Adjusting to a New Normal
I recently came across two unrelated articles—back to back—that created an unexpected connection.
The first, sent to me by my wife, summarized research led by Boston College psychologist Peter Gray, published in The Journal of Pediatrics (2023). It pointed to something many of us recognize intuitively: children in the 1960s and 1970s, given more unstructured and unsupervised time, often developed resilience by solving problems on their own.
The second article reported on Catherine, Princess of Wales, and her comments about the difficulty of adjusting to a “new normal” following cancer treatment.
Different contexts. Different stakes. But the same underlying challenge: how do you adjust when the conditions around you have fundamentally changed?
In the workplace, this question shows up more often than we admit.
A manager changes. A team restructures. Expectations shift—sometimes quietly, without clear direction. What once worked no longer does. The instinct is to double down on familiar approaches: communicate the same way, escalate the same way, rely on the same patterns that worked before.
But when the environment has changed—even slightly—unthinkingly repeating past behavior isn’t consistency—it’s potential misalignment.
Another signal is often overlooked: the internal sense that something is “off.”
These early warning signs are frequently dismissed as overthinking or being overly cautious. But in many cases, they are the first indicators that expectations, boundaries, or risks have shifted.
Situational Discernment requires noticing these signals—then testing them against what can be observed, rather than ignoring them or reacting to them blindly.
This matters because change rarely announces itself clearly.
In modern workplaces, disruption is often persistent rather than episodic, with shifting expectations becoming the norm.
Situational Discernment is the ability to recognize when the rules—spoken or unspoken—have shifted, and to adjust accordingly. It’s not just about adapting. It’s about interpreting what the situation now requires, even when that requirement isn’t clearly defined.
A “new normal” isn’t simply a return to stability. It’s a new set of constraints.
- Misreading those constraints can create friction, damage credibility, and escalate conflict without intent.
- What feels like persistence may be perceived as resistance.
- What feels like clarity may be interpreted as escalation.
- What feels like fairness may be dismissed as inflexibility.
Over time, this gap between intent and perception erodes credibility—and once credibility is questioned, even well-intended actions can be ignored or resisted.
The real challenge isn’t change.
It’s recognizing what the change actually demands.
Start there.
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