The stimulus for change may vary depending upon the situation, but often a loss of energy around even the most successful initiative suggests that a change of direction may be in order. It’s something Ralph and Bill are experiencing now with one of Emergent’s popular programs, and they’re discovering that while change is often difficult, it can result in renewed focus and reinvigorated passion. Listen and learn more. What change might you consider in your organization, your team, or your life?
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Bill Berthel:
Welcome to the Get Emergent Podcast. The Get Emergent Podcast guides leaders to creatively strengthen relationships and improve performance of their leadership and those that they lead. We like to provide concepts and ideas that you can turn into pragmatic experiments to help you develop your higher potential in your work and in your leadership. Hopefully you’ll find some better practices to apply to your work. I’m Bill Berthel.
Ralph Simone:
And I’m Ralph Simone.
Bill Berthel:
So, Ralph When to Change?
Ralph Simone:
Well, you know, it’s an interesting topic because I think sometimes we wait too long to change and we miss the window. And you know, we’ve made a major change that many of our listeners may not know with our flagship offering for 2025. And we were wrestling with it because it was working. The challenge of breaking something that’s working. But I think one of the things, the indicator for me was we were losing a little energy towards it. So that seemed to be an indicator to start looking at changing it as you’re beginning to lose the energy, not after you’ve lost the energy.
Bill Berthel:
Yeah. So it’s interesting, right? This program, our LeadFORWARD forward has folks giving us really good feedback and impactful experiences. Really nothing wrong with it.
Ralph Simone:
No, nothing wrong with it. It was an idea that we had come up with almost 20 years ago. Didn’t get it to implementation until about 15 years ago. But I haven’t been more excited about it since the first year. This year because we have completely revamped it. And I know we joke around about changing things up, but part of it is to keep it interesting for us.
Bill Berthel:
Absolutely.
Ralph Simone:
Because if it’s interesting and energizing for us, that will be contagious for the participants. And the other thing is that it was research and feedback and listening combined with what we know. And I think that’s a formula and a recipe for a really high impact experience.
Bill Berthel:
Yeah, absolutely. And what’s coming up for me is that there needs to be an appetite and some energy to facilitate the change. This isn’t something that we’re just going to wave a magic wand and poof, there’s something new. There’s work to do.
Ralph Simone:
There is work to do. And I think part of what re-energized us was the vision we had for what was possible with the new design from an impact standpoint. And I think that vision inspired us enough and energized us enough to be willing to put in the work for the redesign. Because there’s not just designing it, there’s a reeducation of the marketplace. There’s a different way to put it out there. And I think the vision for the bigger impact was what re-energized me to make the change.
Bill Berthel:
I think most product or service innovation, there has to be a little bit of audacity to envision it differently.
Ralph Simone:
Well, it was interesting because I think we were accused of having a lot of audacity to envision it in the first place at all.
Ralph Simone:
You know, this idea that there is a better way to lead and live, which is holistic, and which taps into these four levels of energy, starting with spiritual, physical, mental, and then emotional. And I think having the audacity, but just intuitively knowing there’s a better way. You can make a huge impact without burning yourself out. And we kind of stumbled on this idea of work life integration and integrated intelligence, where we’re tapping into on a regular basis these four very powerful sources of energy.
Bill Berthel:
What I’ve noticed for the participants of every cohort is that these folks really have an appetite for their own change. They really say yes to this commitment because they want to do something different than their leadership.
Ralph Simone:
Yeah. And we talk about it as transformational change. And if we break the word transform down, it’s just change in formation. And that’s both large and small. Changing small things in your thinking and small steps that have a ripple or exponential impact. Or there could be large things that you’re changing a major paradigm shift that creates a whole new industry through innovation. But it’s this change in formation. But it starts with you. It starts with us individually.
Bill Berthel:
Yeah. Love that. I love that. So there needs to be an appetite for change. There has to be this kind of audacity to have a view of something very different. We put some work into that. As you said, it’s not just changing a program, but there’s all the communication and education around that as well. What’s next? What happens then?
Ralph Simone:
Well, then you got to take action. I mean, there needs to be action, there needs to be steps taken to bring it. There’s the vision. But between where we are in the implementation of that vision, there’s a gap. There’s always a gap between the current state and the future state. So it’s taking action steps. And one of the things that’s come out, almost a happy coincidence, is the way that we have redesigned this through the action steps we’ve taken, is that we now have a national or perhaps a global audience, when before this offering was only regional. And it really fulfills part of our purpose. And our values that we want to make a contribution to a larger audience. And this has really re-energized and excited us that we have structured it now such that we can open it to a much broader audience.
Bill Berthel:
Absolutely. So when you’re mentioning that kind of that gap between current state and desired future state, I’m, reminded of William Bridges s work in his book Transitions where he talks about so many of us and probably me included, quite honestly. We want a quick bridge over that gap. We want some type of easy button. Right. We want to go from the thing we’re doing to the next thing. Right.
Ralph Simone:
Yeah. It’s not always that easy. As a matter of fact, in the book there’s a letting go period. So we had to let go of the success of the past design. Then we’ve spent the last few months in what he might call the neutral zone.
Bill Berthel:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Ralph Simone:
Almost incubating and allowing ideas to kind of percolate up before we moved into his third stage, which I think is the new beginning.
Bill Berthel:
Yeah, the creative zone into the new beginning.
Ralph Simone:
Yeah. And I think this really supports a lot of what we do in the LeadFORWARD process is you’ve got to have the space and the time for these ideas to come through you. And there are action steps, but it is not instantaneous when you take on something this large of a change.
Bill Berthel:
Yeah, there’s risk and change. Right. I think there’s sometimes barriers that stop us from entering change.
Ralph Simone:
Well, couldn’t work. It’s a possibility. Certainly we don’t hold that in mind from an attention standpoint or it would work differently. And so there is always that possibility. But energetically, I don’t think that’s as much of a risk because I’ve been really re-energized. We are changing the opening activities around some of the shadow work that we’ve talked about in a previous podcast. We’ve upgraded the success planning pad. Very excited about that. We’ve got yoga and meditation to build in these practices that speak to all. I have not been as re-energized by this. I had somebody ask me; you’re getting pretty old to have all this energy. And I said, no, this is like a rebirth. This is an opportunity. And I think our energy will spill over to the energy of the participants. That the holistic way that we can guide them and walk alongside them in their LeadFORWARD journey.
Bill Berthel:
I’m excited that it’s now a weeklong retreat instead of the three overnighters we had and that we’re walking alongside these leaders for 18 months now instead of just 12.
Ralph Simone:
Yeah. And I think both of those were feedback from the participants. Yeah, they loved overnight retreats, but they wanted to get to know individuals in the court at a deeper level, and they wanted to have this sense of team so that they could, beyond the, what used to be 12 months and now 18 months, could have a mastermind group that extended as a support network of like minds working in harmony together towards a common objective, transforming and scaling their leadership, which is unbelievable. And the reason we went to 18 from 12 is people felt like they were just kind of catching fire. And then, it stopped. And so many people extended their coaching. So instead of doing it on an individual basis, we’re extending it to 18 months for the entire cohort.
Bill Berthel:
Yeah, it is incredibly exciting, not just for our energy, but this first cohort is going to energize one another at a different level. And that’s going to be just so much fun to be part of with them.
Ralph Simone:
One of our partners and key stakeholder this process, Troy Evans up at VanderKamp. We have collectively envisioned that this retreat will put Central New York on the map for how a retreat is intended to be planned for, designed, and executed. And to me, that is not to put us on the map so much, but to have something that will be that impactful is exciting to be a small part of.
Bill Berthel:
Beautiful. Well, Ralph thanks for talking about change. Thanks for sharing your excitement and energy about LeadFORWARD 2025 being a new, improved redesign.
Ralph Simone:
Join us for 2025. Whether you’ve been through it or not, you won’t be sorry.
Bill Berthel:
Awesome. And, folks, thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode and that you’re looking forward to more. You can always listen to new podcasts here two times every month or wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you picked up something, you’re going to apply here to your leadership and work. If you’re interested in the newly redesigned LeadFORWARD program, just let us know. Reach out to support@getemergent.com or directly to Ralph or I. Thank you.
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