Fear, Change and Learning

Change is an inevitable part of life, and work is no exception. I would like to make some links between fear, change and learning that can be applied to work and management.

Change is necessary to learn anything. Routine by definition does not involve change. Change requires breaking with routine. Whilst work does involve routine, it also requires reacting to change and being proactive to manage change.

When I was managing a team of trainers, I had to give feedback to one of the trainers that their performance was not good enough and that I could not continue with their services. I was very anxious and afraid before giving this feedback. Doing anything new often involves confronting fear and anxiety, but I have discovered that reflecting on the actual experience after the event can sometimes lead to the thought, “Why was I so fearful and anxious?” The actual experience is often not as bad as expected and there can be a sense of achievement from confronting fear. In her book and CD “Feel the Fear and do it Anyway”, Susan Jeffers states that the only way to overcome fear is to face it. I’ve probably listened to her CD over 12 times in the car on the way to business meetings. I think there is a lot of wisdom in what she says. In the situation with that trainer, I learned that it’s best to give bad news near the start of the interview and leave time for the person to take in the information before saying anything else. It is a perfectly natural tendency to try to soften the bad news by over justifying the decision, but this is as much from personal fear as thinking what’s best for the recipient.

I wish I had discovered this fact about fear earlier in my life. I was always so afraid of new experiences, particularly if they involved meeting and talking to strangers.

I think that learning new things might be slower for people with AS because we seek comfort and security from our rigid routines and these routines do not allow much opportunity to experiment and try new things.

What about reflecting on when you recently did something different from your routine at work. What did you think and how did you feel, before, during and after the event? When I talk to non-AS people about this, they have told me that they can feel excited rather than anxious before they meet someone new or try something different. If we could only turn anxiety to excitement, then perhaps we could face these new situations with more confidence, and also speed up the learning process.

Finally, I would add a note of caution about trying to take on too much change as an adult with AS. I made a poor decision at college to train as a mathematics teacher. During my probationary year I noticed that I was getting more and more stressed and unhappy. I was drinking more and not sleeping well. Eventually I did begin to realise that it had something to do with the level of change associated with managing classrooms of unpredictable teenagers. I was way out of my comfort zone and it was risking mental illness such as depression. Fortunately I changed jobs just in time for a career in IT. This still required a lot of social interaction, but not as much as teaching.

I like the learning model that states that we start from a position of being unconsciously incompetent. As we acquire some awareness of our incompetence, we move to a position of conscious incompetence. Following a period of training or self-study, we can move to a position of conscious competence, and then through a period of practice, reflection and consolidation we can become unconsciously competent. When I made that poor decision to train as a teacher, I was unconsciously incompetent in terms of my social abilities and awareness of my limitations when it came to change associated with social interactions.