How To Cope With Transfers
““...The act of getting transferred is not the problem in itself, in fact, it is in one’s relationship to the concept of getting transferred, and in how one responds to a transfer.””
Nearly all civil servants, particularly the IAS, have experienced “surprise” transfers (and not getting postings one feels they deserve). It is natural that surprise transfers cause much disquiet among officers, even though a transfer is not supposed to be an adverse reflection on the officer. If, transfers in general, and surprise transfers in particular, are a way of life, then how can civil servants build their capacity to handle such surprises?
How can they do this? After talking to several officers and from the way coaches help top-performing athletes to remerge after falling short in tournaments a core lesson emerges: the act of getting transferred is not the problem in itself, in fact, it is in one’s relationship to the concept of getting transferred, and in how one responds to a transfer. As transfers are inevitable, the challenge for officers is their ability to respond to transfers in ways that lead to growth, rather than merge with the pain of transfer.
Concretely, some key points to handle transfers, particularly surprise ones, are given below.
First, every officer has to get transferred and sometimes one is surprised, so one has to choose how to respond.
Second, immediately after the transfer carefully review what went wrong - and what went right. Analyze the fact of the transfer in a balanced manner rather than fixating on the negatives. This can be done by focusing on areas you need to ‘fix’ by doing a post-transfer review in a more structured way. One useful structured approach is a version of an after-action review (AAR). Originally developed in a military context, AAR is designed to help a team effectively analyze the difference between the intended outcome and the actual outcome. It helps a team quickly understand what worked and what didn’t, and to disseminate the information to others. Applied to this article, the questions that form the basis for AAR can be used by individual officers as well. Some key questions to ask are:
● What action of mine triggered the transfer – was it one action or a series of actions culminating in the transfer?
● What was I hoping to accomplish from my action(s), and what actually happened?
● What went wrong, and why did it go wrong? Could I have avoided it?
● What went well, and why did it go well? What do I learn from it for use in future postings?
Third, do a similar exercise ‘What Went Well’ exercise. This is borrowed from positive psychology and was initially created to cultivate gratitude. However, in a transfer context, it can be immensely helpful in developing confidence and balancing one’s appraisal of transfers. You can do this exercise by taking five minutes to draw and fill out two columns on a piece of paper after a transfer. On the left side, write down three things that went well, no matter how seemingly small. The more specific, the better. On the right side, next to each item, write down why that specific thing went well. Importantly, you want to make sure to identify internal reasons these things occurred (what you did to make it happen), rather than external reasons. This exercise retrains you to attend to your strengths, and helps you to retain (or build) confidence when you face similar challenges in the new postings later on.
Fourth, prioritize the most ‘workable’ thoughts in the new posting. It involves asking: if I continue thinking this way, how will that work out for me? Will continuing to think this way help me? Instead of asking yourself whether a thought is true, you ask yourself whether it helps you in the current moment. This will help you to cut the mental chatter going on in your mind. The high-performance psychologist Michael Gervais gives a useful analogy: do you answer your phone every time it rings, or do you screen certain calls? You can do the same thing mentally. You don’t have to ‘answer’ each thought your mind throws your way.
Fifth, focus on controlling the controllable. Save your energy for working on the factors that can directly affect you in the new posting. The brain is a problem-solving machine and, for many of us, it’s constantly on the lookout for future problems. Unfortunately, the brain is also an overachiever; many of the scenarios it asks you to entertain will never come to pass, and it also tends to catastrophize setbacks and losses. Controlling the controllable means that you allow thoughts about things that are uncontrollable to pass, and you reserve your mental and physical energy for future postings in which you can make the most significant impact.
Finally, grant yourself compassion because self-compassion has the potential to improve your motivation as you come back from a transfer.
