The Sovereign Change Practitioner: Prioritizing Personal Self-Care

As a change management practitioner, you navigate complex landscapes of human emotion, organisational tensions, and evolving systems. You are often tasked with guiding others through uncertain transitions, while simultaneously managing your own energy and resilience. In this demanding role, one concept that can profoundly reshape how you approach your work is having sovereignty over your workscape. This your experiences of work are not primarily shaped by an organisation’s dictates but by your critical values, choices, and actions. It’s about reclaiming agency in how you lead, live, and work—and for today’s article – how you execute the responsibility to have great well being.

The Concept of Workscape and Sovereignty

The idea of a workscape extends beyond any single job title or organisational boundary. It encompasses the totality of your work-like experiences, regardless of when they happen, where they happen and whether you get remunerated for them. Over your workscape, you have sovereignty! This is self-determination to consciously define the values, conditions, and practices that enable you to thrive. It also means taking responsibility in key areas so you are “response-able”, rather than reactive to what life might send your way.

The Responsibility of Renewal and Self-Care

Renewal is one of the seven responsibilities you have as sovereign over your workscape, according to Self unLimited philosophy. Renewal is “the responsibility to adapt myself and shape my workscape”.

In the context of the topic of this article, Renewal includes maintaining your wellbeing—physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual aspects. It’s not a luxury but a necessity to develop and sustain your ability to guide change effectively. Practising renewal, particularly self-care, allows you to role model personal development, adaptivity and resilience to others. This is extremely important in change management contexts where emotions can run high, challenges can be complex, and unhelpful stress can accompany uncertainty.

Self-care isn’t just self-serving; it’s about ensuring that you’re equipped to support others without compromising your wellbeing. If you are running on empty, your ability to ‘do no harm’ and act with integrity is significantly diminished.

Self-Care: Strategic and Tactical Activity

To address your well-being, self-care must operate on two levels:

1. Strategic Self-Care

This is your long-term, proactive approach to maintaining wellbeing. It includes practices like:

• Regular Reflection: Create space to assess your physical, mental, and emotional state, so you can consciously decide what you might need to adjust.
• Setting Boundaries: Define work hours, screen time limits, and social media consumption, so you are working within limits that enable you to be at your best.
• Intentional Practices: Incorporate habits such as mindfulness, exercise, or journaling that replenish you, and introduce space for literally and figuratively taking a breath.

Think of this as building and maintaining a sturdy foundation for wellbeing that can withstand pressures that come from both work and life.

TIP: Make a General Be-Well Plan that has actions to cover all types of energy: physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual. Also include your personal triggers for the need for self care. (Common triggers for the need for self-care are being hungry, angry, lonely or tired. HALT – A useful acronym created by Judson Brewer, Yale.)

2. Tactical Self-Care

Tactical self-care is your immediate response when reserves are running low. This could include:

• Stepping away for a brief walk or deep breathing exercises.
• Engaging in a quick reset ritual, like reviewing personal affirmations, or literally smelling a rose.
• Communicating your need for a temporary pause to regroup.
• Getting a hug from a loved one or a loving pet.

These responses are your Self-care First Aid, helping you stop the ‘bleeding’ and start recovering when circumstances take a toll.

TIP: When you are feeling good, make a Self-care First Aid poster for yourself and stick it on your fridge – don’t wait until you are too tired to think about this. Name at least five realistic practical steps you can easily take without thinking too much to address your needs.

Practical Self-Care for Change Management Practitioners

The realities of your change management role may expose you to heightened stress from navigating tensions, delivering tough messages, or managing emotional fallout. Consider these self-care techniques specific to your context:

• Plan Ahead: Anticipate peak stress periods during a change initiative and pre-schedule downtime afterward.
• Peer Support: Foster connections with fellow practitioners for sharing strategies and emotional support.
• Model Boundaries: Show stakeholders it’s okay to pause or recalibrate, demonstrating that sustainable change respects human limits.

Being the Role Model for Wellbeing

Your stakeholders look to you not just for guidance but as an exemplar of navigating change. When you show up as someone who prioritises their wellbeing, you give others implicit permission to do the same. Your actions—small or large—can ripple outward, cultivating a culture where self-care is recognised as integral to workplace excellence.

A Call to Action

Take a moment to reflect on your current practices:

• Are you exercising sovereignty over the things you can control in your own workscape, or has your role dictated unsustainable conditions?
• What does self-care look like for you right now, and where could you do more to align with your values (especially if value violations have been a source of diminishing wellbeing)?
• How can you better model self-care to those you serve?

The workscape you design for yourself doesn’t just impact you—it shapes how you can influence and inspire others. By embracing self-care as a vital practice, you ensure your ability to lead change with authenticity, strength, and compassion.

In the words of Parker J. Palmer:
“Self-care is never a selfish act—it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others.”

Start today. Define your critical values. Make wellbeing one of those values to shape your workscape. Prioritise actions and resources for your well-being. Guide with quality wellbeing, inspiring transformation not just in organisations, but in the lives you touch.