Workplace MVP LIVE from SHRM 2021: Barbara Trautlein, Change Catalysts
Barbara Trautlein, Principal and Founder of Change Catalysts, joined host Jamie Gassmann on the first day of the SHRM 2021 conference. Barbara shared her history in change leadership, the CQ® System for Developing Change Intelligence® she pioneered, the neuroscience of change, and much more. Workplace MVP is underwritten and presented by R3 Continuum and produced by the Minneapolis-St.Paul Studio of Business RadioX®.
This show was originally broadcast live from the 2021 SHRM Annual Conference held at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Barbara Trautlein, Ph.D., Principal and Founder, Change Catalysts
Barbara is Principal and Founder of Change Catalysts, the author of the best-selling book Change Intelligence: Use the Power of CQ to Lead Change that Sticks, and the originator of the CQ® System for Developing Change Intelligence®. For over 25 years, she has coached executives, trained leaders at all levels, certified change agents, and facilitated mission-critical transformations – achieving bottom-line business and powerful leadership results for clients. She is gifted at sharing strategies and tactics that are accessible, actionable, and immediately applicable.
In 2015, Barbara was recognized as the Change Management Consultant of the Year by the Association of Change Management Professionals-Midwest Region.
In addition to her “hands-on” work with clients, she is a recognized expert, author, and researcher on leadership and change management best practices. It is this blend of research and real-world expertise that has made her an in-demand speaker at conferences in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Barbara holds a doctorate in Organizational Psychology from the University of Michigan.
Change Catalysts
Change Catalysts’ mission is to catalyze change successful and sustainable change by partnering with clients to plan, execute, and enhance organizational, team, and individual performance, providing high impact, results-focused, and customized solutions through their deep expertise in Change Management and Leadership Development.
Change Catalysts is the home of the CQ System for Developing Change Intelligence. They use our innovative, proprietary models and methodologies to help clients lead change more effectively, both individually and collectively. Services and tools include the CQ Assessment, CQ Workshops, and Webinars, and the CQ Certification Program, which is approved for credits by the ACMP, HRCI, and PMI.
They have been in business for over 25 years, and their tremendous amount of repeat business speaks to their high quality and customer focus. Clients served include Ascension Healthcare, BP, Cisco, Ford, Steel Dynamics, and ThyssenKrupp.
Change Catalysts, LLC is a Certified Woman-Owned Business.
About Workplace MVP
Every day, around the world, organizations of all sizes face disruptive events and situations. Within those workplaces are everyday heroes in human resources, risk management, security, business continuity, and the C-suite. They don’t call themselves heroes though. On the contrary, they simply show up every day, laboring for the well-being of employees in their care, readying the workplace for and planning responses to disruption. This show, Workplace MVP, confers on these heroes the designation they deserve, Workplace MVP (Most Valuable Professionals), and gives them the forum to tell their story. As you hear their experiences, you will learn first-hand, real-life approaches to readying the workplace, responses to crisis situations, and overcoming challenges of disruption. Visit our show archive here.
Workplace MVP Host Jamie Gassmann
In addition to serving as the host to the Workplace MVP podcast, Jamie Gassmann is the Director of Marketing at R3 Continuum (R3c). Collectively, she has more than fourteen years of marketing experience. Across her tenure, she has experience working in and with various industries including banking, real estate, retail, crisis management, insurance, business continuity, and more. She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mass Communications with special interest in Advertising and Public Relations and a Master of Business Administration from Paseka School of Business, Minnesota State University.
R3 Continuum
R3 Continuum is a global leader in workplace behavioral health and security solutions. R3c helps ensure the psychological and physical safety of organizations and their people in today’s ever-changing and often unpredictable world. Through their continuum of tailored solutions, including evaluations, crisis response, executive optimization, protective services, and more, they help organizations maintain and cultivate a workplace of wellbeing so that their people can thrive. Learn more about R3c at www.r3c.com.
Company website | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting live from the SHRM 2021 Conference at the Las Vegas Convention Center, it’s time for Workplace MVP. Brought to you by R3 Continuum, a global leader in workplace behavioral health, crisis, and security solutions. Now, here’s your host.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:22] Hey, everyone. Jamie Gassmann here, your host of Workplace MVP. And I’m broadcasting from the SHRM 2021 Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. And with me today, I have our first guest of the show, Barbara Trautlein from Change Catalyst. Welcome to the show.
Barbara Trautlein: [00:00:38] Thank you so much.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:40] And so, Barbara, can you tell us a little bit about you, and Change Catalysts, and what your organization does, who you work with?
Barbara Trautlein: [00:00:46] Yeah. Absolutely. So, at Change Catalyst, we’re the home of the CQ System for Developing Change Intelligence. So, we help organizations. We have people, teams, and organizations to lead change with greater confidence and competence and less stress and frustration. And so, we are a combination of a change management and leadership development firm. So, we work with, you know, many large global corporations down to nonprofits.
Barbara Trautlein: [00:01:15] I got started down this journey, my first day on the real job, I was part of a consulting team that was working at a steel mill that was in bankruptcy. So, I was 25 years old, and I get up to introduce myself. It’s a room full of all men. They’re all about 20, 30, or 40 years older than me. And to a man, they’d worked in that mill their entire careers. And I talked about how we’re going to partner together to transform them to high performance, total quality, self-managed teams.
Barbara Trautlein: [00:01:44] I look in the back of the room, a gentleman stands up, 6’5″, 250 pounds like the Hulk, stomps to the middle of the room and says, “We’re steelworkers and we don’t listen to girls.” So, that was my first day on the job as a change leader. That’s what got me down this path of equipping and empowering my fellow change leaders, and probably everybody who’s listening.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:02:02] That’s a fascinating story. Wow. And a little bit intimidating, I’m sure. But you probably held to your message and you were like, “No. I’ve got this. I’m fully confident.”
Barbara Trautlein: [00:02:14] Well, actually, it was very, very interesting because, of course, I had a lot of empathy for him, actually, right? Because the mill was already in bankruptcy, it was the only job they knew, it was the only job in town. They desperately didn’t want the doors to close forever. So, I had a lot empathy for the targets of the change. However, I also knew right from that first day on the job, there was a heck of a lot of fear, threat, intimidation in the change leader standing in front of the room. And that’s what got me down my now 30 plus year path.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:02:42] Wow. And usually that is the unknown of change, right? That kind of, you know, prevents people from being a little bit more accepting of it. And they kind of get a little bit more of that fear steps in which kind of overrides some of maybe their more natural thinking about the change that’s occurring.
Barbara Trautlein: [00:02:59] Absolutely. And as we now know from the neuroscience of change, to our brain, change equals pain. Literally, when neuroscientists place electrodes on people’s brains and introduce them to a change, the same neuro receptors fire. When we get introduced to a change is when we feel physical pain. I wish I had that information 30 years ago. It’s really fascinating, absolutely.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:03:21] That’s fascinating. So, now, you were one of the pre-conference speakers today at SHRM, so talk to us a little bit about what did you present on. I’m sure it had changed in the title.
Barbara Trautlein: [00:03:29] It indeed did. Yeah. So, I talked about the fact that I’m sure everyone listening has heard of EQ or emotional intelligence. I talk about CQ or change intelligence. And I believe that we all need to be much smarter about how we’re leading ourselves and others through change. So, that’s what my pre-conference workshop is all about.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:03:48] Wonderful. And so, if you were going to look at the curriculum of your presentation and you had to identify, like, if I wanted these three things to be taken away by this audience, what would those three things be?
Barbara Trautlein: [00:03:58] To understand change intelligence is the awareness of our style leading change and the ability to adapt to be optimally effective across people in situations. So, what I wanted people to walk away with was an understanding of their own style of leading change, their strengths and their gaps, because what can we really change is only ourselves. So, start with ourselves. Like Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see.”
Barbara Trautlein: [00:04:21] Then, how can we use that information to build change intelligence teams and organizations? Because HR plays such a mission critical role. So, I wanted people to walk away with what’s the biggest frustration leading change? The number one topic is overcoming resistance to change. I talked about how can we reframe resistance from our enemy to our ally and use it as a powerful source of information that, again, we can use to adapt our style so we can give people what they need to get it, to want it, and to be able to do it. In other words, collaborate to lead change together.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:04:56] Wow. And as we know, the one thing that’s always a guarantee is that there’s going to be change.
Barbara Trautlein: [00:05:01] Absolutely.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:05:02] Especially over the last year. We’ve seen a lot of that constant change. So, I’m sure your presentation was absolutely fascinating to sit through and really appreciate you being with us on the show today.
Barbara Trautlein: [00:05:11] Thank you so much. Absolutely. And thank you so much for asking. Yes.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:05:18] Absolutely. And so, for those who want to be in touch with you? How would they be able to get a hold of you?
Barbara Trautlein: [00:05:22] They can absolutely go to my website, which is changecatalysts – with an S – .com. And there’s lots of free resources there. So, download two chapters of my book, see TED-like keynote talk, and then they can reach out and get in touch with me directly.
Barbara Trautlein: [00:05:40] And so, I’m really thrilled to work with the HR community, because so often what happens is that change is planned. It’s about to be rolled out. It gets thrown over the wall to human resources to communicate about, to train about. And HR professionals see so readily what the landmines are. And so, how can they, again, help avoid those landmines for their organizations? How can they get a seat at the table earlier? I think by becoming more change intelligent themselves, HR professionals can then be the light that transforms their organization to be more change capable.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:06:18] Awesome. Wonderful. Thank you again. It’s great chatting with you.
Barbara Trautlein: [00:06:21] Thank you so much for having me.
