Examples in Change Management Challenges
Example 1: Stakeholder Resistance
A project sponsor feels attacked by user complaints.
Immersed response: “They’re sabotaging my project.”
Self-distanced response: “If I was an outsider, I’d notice people are afraid of losing control.”
Leads to better engagement strategy.
Example 2: Change Leader Under Pressure
Deadline slipping, team overwhelmed.
Immersed: “Everything is going wrong; we’re failing.”
Distanced: “If I was analysing this as a case study, I’d say the issue is unclear decision rights.”
Clarifies governance instead of attempting emotional firefighting.
Example 3: Executive Alignment
Immersed activity: Executives arguing about the solution.
Self-distanced technique: “Let’s imagine we are external advisers paid to solve this—what would we recommend?”
NB Shifts the dynamic from ego to collective intelligence.
Summary
Self-distancing is a powerful, practical tool for improving emotional regulation, clarity and decision-making during organisational change. It helps leaders and teams step out of reactivity and into thoughtful, adaptive leadership.
Some techniques are self-distancing:
1. Take a physical and/or mental break to disrupt the immediate intensity of the situation so that you are able to reframe it.
2. Prioritise tasks in a 2 x 2 matrix, with columns including urgent and less urgent and rows including important and less important. Allocated tasks in the less important and less urgent are given a lower priority ranking than those tasks allocated in other parts of the matrix.
3. Watch yourself from a distance and/or the future. This will change your focus to a more abstract setting so you are able to better handle the immediate negative emotional and psychological reaction
“… By creating your own temporal space, you're less likely to focus on the immediate, concrete characteristics of the current situation and see the event and its consequences in a broader context…”
4. Use of language
“…allows people of all ages to create ‘distance’ between themselves (as they exist) and the topic of discussions…”
Speech can allow distance between the real world and imaginary, hypothetical scenarios.
Summary
Through self-distancing, you can gain space between yourself and your immediate surroundings. Through this space, you will be able to gain new perspective and control (emotional and cognitive).