 Hello, I'm Marie Witzman, Rural Leadership Specialist with NDSU Extension. Today I'm going to share information about change, specifically about the transitions that we go through. So change, what is it? Change occurs when an individual community organization makes a transition from a current state to some desired future state. And how does change happen? This is the ReFreeze model by Kurt Lewin. First you need to get ready for change, then you execute the change, and then you hopefully make the change permanent. And this ReFreeze model is seminal to thinking about change. Kurt Lewin also talked about horses that are driving change and restraining change. This is his force field analysis. And we're going to talk in just a little while about in the transition part where we're thinking about change, feeling the change. What drives that and what restrains it? This William Bridges quote will kind of help us get into this transition. It isn't the changes that do you in, it's the transitions. Change is not the same as transition. Change is situational. We have a new boss, we have new team members, maybe you have a new policy, maybe you're thinking personally that you have a new home or you have a new way to exercise. So it's situational. Where transition is the psychological process we go through to come to terms with this new situation. It's how we think about it, how we feel about change. So change is external where transition is internal. In stages in transition by William Bridges, he has three distinct areas that we go through. And we can go through them quickly or some may take longer, it just depends. So the ending, here are some of the ways that we think about this transition. We are giving up something. So we're grieving that loss. We need to acknowledge that. We need to share with others how we're feeling about it, what we're thinking about because we feel that it's a loss, that we may even overreact to the change. The next process that we go through is called neutral zone. And here's where we're trying out this new change. And we aren't as good as it, so we might be anxious. We might feel overwhelmed or disoriented because we haven't done this before. And here's where you might have those resisting forces and driving forces. So a driving force would be people who are ready to move ahead into the new beginning. And others who are thinking and feeling to themselves, no, I want to pull back. I actually don't want to do this change. And so you'll see both of those in the neutral zone. New beginning, that's where we are now understanding, feeling better. So our psychological state is better. We understand the processes. We probably still need to be nurtured here because it's still new and we want to make it permanent. So people sharing with us, boy, that's you're really doing a good job. You know, it's been hard. So helping us in our thinking, our emotional part of us, that this is going to work. Another area that we need to think about when we're dealing with change is how people think about it. There are four different types of people, attitudes about change, and we can be in any of those at any time. So let's talk through those. Innovator is someone who would be willing to take risks. They're probably the first to try it. So that's a pretty positive characteristic. They don't have a lot of questions. They just go with us, which is wonderful. They could be perceived as a yes person, that could be a negative. How they can help us influence this change is that we can build on their enthusiasm and use them for role models. An early adapter is also willing to step up to the new change. They're supportive and involved. They negative on the negative, they might need a little bit more support. They might have some why's that they're going to come with. Although that's a very good reason for them to influence others because they'll have more information. They'll have the answer to the why. So those two are driving forces in this transition process of change. The resistors are more the late adapters and resistors. The late adapter is one who waits for a while before they climb or get on board with the change. They're positive though because they will follow you when they feel that they have kind of some information or as you see on the negative characteristics. They like to negotiate a little bit. They may want to have some conditions re-evaluated. How they can influence others is that we could then give them or link them with the innovator and early adapter and so that they can learn more and hopefully respect the change more. And lastly our resistor. They'll want to change. I want everything to remain the same. That's a pretty negative characteristic already. And unfortunately they can affect attitude morale of others. How they're positive is once they are convinced that the change is good they'll be on board which is a great influence strategy because they can help others deal with those emotions and logic. So change comes down to very personal process for each one of us that we have to come to either well both dealing with the actual change and how we think and feel about it. So let me end with this Marilyn Ferguson quote. No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another either by argument or by emotional appeal. Thank you.