Ruth Skeens, director of curriculum

Ruth Skeens “discovered” Rapid Change when she was an Operations Manager at DuPont in 1989. She was facing tremendous resistance to change from her employees.  After Rapid Change trained leadership, supervisors, and 30% of the labor force with the “tools for engagement”, she was “blown away” by the successful shift in attitudes and positive alignment with a new vision for the plant.  

After experiencing the power of the tools herself, Ruth wanted to teach other organizations how to use the tools to reduce resistance to change in the workforce.  Ruth has been with Rapid Change since 1995 and is currently Director of Curriculum and Lead Instructor.

Ruth reflected on two concepts that are especially crucial in these difficult times.  The first is a reminder that 50% of the Rapid Change tools, are about building productive relationships.  She cited a recent meeting with a college president who has a brilliant vision for the school, but there’s a stand-still because of polarization with the faculty.  In order to move to a more aligned organization, it is crucial to build respectful relationships where people feel heard. 

When we attach a lot of emotion to an issue it is usually because we do not feel heard.  For a person to truly feel heard when emotion is high, empathy is required. The listener needs to repeat back in the speaker’s OWN words what they said without pointing out that their point of view is bad or wrong or unimportant.  When people are emotional about an issue, it is not the time to paraphrase back to them what they said. Paraphrasing will only elicit stronger emotion due to the part of the brain that is engaged when we are under stress.  

The other 50% of the Rapid Change toolkit is about the utilization of the WHOLE brain.  Ruth has found imagery to be especially helpful to managers who may be paralyzed with too much data.  Imagery works with the part of the brain that deals with symbols and metaphors. Leaders have made significant discoveries by learning to access their intuition.  She lead one manager through an imagery where he “saw” a red car racing down the road, moving so fast it didn’t know where it was going.  Upon reflection, the leader had an “aha” moment by recognizing that his organization had speed and passion for what they were doing but not a adequate plan toward the goal.  

Ruth and her husband, Lee, live in Burlington, Iowa.  With a blended family of seven children, they’ve used everyone of the tools to keep the communications open and harmonious.