tegan Trovato
So you’ve just really handed us rich resources and sample language. And I want to thank you too for your partnership with Bright Arrow and working with clients together. It’s just been such a pleasure. They’ve benefited so much from your expertise. So thank you for that. And listeners, if you need a speaker for your next event.
Dr. Moran is where it’s at. She brings this to audiences in a way that is energizing and intellectual, which most leaders want a mix of. So, so shameless, you know, bias plug from my part. can’t help myself. So, yeah, thank you again for being with us today.
Dr. Elizabeth Moran
Thank you, Teagan. Really. Yeah, it’s an honor. I look forward to our continued partnership. Thanks so much for the opportunity.
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