The Power of Support in Times of Change

This year I committed to holding 100 conversations on change with leaders across industries. Here’s a top theme standing out so far — don’t go it alone. The quality of support you lean into through change is a gift. And it matters more than most people realize.

Describing their experience of navigating significant changes — both work and personal — leaders pointed to support as a source of emotional relief, energy, learning, and growth.

How people sought this support falls under four categories: Coaching and Mentorship, Curating Your Circle — Family and Beyond, Inner Work and Self-Knowledge Resources, and Collective Belonging — Community and Team.

Coaching and Mentorship
Several leaders mentioned the value of receiving transformative support through formal executive coaching. This resource provided a space to step back, reflect, and gain more clarity and confidence to navigate their change.

For example, a senior executive leading a major transformation in her organization noted: “I had a really good coach who helped me… helped me think about it in a way that I can put structure around it, at least for me emotionally.”

A few referred to the benefit of mentors supporting them through transitions. One leader noted: “I met someone here who really mentored me, taught me and developed me and believed that my skills are strong enough.”

Curating Your Circle — Family and Beyond (AKA for the love of God don’t tell everyone)
Leaders noted the value of building the right constellation of support in your family and community at large. Many cited receiving support from family members, friends, and co-workers — and spoke to the value of being selective in how they used this community.

Referring to making a career change, one executive shared needing to be discerning in her network: “I only could tell a couple of people because those people thought I was crazy, so I didn’t even mention it.”

Another leader noted: “Seek guidance… with trusted friends, with trusted colleagues… In a trusted way. This is what I’m thinking. This is where I’m going. Am I crazy?.. I think that having someone that you can share the load with takes a lot of pressure off.”

Inner Work and Self-Knowledge Resources
Several leaders had done significant inner work long before their change arrived — therapy, retreats, years of reading. They weren’t starting from scratch when the change came. They had infrastructure.

One executive shared the impact of investing in therapy: “I had a really good therapist who was very much working on me as an independent adult — not just one dimension of who I am. I worked with her for maybe eight, nine years.”

Describing the value of investing in self-discovery, another leader noted: “I definitely did work. I read, I went to Miraval… Canyon Ranch… John Kabat-Zinn, Joan Borysenko, Herbert Benson — I read most of their books. My friends used to make me laugh because they said you could open a self-help bookstore… You have to find out what that is if you don’t know it. And so that could be a process before you get to this point.”

Collective Belonging — Community and Team
The broadest form of support across my conversations is also among the most powerful: the experience of being part of something larger than yourself, whether a peer community forged through shared struggle or a workplace team united around a common purpose. What these accounts share is a belief that change is not only easier but fundamentally different in quality when it is carried collectively — that belonging itself is a resource.

Sharing his sense of belonging during a major change, one leader noted: “What I did was then find a community of peers… building community with people that were all believing in that community is better than doing this alone and taking care of each other.”

One senior executive emphasized the importance of having the right team beside and above her through an organizational change: “I want to be careful in giving everyone the perception that I was doing this alone… it takes teams. And it takes broader leadership. And so I was fortunate that I had other people that agreed and worked alongside me.”

Another exec described the energetic fuel of seeing others grow: “If you have the right people with the fire in their hearts and mind, everything’s possible. That’s the first building block. I get my energy from two sources, always from our customers and my team, always. Especially when I see them thriving and more successful and growing year over year… there’s nothing more fulfilling than to see a human growing and maturing. We carry each other forward.”

Digging into these conversations is personally gratifying. I get to talk to and learn with amazing people about an important topic — how they navigated, and may perhaps even still be navigating, a big change. All have noted the value of holding these conversations as a way to get more clarity on their own change journeys and how to apply insights going forward.

If you or someone you know is interested in sharing wisdom on navigating big change, please send me a private message. I’d love to hear from you.

One more thing — this project is becoming a video podcast: Change ThroughPoint. More coming soon! In the meantime, I invite you to visit my YouTube channel and listen to these inspiring conversations for yourself.