If you’ve taken even a single management seminar, you’ve heard about how people hate change. You’re warned that no matter how terrible the problem you’re solving, your staff will likely cling to the way we’ve always done things and resist the new way.
But we don’t just resist change when it’s imposed from outside. We often put blinders on to making changes ourselves. Paula Caproni taught one of the most popular MBA classes when I was at Michigan, Interpersonal Skills in Management. In her syllabus, she writes:

Management research indicates that developing self-awareness has several advantages: personal growth, career development, and an enhanced ability to understand and have empathy with others. In their studies of managerial and executive derailment, the Center for Creative Leadership found that successful managers: (1) understand their values, personal styles, and strengths and weaknesses; (2) know the impact of these values, styles, and strengths and weaknesses on their ability to effectively work with others and achieve their goals; and (3) are quick to reflect upon and learn from their own experiences.

Despite these advantages, we often resist opportunities to increase our self-awareness. We try to protect our self-esteem. We fear that learning something new about ourselves will be painful or may require us to change our treasured and habitual ways of seeing, thinking, and behaving. We may think that we already know ourselves well enough. Or we may not want to take the time out of our busy schedules to engage in self-reflection — like the busy woodcutter who never takes the time to sharpen the saw and eventually loses the ability to cut wood. In short, developing a willingness and ability to engage in self-reflection, is a critical leadership skill that is not easily learned yet reaps many rewards.

Imagine you’re walking down the street and you realize you have a sharp little stone in your shoe, painfully poking into your foot. Do you consciously work to ignore it, or convince yourself that it’s not so bad? Or do you stop and take the stone out?
Paula’s saying that professionally, the most common answer is resisting acknowledging the stone is there, which is the first step in taking action to improve your situation.
There’s comfort in the familiar, even if it’s not ideal. Anyone who’s ever started a new job has probably nervously wondered whether it’s going to work out, whether you’re actually qualified, whether you’ll flop.
Making a change takes work. If you want a new job, you’ll need to decide what you want to do, update your resume, investigate companies, make connections at the places you’d like to work … and if it all goes well, you’ll have to prepare for an interview, negotiate a new salary, maybe relocate.
But even the Brady Bunch knows that there’s an upside to change.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyooALwfxO8]
Gratuitous Brady Bunch references aside, change comes easier for some people than for others. Some people embrace change while some resist it. A psychology article explains:

A neophile is a person with a very strong attraction to novelty. Neophiles tend to get bored easily with old things, whether they are traditions, daily routines or objects. Neophiles clamour to get the latest technology – mobile phones, computers, software etc. Neophiles like trying out new ideas. Neophobes are the opposite: they hate change. They often hate neophiles because they bring about change more quickly. Which are you?
An innovative new study (don’t be scared) by German researchers Michael X. Cohen and Dr. Bernd Weber suggests that the difference between these two personality types is how well developed the connections are between two specific parts of the brain: the ventral striatum and the hippocampus.

If you’re thinking about your ideal life, it will help to understand where you fall on that spectrum. If you know you’d rather go to your favorite restaurant every Saturday and order the same thing, and your idea of a perfect vacation is returning every year to your parents’ cabin, you will likely have a harder time making big changes than someone who takes pleasure in exploring new restaurants and new countries.
I used to get so annoyed when my dad would complain about my hometown but refuse to leave. Then he’d come visit me in a city full of great restaurants and only want to go to chains they have back home or to one of the handful of independents I’d managed to drag him to before. Then I recognized my dad as a neophobe. He loves his routine and finds comfort in the familiar. To me, discovering new things is fun and exciting but to him it’s stressful.
So if I was my dad and thinking about making a life change, I might look for something that has some sense of the familiar — I might move to a different city but in the same state so the culture, climate and geography all felt comfortable. If I was looking for a job, I might want it to be something that’s close to things I’ve done before, or maybe a place where a good friend already works. If I was starting a new relationship, maybe it would be with a friend of a friend, so we’d know some of the same people and have some things in common.
For me, picking up and moving to New York City was a thrill. Switching into a brand new function at a new company challenged me, which I liked. Exploring new neighborhoods is a fun way to spend a weekend afternoon. Not hard to peg me as a neophile.
For me that means the challenge is to avoid the temptation to change just for change’s sake. Staying put long enough to really understand a company, or living in a place long enough to form deep friendships, requires forsaking the novelty of the new a little.
Recently I’ve been seeing things from my dad’s perspective more. I understand the appeal of having a favorite restaurant where you see the same waitress every Saturday and she knows you like extra dressing for your salad, even if you forget to ask. So interestingly, one of the changes I think I need to make in my life is changing a little less and putting down roots more.
Are you a neophobe or a neophile? How does that influence your life decisions? How could you be more comfortable making necessary changes in your life?