Riders, elephants and paths: Three steps to navigate change leadership

“Change is hard.” 

We’ve heard this phrase time and time again, and this year’s hurricane season has certainly tested both our change management skills and our resilience. But stories of neighbors helping neighbors, organizations quickly jumping in with support and businesses adapting have emerged in droves. There’s a lot to celebrate in that. 

So how are these leaders successfully navigating this seemingly relentless flow of change? They have focused on what they can control, strategically resolving logistical and operational hurdles while also addressing the emotional and psychological needs of both themselves and their teams.

Psychologists and behavioral scientists have long explained that our minds have two distinct parts: a rational side and an emotional side. In his book "The Happiness Hypothesis," Jonathan Haidt uses the analogy of an “Elephant” (our emotional side, responsible for instinct, impulse and immediate gratification) and a “Rider” (our rational side, the planner who tries to steer the “Elephant” toward long-term goals). While the Rider seems to be in control, the Elephant often subconsciously takes over in moments of stress or fatigue. This insight is crucial for understanding change: Even if team members intellectually understand the shift, their emotional side might resist it. 

Therefore, when navigating change, leaders must invest in these three key areas to align both the Elephant and the Rider with a clear and supportive path forward that is free of obstacles.

Direct the Rider

The rational Rider likes to analyze, plan and strategize, but in times of stress, such as after a hurricane, this overthinking can lead to decision-fatigue and analysis-paralysis. Your role is to relieve the burden of too much information.

Your action plan:

• Avoid complexity through setting measurable, realistic, time-bound goals. Try Monday morning meetings to go around the room and ask, “what are your ‘must-do’ priorities for this week, and your ‘would-like-to-do’ priorities for this week?” Your role is to ensure those priorities are in alignment with larger strategic objectives and that everyone sets doable “ bite sized” goals.
• Increase understanding. During a team meeting, explain simply what the change is, why it’s happening and how you are supporting them with what they need to navigate that change.

Motivate the elephant

Heightened emotional responses to significant disruption — such as fear, fatigue and uncertainty — understandably undermine connection to and engagement with work. While the Rider understands logically the realities of the challenge at hand, the Elephant needs to feel a reason to act. 

Your action plan:

• Focus on storytelling. Team members are motivated by personal stories that highlight how their efforts have had a positive impact on others.
• Celebrate small wins. Encourage a practice in which everyone ends the day by reflecting on, “what is one thing I want to celebrate today?” or in which you gather the team at the end of the week to shout-out each other’s wins. The act of building the positive emotions within the team broadens everyone’s perspectives and resilience to handle the challenges they are experiencing.
• Give support. Ask your team members what they need and brainstorm how you might connect them with that resource.

Shape the path

Effective change requires not only engaging the Rider and the Elephant but also shaping the "Path" — the environment and circumstances that support progress. In one famous study, simply changing the size of popcorn containers in a movie theater caused people to eat larger amounts of popcorn, regardless of how hungry they were or how good the popcorn tasted. Leaders can apply the same lesson: Simply alter the environment to drive behavior changes that don’t rely on willpower or conscious choice.

Your action plan:

• Simplify your processes. Take a step back and reflect, “how are we over-complicating things?” And, “which steps in the process might be redundant?”
• Eliminate obstacles. Ask, “If there was one thing that got in the way of you accomplishing these goals we’ve set, what would it be?” Then build a plan to overcome that obstacle.
• Give control. The response from the Elephant is often driven from a lack of control — give your team members ownership over a task, project or workflow.

In times of crisis and change (whether within our control or without), the combination of direction, motivation and a well-designed environment enables teams to navigate uncertainty with confidence. Bravo to our community’s leaders who are leveraging this roadmap of aligning the Rider, motivating the Elephant and shaping a clear Path.