306. The Change Playbook: Adapting and Thriving with Huw Thomas

Change rarely fails because people don’t care; it fails because we misunderstand what drives behavior. With author and change leadership expert Huw Thomas, we dig into the real forces underneath stalled transformations: loss aversion, identity threats, and the quiet stories we tell ourselves that keep us clinging to the status quo. From childhood curiosity to adult routines, we unpack how our wiring prioritizes safety, why we catastrophize the unlikely, and how a few practical shifts can restore agency and momentum.

Huw shares a candid look at navigating personal and professional change—moving countries, facing a health crisis, and reframing setbacks as stepping stones. We explore the messy middle of change and the identity tension it creates, including the classic “expert with the legendary spreadsheet” who resists a new system because it threatens who they are at work. Instead of erasing the old self, we talk about upgrading to version 2.0: preserving dignity, building new capability, and making the future identity feel real through micro-wins, visibility, and support.

You’ll learn concrete tools: pattern interrupts to test assumptions, emotional labeling to reduce intensity, future-self framing to re-anchor perspective, and success mapping that pairs a vivid destination with the true cost of inaction. We also preview why organizational change is so hard—scale, diversity, influence networks—and why technology and processes don’t create value until humans believe they can, want to, and know how to use them. If you’re ready to stop focusing on barriers and start steering toward the gaps, this conversation offers a clear, humane roadmap.

If this sparked an insight, share it with one person who needs it, hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app or YouTube, and leave a review to help more leaders find the show. What’s one small behavior you’ll change this week, and what support will make it stick?

🌐 Connect with Huw:
• Website: https://huwthomas.com.au/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomashuw/

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Change Feels So Hard
• 0:57 Introducing Huw Thomas And Focus
• 2:10 From Logistics To Human Behavior
• 5:00 Childhood Moves And Loss Aversion
• 7:35 Health Crisis And Perspective Shift
• 9:25 Fear, Catastrophizing, And Stories
• 13:00 Pattern Interrupts And Rational Checks
• 15:30 Openness To Experience And Curiosity
• 21:09 Identity Threats And The Messy Middle
• 25:06 Upgrading The Self To Version 2.0
• 29:15 Time, Novelty, And Memory In Change
• 34:56 Practical Reframes And Future Self
• 36:56 Two Hands On The Wheel Metaphor
• 38:36 How To Start If You’re Stuck
• 43:41 Organizational Change Teaser
• 47:02 Rapid Round And Resources
• 50:28 Closing Reflections And Next Guest

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

Have you ever genuinely wanted to change something, a habit, a behavior, a way of leading and still found yourself slipping back into old patterns? Have you ever looked at someone else and thought they know what to do, so why don't they just do it? And have you ever wondered why change feels so hard, even when the intention is there. In today's episode, I'm joined by Hugh Thomas, author of How to change anything. And what this conversation really explores is a simple but uncomfortable truth, change doesn't fail because people don't care. It fails because we misunderstand what actually drives behavior. This is a conversation about what sits beneath change, capability, identity, competence, and the stories we tell ourselves about what's possible. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Huw Thomas. Hugh is an expert in the leadership of change, and he's also the author of a playbook called How to change anything. So you can imagine, that's what we're going to be talking about today. Many people change is scary. They find it very difficult, and they also tend to resist change. So we're going to go through all of that. You know, why is change so difficult? Why do people resist change, and what can we do about it? So without any further ado. Hugh, I'd love to hear from you. Say hello to the audience. Give us a little flavor of your background and what inspired you to do this work that you do helping other organizations and individuals manage change?

Huw Thomas: 1:44

Thanks. Mick, it's great to be here on your great podcast. I suppose. I started my career at a large consulting company working on major transformations which are enabled by technology, and I was a small fish in a big pond of big projects, often hundreds of consultants working on them, and that sort of got me into seeing what change was like on a really large scale. But what I noticed there is often in early in my career, in that environment, change was really treated like a large scale, logistical project management exercise, and that is a big part of what change is. But often I found it was the little things involved in the human interactions which either enabled change, or certain people that were great at sort of just making it happen, and certain people which would struggle with it. And often we weren't sure about how to influence those kinds of people, or a lot of people would struggle with it, influencing them. So I was always fascinated by that human side, and did a bit of study in the field as well. And a master's degree around organizational behavior and sociology and psychology and those types of things. The Behavioral Sciences piqued my interest, so I did a lot of my own reading and research in that space. And I suppose the other thing, I guess, on a personal level, just experiencing change growing up, and, you know, in my adult years as well, and seeing what it's like, I guess, to be adaptable, and what that's like, what it feels like when you say, go into a profession that you have no idea about, and how you adjust to that, and then perhaps switching careers, or taking on a new role and or working in a different location, all those kinds of changes I've sort of reflected on as a change management experience myself and how they shape me as a person, and how I adapt to that, and what's the kind of process I go through. So I always try and think about all my own thinking about change and how I drive that in organizations, but also, what do I learn from my own changes.

Mick Spiers: 3:45

Yeah, really, really interesting to hear. There's three things I'm hearing there. First, your background as a technologist. That's the background I come from as well, and I can echo back to you that in all technology projects I've ever done in my career, that the technology was the easy part, the human beings were the far more complex part. The second part that I'm picking up there is, if you address it like it's a logistical challenge that's going to be at your peril, and I think we'll need to unpack that a little bit later. And then the third one, I'm really curious about your own reflections. That's I've not heard this before, so let's talk about Huw Thomas and what you've learned about yourself when it comes to change?

Huw Thomas: 4:34

Yeah, I suppose the first and I wouldn't say I reflected heaps as a kid, but it's more when I reflected later on my childhood growing up, my family moved around a bit, and I lived in six different houses in my childhood, so it wasn't necessarily the same place, but to be honest, at the time as a kid, that was quite exciting. You move into a new house and you're like, Oh, this is all brand new, and it's fantastic, and there's a new neighborhood and new parks around the corner, and you. Neighbors, and I always found as a kid that that was a really good thing, and I think as a kid, we're often really open to change. We're open to new experiences. But as we get older, particularly as we sort of build a life for ourselves, a life that we like and good relationships and habits and routines, we tend to find it harder, because actually what change involves, and what we focus on when we get older is sacrifice and change. Once we've built up a certain degree of whatever it is, wealth, success, relationships or habits, we often start feeling like we start focusing on what Daniel Kahneman calls loss aversion, which is trying to think about what we stand to lose, or we're not trying to think about we naturally think about what we're standing to lose during change, and so we go into a protective mode. But as a kid, growing up, yeah, we love it. We love new experiences. We love a lot. I'd light up and our brains start firing. So I think that was probably the earliest experience of change as I got older. When I was in my 20s, I did what lots of Aussies do, and traveled the world, and went to America, went to the UK to live for a while, and and all of that as well, I guess, was a life changing experience, partly as a result of that, when I came back, had a few back problems, and I had a tumor in my spine was discovered, and had to have a big operation on that. And I think that was also somewhat of a transformative experience, where I sort of opened my eyes to, you know, limitations with health, and to not take health for granted. And that, I think when I came out of that operation, which was pretty epic and risky, that, you know, it was not, not to take life for granted and to really live life to the fullest. And I often, when I think back to that kind of experience and the travel and so forth, I realize that you can have experiences which change your perspective on things, and so you don't have to doesn't have to be a bad experience, doesn't have to be a life health risk experience. It could be any kind of experience which just changes your perspective. So that might be, like I said, changing your location, moving around, building new relationships, taking yourself out of your normal routines, and that really can give you a whole new perspective on things, which then adjust your behavior going forward. So that was probably a couple of the personal experiences.

Mick Spiers: 7:21

Yeah, really interesting, Huw. There's three interesting things I'm hearing here as well. The not thought of that as a kid. Quite often, I wouldn't say it's universal, but quite often, a kid will go into a change with bright eyes, like open eyes, going, Wow, this could be really interesting. And looking forward to the experience. The second part there around your own experience. I'm sorry that you went through that, but I'm glad that you came through the other end healthier and stronger And with a with a new mindset. And I was just thinking about the loss aversion, and that is certainly something we need to discuss further. People's fear of loss, depending on which research you read, it's between five to 10 times greater than their appreciation of gain and and what it means is like to put that into context, to feel as good about finding money versus losing money, you need to find$100 on the street for it to feel as good as losing $10 that's really quite crazy, but what made me think about your experience is then change is going to happen anyway, and trauma doesn't discriminate. So if we so, if we walk away around the world fearing loss of the status quo, the status quo is going to change, whether we like it or not. So do we want to lean into that, or do we just want to wait until the world slaps us in the face? Is what I was taking from how does that sit with you like this, this fear of loss, then we're fearing something that's going to change at some point in your life, anyway.

Huw Thomas: 8:59

Yeah, it's an interesting phenomenon. You're banging on with that. You also read some of the studies around it with that, what we tend to focus on. And there was this great quote, and it's sometimes attributed to it. And center the f1 driver, but I don't think it was him that said. It was someone else, but it's, it was someone's having a conversation with a racing car driver, and they said to the driver, how do you always manage to get round people on the track and find the gaps? And he said, I don't focus on the other cars and I don't focus on the barriers. If I focus on those, I hit them. If I focus on the gaps between them, I go through them. And I've always loved that quote. I think it sums up the concept of kind of avoidance versus, you know, goals. And often we focus on avoidance, which brings out that fear. We're thinking, What could go wrong here, when we're called up to step up to a new role in a job or to do something different to what we've been doing, we're always thinking about what can go wrong. I think it's an evolutionary. Mindset, a mindset that comes from 1000s of years of adaptation, where you know a change in our environment would signal a potential threat, whether we're seeing it with our eyes and it's a mysterious moving object in the distance, or it's a twig snapping behind us, or it's a bad smell, which could be a hygiene issue, or a sick person, we immediately our ears prick up, and we start thinking about risk to our own safety. And I think that's still within us, that that threat response, and so I think it's all linked to that neurobiology. Now I think to your point there around what's a good philosophy to deal with the modern world we live in, which is just constantly changing? And so what's you know that threat response isn't really serving us. I think it's a lot of it is about just being self aware and knowing when you start feeling that sort of fear of a particular change, is just to be aware Well, is it rational, or is this just a natural response that I'm experiencing, and it's okay to experience it, because it's totally natural, and then to just have a reset and think about, okay, what is the greatest possible success look like for me through this change, and it's focusing on and separating between what is out of your control, what's out of your circle of influence or control, and what's within it. And the thing that's that are out of it is you need to have a mindset of acceptance that I can't change that, but I can change the way I'm going to navigate myself through it. And I think that the AI kind of fear at the moment, which is around a lot, is a great example of that, you know. And you hear people saying, everyone's going to lose their job, or we're going to be slaves to robots and all sorts of crazy things like that. I always ask people, do you want that? And usually they're like, No. I'm like, Okay, well, don't focus on that. Focus on what you want it to look like in the future, and let's try and make that happen. And so I always think humans can control their destiny to a larger degree than they realize. And often we feel like we're kind of caught bobbing along in the ocean, and we just have to kind of go with the flow and wait for someone to tell us what to do. But it isn't always the case. We can we can decide for ourselves what we need to do to navigate through those rough seas.

Mick Spiers: 12:14

I do like this thought, and I've not heard that it and sent a one before, whether it was him or someone else, it's a it's a great way of looking at it and focusing on the path that we want instead of the hazards that we don't want. That's really powerful. The evolutionary aspect of it. You know, there are no saber toothed Tigers at the edge of the cave anymore, but I hope not to. But we generally, we generally live in a safer world than ever before, and yet the primal instinct is still there, that the fear might be the fear of our life. I'll come to other fears later, but the fear might be the fear of our life, that the chemicals in our brain are reacting the same as if it was a fatal fear. This leads me to like coming back to the the way that we fear loss greater than we appreciate gain and and you said the word rational to make it a rational thought in the moment. It's not necessarily a rational thought unless we pause like you said. But here's, here's what I want to play to you, Hugh, is my experience is that the tendency to catastrophize. So the thing that we're fearing, that big loss, that we're fearing it might have a 0.0000001% chance of happening. And the thing that we might gain, there might be a 60% chance that we're going to gain something out of this venture that we're about to do, or maybe even more than 60% and somehow we're letting our brain hijack and be worried about the thing that's got almost no chance of happening, but it's we're catastrophizing that, and we're not fully appreciating the almost the gift that's in front of our eyes. How does that sit with you?

Huw Thomas: 13:59

Yeah, I mean, I love that, and I think what happens during change. I see this in organizations, and I see it in myself and individuals as well. When we're trying to make a change, or in change our habits or anything like that, is good, people will make all sorts of ludicrous excuses, and excuse sounds really harsh, but we what it is, really is we're telling ourselves a story about what's going on, and almost trying to talk ourselves out of it. And I think sometimes, like a great example, most common one, I often use health and fitness analogies, because I think it's a everyone struggles with it. Everyone has at some stage, whether it's now or always, I think, you know, and I've certainly experienced it is trying to get fit and healthy, how hard it can be, and how to put these new habits in place, or to when you've got a New Year's resolution or whatever, and you're trying to achieve some kind of goal, and it can be hard to change. Our own behaviors there to get fit and healthy, and we'll often tell ourselves things like at the end of the week, we'll often say to ourselves, well, our health and fitness is the most important thing, so Okay, I better take care of it. And then end of each week, what do we always say to ourselves, I didn't have time to exercise? And is that really true? And we'll often say to people, well, when we say I don't have time, what does that really mean? It might mean, well, I didn't prioritize it, or I don't value it enough, or I wasn't assertive enough at saying no to other things, or I didn't decide when I was going to do it and just block the time. And so we don't take accountability. So the latter things I just said there are taking accountability where you're saying I need these are the things I didn't do, so I'm going to do fix that next week, whereas if we say I don't have time, then we're really sort of dodging accountability. We're saying it's everyone else's fault. All these other priorities came at me and wasn't up to me. And I think in organizations, will have similar experiences, like people will resist the change for various reasons, and they'll say, before they've even taken any time to understand it, they'll critique it and say it's wrong. And then you ask them a few questions, and then suddenly they start coming around to it pretty quick when they get a bit of information about it, or you get to the core of what's holding them back so often, I think when we're going through change, we don't even know why we're resisting it a lot of the time, because it's because it is so deeply ingrained in us, whether it's loss aversion, whether it's a habit formation, the wiring of our brain, whether it's our past experience, maybe we've seen the organization made a really dumb change was poorly executed last year, and then they're doing something again, and we think, Here we go again. And we've got a good reason to think that, right, but it doesn't necessarily mean that that is the case. But so we'll find these reasons and reasons to, you know, not just resist it, but to pick holes into it, and to be very, very skeptical about it. And I think that is part of that, that either the threat response or our loss aversion, we want to see well, is this going to be good or bad? And our natural tendency is to look for the bad things and protect ourselves from those.

Mick Spiers: 17:13

Yeah, there's two layers I'm hearing there here. One, I'm going to use my own words here. It just helps me understand what I'm hearing from you and correct me if I go on a tangent, what I'm hearing here is that if we leave it to chance, if we leave it to autopilot, it might be some kind of subconscious sabotage coming through that we're missing out on the opportunities of this change because of the story that we tell ourselves in the Head, the things that you're saying there, but it's at this point. It's autopilot, subconscious sabotage, and if we don't stop and assess it and go, Well, hang on a second, why did I do that? Like, why do I feel like this? Why did I take that action, if we don't patently interrupt and go, hang on a second, is that rational? We're going to keep on doing that. And then if we can patent interrupt, we can then ask ourselves the question, do I know this to be true? Do I really know that it's going to be that bad and and to do the risk assessment that we're talking about before, what's the probability of that happening versus the probability of this happening? And we can pat interrupt and have a rational thought. How does that sit with you there?

Huw Thomas: 18:24

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think it is. A lot of it is self awareness, and it's just we have to remind ourselves that any given thought that comes into our brain isn't a fact, and often we assume it is. We go, this is my initial response to this is what I think of that, and we can get locked on to that certainly certain kinds of personalities are more likely to do that. I think certainly, as we get older, it's a little bit harder for us to be as open minded it certainly can be. I know plenty of people who are in the second half their life and are really open minded. But that takes effort. I think it actually takes some conscious desire to want to be like that. But I think a lot of it comes down to that. I think adaptable people, by nature, are open to experience. And that's kind of one of the big five personality traits in the psychology area, is the degree to people are open to new experiences. And so when you adopt that mindset, where you go, you get into a situation where it feels uncomfortable, or you fear, you feel a bit of fear, or you're not sure that this is a good idea that someone's imposing on us in this organization, is the advice I'd give is to probably just think, Okay, let me find out a bit more about this and find out where the opportunity is in this. Don't necessarily assume what you're thinking and that things are going to be bad or it's another, here we go again, moment where this is going to fail, or that the executive team and the board have no idea what they're doing. As we often like to think, just be mindful of those stories and realize that they are just stories. Some part of your brain is telling you to protect you, and then just think, Okay, well, how can I challenge myself? Challenge my own thinking there? By getting someone else to try and change my mind, and that can actually either strengthen your existing view and prove it, or it's going to get some new information into your mind, or new perspective, which is going to open a new pathway for you to be successful through that change.

Mick Spiers: 20:30

Yeah, really good, Huw. So self awareness, the ability to do this and and then to challenge our thoughts to, you know, like I said before, do I know this to be true, but then also to get curious and seek out, well, for any loss, there's always an opportunity. What is it? What can I gain from this, instead of focusing on what I'm losing? So that's a good segue to talk about what I was hinting at before, about different types of loss. So I've spoken about the primal fear of loss of life. You mentioned AI before, and there's a very real fear for a lot of people right now, loss of job, loss of income. One of the ones I want to throw to you is also what I found in technology projects. Coming back to that again, is loss of identity. So if you're if you're rolling out a new technology, a new advanced technology, whether it's AI or in any other industry, whatever, this new thing that's coming, if you're dealing with someone who's the expert in the old technology, their identity and ego might be challenged. How does that sit with you as well? How do we deal with this loss of identity?

Huw Thomas: 21:43

Yeah, I'm glad you raised that. Mick, it is a big one. I see this a lot in organizations, and so I guess the theory is that we derive a lot of our self concept, you know, our own identity, from group identities as well, and from things like even the brand of something like an example, an example, which is a great example, I think was quite a few years ago. Instagram, the social media company, right? They changed the icon on the app, and it went from this old school sort of camera to this sort of brightly colored thing. And there was this massive fury out there of these heavy Instagram users. I can't believe they did that. I hate this thing. I'm never using it again. It's like it's just an icon. But people sort of identify with themselves, and they attach some part of their existence to that little thing on their phone that they sort of tap on all the time, and they have this great connection with it. And we get that with brands. You know, even with phones, there's app people are obsessed with Apple or, you know, whatever their favorite brand is in certain area, or clothing, and they get really, really attached to it. If that brand makes a misstep, then there's that. There's outrage. So I think we attach our identity things when in during reorganization, in companies as well, this is a big, big one. We even when people change who their manager is, or reporting lines or the team, they feel this sense of loss, like I'm leaving this, you know, championship team that I've been a part of for years, and I'm now in some new team, doing some slightly different role, and we feel kind of discombobulated for a little while, and so, and I've even seen that to that example you just gave there, I worked on a project with A big bank, and there was this credit risk manager who was like this, this gun, this, like, linchpin kind of guy, and he didn't want to, he didn't like this new system and the reporting, and he was just picking holes in it. Kind of found out after lots of conversations, building a lot of trust with this guy and getting to know him, that he just loved this spreadsheet that he'd created, and then he'd been building it up for like, 10 years and adding different things to it, and he was doing a lot of the assessing of risk on this thing and outside the system, or he's pulling data and using the system and the spreadsheet. And he was struggling to let go of this thing. We're like, No, we need to have all the data, all that stuff needs to go in here, and you need to use the reports, because they're much more reliable. He just took him a long time to deal with that. And so my advice, I suppose a practical tip there, is to when we experience that again, it's that self awareness, to know when you're going through that, but look for the new identity. And that can be exciting too, when you're shaping a new identity. But during change, I always think you've always got to think of it as we're going from point A to point B, and there's a tricky bit in the middle, like there's a bridge process there, the transition, and that's the part we hate. We often love the outcome of change. We struggle with the process. And change is a process and outcome. So it's a process we need to kind of get comfortable with, and we need to keep our eyes on the outcome. So when you're going through an identity crisis, if you like, during change is to think, Okay, what's the new identity I'm trying to shape here? How can I get that built up? Do I need to, you know, build some new relationships, which is going to start strengthening and so I start to feel and see that new identity in the new world? Is it that I need to familiarize myself with some new system so I can kind of see how this is going to be a part of my. Kind of little identity ecosystem that I'm existing in, and to go looking for that opportunity. And I think that is a big thing during change, is we get stuck in that messy middle piece, the pain and the suffering. It's like exercising. You know, we want the six pack or the great erratic fitness, but running up the hills and getting up every morning is the hard part. But when we really focus on what that great outcome looks like, that pain in the middle and that discomfort becomes easier, and suddenly the sort of fog in the clouds start to disappear, and we see the path across this little bridge to the other side start to appear for us, and then we start feeling a bit more hopeful and less fearful.

Mick Spiers: 25:40

Yeah. Really good to you. I like the metaphor that you're painting as well, and just the our identity doesn't have to be destroyed in this process. So I'm going to, I'm going to use this software kind of metaphor here, and go, we might be version 1.0 of ourselves today. We're not going to go to version 0.0 at the other end of this journey, we're going to go to version 2.0 so what does version 2.0 look like? And 2.0 doesn't have to 1.0 doesn't have to disappear. 2.0 builds on 1.0 it's, it's the new the new look. Hugh Thomas, it's not the it's not a brand new person. It's, it's a upgrade.

Huw Thomas: 26:22

Yeah. And one, one thing I've noticed is that new experiences, they always add something, even if they're a challenging and tricky experience. One thing I noticed, you may have seen it during covid as well. Mick, when you you're in a lockdown, right? And you don't leave the house as much, and you're kind of going between your bedroom, kitchen and wherever you're working, and you might do a walk to the shops, and you kind of, your physical environment is the same every day. And there's this weird thing that happened that time distorts your perception of time, you know, and we had a few lockdowns, and then you you bump into someone's like, when did the last see you? Was that like, last month? Or was it two years ago? I can't really remember, because remember this. It's sort of blurred time and and the reason for that is, people talked about the novel coronavirus, but the novel thing, for me, there wasn't much novelty in lockdown, because you're doing the same thing. You're not, you're not. You might be having meetings with different people, but you're still staring at the same screen. And this is still happening a little bit at the moment. But if you when you change things up, like you go to a different location, or even if you go to a different coffee place for a day, new experiences get locked in your memory, the more they stand out, rather than something which you've done on repeat. So the thing you do on repeat, say you have 90 days of being in a lockdown, it all feels like one experience. If you had 90 days of going to different locations, doing different things, you're getting a different sensory experience, you're seeing different things, you're talking to different people in the physical form, then some of those experiences will stand out as lots of different things. And so any new experience, like the example I gave of my health issue that the tumor I had 20 years ago. You know, that was a bad experience in some ways, but it wasn't an experience that changed the perspective on health and fitness and life for me. So even though it was a bad experience, I choose at the time to look at it as something, as a positive, and you can do that with anything. And you know, around the same time, the other part of that story was the day after I had that operation, my mum came in and told me that my grandma died and, and that just added to the pain of the experience, when we knew she didn't have long to go and, and that was tricky, but it was just sort of added to that. But even, you know, a week later, I'd had the had had to come back for my overseas trip, and which early, because of this back issue, had the operation, grandma died, and I didn't have a job or any idea what I was doing with my career at this point, because I was meant to be overseas. And I remember just thinking, like I just chose not to, sort of think, Oh, this is terrible. It's all bad. I remember thinking, wow, I've got this sort of new opportunity here, this blank canvas. And I think, you know, there were times where I felt a bit bad, like, this sucks, you know, when you're in hospital and all this stuff's happening. But then it, I just decided, and partly, I think one thing that helped me with this was actually, I was actually, I was reading a bit of personal development literature around that time, and just thinking about goal setting and taking ownership of your life and all that. And I think that that helped a little bit and some guidance from a few positive people around me. But I just decided, okay, well, I'm not going to waste life, right? Life's short. I've just had the death of someone I was really close with, had a bit of a brush with a risky experience myself, and so I'm going to grab life by the horns and do something about this. And so for me, that was a hugely transformational experience. And I think anytime we go through something difficult, and it could be, say losing our job, we've got to think, Okay, this is tough. This. Isn't something I wanted and planned for. And I've got to think about my finances at home. I've got to take some action and get that in order and and, you know, look for another job potentially, and look use every resource within my power to do something here. And so you've got to think about that, but then you've also got to think about what's some good can come come of this? You know, maybe it's a great thing to let go of that past job and adopt a new experience. And so often, and I know it is a really difficult experience, and I empathize with anyone who goes through that, but so often I meet people who've been made redundant and lost jobs. And sometimes I'll meet people who've they've had it two, three times in their career. They'll often look back and say, you know, was the best thing for me. It was the best thing that happened to me, because it landed them in this other job, which they ended up loving, or it got them to where they are now. And often those sort of steps, which feel like challenges at the time end up just being stepping stones to something greater or a new experience. And they teach us that those things aren't catastrophic like we thought they were at the time. And they teach us that actually, any sort of challenge which comes my way, I can actually, I can deal with it. I've been through this before. I've been through something and just as challenging and tough, and so I've got the tools and the mental stamina to deal with it.

Mick Spiers: 31:13

Yeah, really good. There's multiple things there that the brain's ability to take shortcuts. I've not thought of it in the way that you're talking about, but this, you know, this can explain why, after years of driving to and from the same workplace, When we drive home, we don't even remember the trip anymore. It's not like we weren't concentrating. We were still concentrating on the road, etc, but the brain is purposely deleting the things that didn't matter, and remembering the bits of substance. So if we, if we don't stretch ourselves and do something new, we won't create those, those new memories. And you know, the story you spoke on on covid is really interesting for me. And then getting through to, yeah, not to downplay that, going through a loss of job is, you know, it's hard. So we're not trying to say it's easy, but, but if you stop and think about, well, what can I do? You said earlier, you know, letting go of the things that are out of your control, and focusing on what you can control. And what can I do with what I have from where I am to make this a new opportunity, and then five years from now, you'll look back and potentially, potentially not, not trying to downplay it again, potentially laugh about it and go, yeah, it opened up this new door for me.

Huw Thomas: 32:29

That's right, and that is a the time. Time gives us great perspective. And there's cognitive therapists, baby therapists will often use time, time timeline therapy, I think it's called where sometimes they'll get you to map out experiences through your life, and I've done this myself, and to map them on a timeline, on a piece of piece of paper, things that have happened to you. And you, you write about it, each one of them, and you say, what happened? You know? What was it about? And what did I make it mean? And some and you you can decide part of that. You can't decide what happened, it's happened, but you can decide what you make it mean, and that actually creates this sort of strength, strength behind you when you look do it in the past sense, and when you do it in a forward looking sense. And I've done this with a couple of coaching clients recently, when we catastrophize about things, and you look forward, say 12 months from now, say it's a challenge you've got in the next quarter, but you look ahead and go, Okay, imagine yourself 12 months from now, and you've been through that thing which is challenging, and you've overcome it, and you've nailed it. You've come out a better leader. You've displayed to everyone that you can tackle that thing, that you can overcome it, that you're adaptable, that you can learn new things, that it's probably not as bad as you currently think it is. And you're 12 months from now looking back at this and realizing actually, that was kind of a good experience for me, and it's made me a better leader. And suddenly you start feeling better about it in the present moment, because you you using your future self to look at where you are now, and so you can sort of dissociate yourself from what you're currently experiencing when you do this kind of activity. So I think it's quite useful to do that. And the ultimate thing I was going to say that you mentioned the driving metaphor right where you drive to and from work or the same road a million times, and you know exactly when to slow down, indicate and all of that, and you suddenly realize, Oh, I hope that all those lights were green, because I wasn't. Don't think I remember what I was doing, right? I use that same, same analogy in the playbook, and I often say during change, that's that's like your habit, right? But during change, I say it's like driving down a country road around a mountain, and there's fog, and it's night time, and you've never been been down this road before, and you got to look at every sign and you're turning the music down so you can concentrate better. And I always say you got to have two hands on the wheel, so during change, you got to be awake at the wheel. You have to be kind of a bit more concentrated, focused on where's this road. Going, you know, what does success look like, staying within the guard rails and and keeping on track? So I think that's a great, a great metaphor for it.

Mick Spiers: 35:08

Yeah, really good, Huw. All right, so we spent a lot of time talking about the individual and the individual's relationship to change. Why we why we fear change so much before we just spend a little bit of time on organizational change. I'd like to just give you the floor to ask this one question. If someone's listening to the show and they're almost self diagnosing and sticking up their hand and going, Oh, that Hugh guy. He's talking about me, how does someone start to reframe their relationship with change, if, if they are struggling with it?

Huw Thomas: 35:43

Yeah, it's an awesome question. I think there's, there's many things you can do. One thing I often say is to change anything about yourself, particularly in a personal sense. I think it pays to get help. It's hard for us to there's, you know, Marshall Goldsmith has great book. What Got You Here Won't Get You There. And you know, the thinking that got you into a particular situation isn't the thinking that's going to get you out of that situation. So you need to change your thinking somehow. And sometimes that can be hard for us to do when we don't always have the perspective. And this is the power of, you know, having an executive coach, or even just a friend you can call upon, but a friend who doesn't just encourage you and validate what you say, but a friend who can challenge you a little bit and tell you a different perspective that might differ from your own, and who's empathetic as well. And so I would say, get help. There's a lot of evidence, you know, I use that fitness analogy a lot. There's a lot of evidence on that as well, that people who get help with their their fitness journey are far more likely to achieve their goals and a lot quicker because they've got someone who's an expert, who can give them a plan, who can challenge them, who can motivate them, who can be there at the right time when they need to be there and hold them accountable. So getting help can certainly help. I think the other thing I'd say is a lot of it is an emotional intelligence challenge, so we need to find ways to kind of cool our emotions down in the stress of change. So when we're feeling all these different things that can be debilitating and can make us fearful, afraid, all of those kinds of those kinds of emotions. So what can pay off there is that we actually just slow down, take a deep breath and address those emotions. The neuro Leadership Institute did a study where they found that actually labeling your emotions reduces the emotional intensity in your brain. They put an EEG monitor, or whatever on the brain, and they can see where all the activity is in the limbic system, in the emotional center, or whatever. And so just by simply saying, you know, I'm feeling angry, that will reduce your anger so accurately labeling your emotions is another thing I've heard. Mark bracket, the emotional intelligence expert in America say this. He said, often we overstate our emotions. So say, on the anger spectrum, we might say, I'm furious, I'm pissed off, right? But are you really, or are you just a little bit peeved and you bothered by that? And so accurately labeling it is powerful in reducing the intensity a bit. So just dealing with the emotions in the moment, and you can do that by speaking to someone, journaling or writing things down, can be useful as well. And so that can be useful in dealing minimizing the emotion. I think then it's a lot of it comes back to just the goal and the outcome that you want, and being furiously focused on that. So during a change, or there's something you, you're struggling with. And this is in my playbook. I talk about the first step in the model I use for behavior changes to get change clarity. Which one is to understand the problem, and that creates an openness to change, and it gets us a sense of an understanding there's a cost of inaction here, so that makes us want to be motivated to change. Then the other side of that is to understand what's our vision for success, like, what does the ultimate future look like? And what that creates is a strong sense of motivation. And if you kind of put these two things side by side, it creates this kind of, you know, like I was talking about before there's a bridge in the middle, but we know where we're coming from and why we need to get it, get out of that space, and then we know where we're going and why we need to traverse this tricky journey on the on the other side. So to get over that sort of avoidance, that fear, all of that, is to just decide for ourselves what is the ultimate success, just for me, and that's going to get me excited about it and help me overcome those tricky emotions in the middle. So I think that gives you a bit of a map then.

Mick Spiers: 39:42

You're really, really good here. So the three things I'm hearing here that it's okay to ask for help that you know, asking for help is not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. If you need help, get get help, whether it's a friend or an expert, very good. Number two is, look. Into emotional intelligence. And there's lots of good material out there that can help you with noticing and naming emotions and also unpacking those emotions. You know, why this emotion? Why this emotion now? What is it? What is it trying to tell me? Do I know it to be true, similar to what we were saying before? And then third, you know, focusing on, what do we want to have happen? What does success look like at the at the end of this process? So that's, that's three really good practical tips. We're actually running fast out of time here. And I did want to talk about organizational change, so not to put you on the spot here, but I'm going to, I'm going to do two things, and I'm going to say one thing is that if you're up for it, we'd love to have you back on the show, and we could talk about organizational change in a second interview, because we were focused on the individual today, the second would be just one question on organizational change, as to why it is so hard. And then, then, like I said, we'll invite you back and we'll unpack it further in a few further interviews. So, so what is it about organizational change that makes it so hard?

Huw Thomas: 41:04

Yeah. Mick, I think people will have to tune in for part two to answer that question. So, but look, I'll say one, oh, this will be the teaser. Look, we've just talked about how hard it is for one person to go through a change. Now multiply that by maybe hundreds or 1000s, or even sometimes 10s of 1000s, right? And you've got diverse personalities, and you've got each of those people have got their own personal things going on at home, which adds to their sort of mental state in the workplace. And you've got people at different ages, which changes how maybe tech savvy that hour, how deeply entrenched their habits are. And then you've got, you know, cultural differences between people and and their perceptions of what's going on. And then you've got different levels of, you know, career maturity. Some people have really experienced with change, and some who aren't. And so you add all that up, and you've got a big melting pot of change challenges right there. So it's really the big thing is it's the scale and complexity times the human behavior challenge that we've just talked about. So that adds to it. And I think what like I touched on at the beginning there, it's more than just we tend to focus on the logistical side of it's like, how do we train the 1000s of people who are spread out all over the country or across multiple countries, and how do we communicate and get everyone across this? And, you know, we often focus on the plans, but you have to do that. That's important. That's almost like a foundation. But really, we have to focus on, how do we engage the most influential people in this and get them on board? How do we engage those stakeholders and those those managers out there and those really respected employees on the front line who are going to be such a powerful influence on all of their peers? And that can be time consuming and but it is necessary if you really want to deliver the benefits of the change that you're achieving. Otherwise you can go and implement some new solution, and assume and hope that it's going to change things, but it doesn't, and that is probably one of the biggest mistakes that gets made, is we implement new technology, a new process or a new org structure. We think, yeah, this is going to deliver business value. None of those things deliver business value. It's the humans using those things that create the business value. And so if we don't get them on board, we don't get them changing the way they're doing things to leverage that solution that we've implemented, nothing's going to change.

Mick Spiers: 43:32

That's the perfect teaser, Huw, and we absolutely have your back, and we'll, we'll unpack that so, so thank you, Hugh, for sharing your your wisdom today about individuals relationship with change, why we fear it so much, and what we can do to interrupt it and make something of it. So thank you so much. It's been very practical. We'll have you back to talk about the organizational part. So let's go to our Rapid Round. These are the same four questions we ask all of our guests. So what's the one thing you know now, Huw Thomas, that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Huw Thomas: 44:05

I think the one thing is that I can control my own destiny to a far larger extent than I think I would say that, and it's just comes down to setting a clear goal and really pursuing it and backing yourself to make it happen, and I feel like I've proved to myself quite a few times that that's the case, but it took a while to figure it out.

Mick Spiers: 44:27

Yeah, really nice. All right, what's your favorite book?

Huw Thomas: 44:30

One of my favorite books is Immunity to Change, by Robert Keegan and Lisa Lasko Leahy. Got a copy upstairs, not in this room, and it's a great, sort of seminal book in the field of organizational change, and talks about a lot of the things that I talk about, and talks about the psychology of why we sort of treat changes like a virus and we have this immunity to it, where we're naturally trying to push back on it. So a lot of research in there has inspired some of my thinking.

Mick Spiers: 45:00

Yeah. Excellent. All right, very good. What's your favorite quote?

Huw Thomas: 45:03

I think I already said it in this podcast. What got you here? Won't Get You There. Marshall Goldsmith has a book of the same name, and it's one of my favorite leadership and coaching books. And I say it all the time to my coaching clients as well and to people, and I think it really opens our eyes to we need to change our thinking if we're going to go to some new greater place.

Mick Spiers: 45:26

Yeah, really good. There's one for us all to remind ourselves on a regular basis. Excellent. Finally, Hugh, how do people find you? People are going to be listening to this. A lot of them are going to be looking in the mirror. I go, Oh, wow, that guy's talking about me. How do people find you? If they would like to know more about you and your work?

Huw Thomas: 45:43

Yeah, probably just my website's the best place. Mick, it's huwthomas.com.au and it's Hugh is spelled h, u, w, the Welsh spelling. So huwthomas.com.au and there's lots of resources on there. I've just published a 44 page playbook, as you touched on which is on that homepage, there's a contact form on that website too, if you need to get in touch. There's a blog I write in the free resources section as well, which is a weekly blog where I talk about all this kind of stuff and various experiences. So you can subscribe or read some of the blogs there.

Mick Spiers: 46:16

Excellent Huw, and we'll put the link in the show notes as well, so people find it easy to find once again. Thank you so much for your wisdom. Today, it's been quite cathartic for me to listen to this. I'm going to apply some of the stuff that we've just discussed ourselves, and I know the audience will as well. Thank you for sharing that we'll definitely have you back to talk about the organizational change element as well.

Huw Thomas: 46:39

Awesome. Thanks. Mick, look forward to part two.

Mick Spiers: 46:42

As we wrap up this amazing conversation with Huw Thomas, one idea really stands out. Change isn't just about motivation or willpower. It's about whether people, including us as leaders, actually believe they can change, and whether the environment supports that belief. So here are a few questions worth sitting with. Where in your leadership are you expecting change without creating the conditions to make that possible? What behaviors are you trying to shift in yourself or others without addressing confidence, capability or identity, and where might the real work be less about pushing harder and more about removing friction, building belief and making change feel achievable, because sustainable change doesn't come from pressure. It comes from understanding how people work and leading in a way that helps them see a different version of themselves as being possible. So the invitation this week is simple. Choose one small behavior you'd like to change and ask yourself what support, what structure or what belief would make that change easier to sustain. In the next episode, I'm going to be joined by the amazing Salvatore Manzi, who's an expert Communication Coach, who's going to talk to us about how we can communicate even if we have fear of public speaking. We're talking about people here that are technically brilliant, but find it challenging to express themselves in a persuasive way. You've been listening to The Leadership Project. If today sparked an insight, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with one other person who would benefit from listening to the show. A huge thank you to Gerald Calibo for his tireless work editing every episode, and to my amazing wife Sei, who does all the heavy lifting in the background to make this show possible? None of this happens without them around here. We believe leadership is a practice, not a position, that people should feel seen, heard, valued and that they matter, that the best leaders trade ego for empathy, certainty for curiosity and control for trust. If that resonates with you, please subscribe on YouTube and on your favorite podcast app, and if you want more, follow me on LinkedIn and explore our archives for conversations that move you from knowing to doing until next time, lead with curiosity courage and care.