Map out and clarify thinking amidst uncertainty and confusion, enabling others to shift their thinking and make headway.
The TransforMap is a guide for making headway through the uncertainty, confusing feelings and conflicting thoughts which accompany significant change. It is a basic structure for conversation with yourself or another person embarked on change.
Changes can seem pretty messy because we have so many conflicting thoughts, feelings and urges going on in us at the same time. When someone says, “Things are changing”, it is generally worth asking what they mean by that. Over the years, thousands of answers to that question have seemed to emanate from three different and very distinct ‘Voices.’ Each voice has a particular language and an affect associated with it.
All three are at work at once, as if three different people are talking inside our head. Hence the confusion. At any time, one voice will be dominant. Usually people begin with Voice 1, Ending, move to Voice 2, ReInvention, and wind up in Voice 3, Realisation. While there is an overall sequence, we are wherever we are at any moment. So the TransforMap may be entered wherever your interest or feeling or need demands.
Each voice has an emotional expression, a thinking expression and an action expression. Therefore, there are nine domains on the map. Each represents a legitimate and necessary point of view and must be heard, fully, to genuinely complete a transition. Whatever comes up has a place to fit and a positive reason to be there. Everything is helpful because everything is real. There are no ‘bad’ or ‘good’ voices. Just voices. When, individually or in teams, we are caught up in the struggle with a transition, the map takes all the feelings and thoughts and activity and gives each a place to rest. It all fits. The sooner they are all heard, the sooner we move on to the rest of our life.
For those who are facing a change in the future, the map is a great planning and awareness tool. The map predicts the type of material which will come from ourselves and others when the change hits. We also remember the processes of past changes and learn what our natural responses are so we know them when they reappear.
For those leading a change, the map is predictive of what to expect and helps the leader:
- locate where he or she is in the process
- move along as quickly as possible
- develop empathetic personal stories
- appreciate the dilemma of those who have not yet engaged the change
- develop a creative communications plan for the whole system
This is a starting place to understand the domains of the three voices and use them effectively in conversations with another person or a group, reducing waste and angst, building spirit and vitality, and moving business and lives along.
Acknowledgememts
Education Scotland has licensed the Transition Leadership tools and the Three Horizons toolkit for the specific and sole purpose of improving Scottish Education and the partner services that support it. We are delighted to have partnered the following people and organisations in this venture: Executive Arts Inc.; James R. Ewing, ForthRoad Ltd.; International Futures Forum and Graham Leicester.
