If you are dealing with change at work at the moment, this video might come in handy.
In just over five minutes, it covers the most common reasons why people resist change.
Enjoy!
Using the Change Curve in Communication during Change
Change theory is useful to help us begin to create some order in what is a very chaotic process: change. No matter how many processes or plans you include in your change management strategy, at some point change will be chaotic as it involves people. People are different from each other: they have different priorities in life, different concerns, different private lives, different reasons for coming into work, etc.
Change in an organisation might throw people into the unknown. Individuals might have to experience ways of working they hadn’t encountered before. It is therefore difficult to foresee how your team members will react: they might even be surprised themselves.
One very popular change model which might help during the management of change is the curve created by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. After interviewing cancer patients as they came to terms with their disease, Kubler-Ross found that individuals tipically went through five emotional stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance. (If you enjoy watching Frasier, there is an episode which illustrates these stages of grief very well, I think it’s the first episode in series 6.)
Kubler-Ross then went on to research how this model fitted in with other life-changing experiences. It is worth saying at this point, that the psychologist was very aware that the model was just that, a model, and that the emotional journey through change is particular to each individual.
When facilitating discussion around personal change at work, I prefer to use the model created by Adams, Hayes and Hopson, who added a state of Shock/Relief at the beginning (also referred to as “immobilisation”) and the stages of experimentation and discovery before the change is integrated.
It’s worth noting how much self-esteem rises and falls, how there are quite a few emotions involved in the process and the fact that it takes time to be comfortable with the change.
This model might help you to structure your communication during change or to give you an idea of how people in your team and organisation might behave during transitions. But this is not a blueprint. There are plenty of other emotions that will surface and they will not appear neatly one after the other. Hopefully the curve will help you to anticipate some problems.
So, as you manage change in your team:
- Don’t be surprised if there is a loss of productivity when the change is announced as the information sinks in.
- Set some time aside for people to vent their anger or frustration, so that they can get their anger (or fears, insecurities etc) off their chest. Even if the change is welcome or supposed to improve their conditions, self-esteem will drop at some point.
- Be prepared to repeat information over and over again. It is difficult to assimilate or even hear new information when all sorts of emotions are bubbling up inside.
And above all, allow yourself to feel all sorts of emotions, it comes with the job.
Personal Change at Work
This blog addresses mainly how to lead others through change, how to enable teams to go through transitions.
There is the small danger that in thinking about “the team”, we forget that it is composed of individuals – my reply to there is no I in team is always: “No, but there are plenty in “individual accountability”. Go on, count them.
So if you are in a position of leadership, or simply want to make a difference during times of change, don’t forget that people are complicated and don’t forget to look after yourself.
To help you do that, I have recently published a short ebook. You can download it for all readers and as a PDF from smashwords, from the Kindle store,and from most ebook stores.
“Thriving through Change at Work” covers how change affects us as individuals, how to deal with resistance to change in ourselves and others and, most importantly, how to learn and thrive during change. The book also has plenty of change theory models to help you simplify what is quite a chaotic process.
There is some crossover of material with “Leadership through Change”, but it is a lighter read and suitable for a wide range of people, not just those leading others.
I will be releasing a paperback version later on. I will also be creating an online course on Personal Change at Work. If you would like me to let you know when this happens, just go over to the leadership training online site and introduce your e-mail address in the “subscribe for updates” box on the right sidebar or leave me a comment on this site, which I will not publish.
And if you do read the book, please let me know what you think!
The Self-fulfilling Prophecy and Change
The Importance of Mindset.
Do you try to turn mistakes into learning opportunities (albeit painful ones)? Or do you see them as a part of life which we just have to overcome and forget about?
If you don’t believe that you can learn from your mistakes, then you subscribe to the “entity theory” that your intelligence is finite and there is little you can do to develop it. If you think that by analyzing your performance you can get a bit better every day, then you subscribe to the “incremental theory” of intelligence. (Both theories as labeled by Carol Dweck.)
Your mindset will influence how you perform: if you think you can learn from your mistakes, you will. If you don’t believe so, you won’t. This last self-fulfilling prophecy is dangerous on many levels.
If you believe that you are at the top of your game, you will avoid risks that challenge that perception. If you are not quite happy with your current performance but think there is no point in trying to improve it, you will just stay away from anything where you can possibly fail.
What happens when we make mistakes?
When we first realise we have made a mistake, the brain reacts with two signals in the anterior cingulated cortex, the area responsible for helping to monitor behavior, anticipate rewards and regulate attention. The first signal occurs 50 milliseconds after the error occurs and is referred to as Error-related negativity (ERN). The second signal is called Error positivity (Pe) and it takes place 100-500ms after the mistake, when we pay attention to the error.
Research has shown that the larger the ERN signal and the more consistent the Pe signal appears, the stronger the learning experience from mistakes.
Mind and Brain
Let’s go back to the entity and incremental theories of intelligence and how these mindsets affect how much we can learn from mistakes.
A recent study (2011) by psychologist Jason Morser aimed to find out whether brain activity during “mistake-making” differed between those people who thought they could learn from the experience and those who thought they couldn’t.
University students had to identify the middle letter of a series of five letters, such as MMMMM or MMNMM. To record their brain activity, the students wore an EEG (electroencephalography) cap, which records neural activity in the brain, though not the location of this activity.
Those students with growth mindset got better at the exercise as time went on, learning from their mistakes. The main difference in neural activity was the larger Pe signal, meaning that they were paying greater attention to the fact that they had made a mistake. This signal was three times as large and was correlated with improvements after a mistake was made.
So what?
Our brains are programmed not just to identify errors, but also to dwell on them. Stronger brain activity related to awareness of errors results in a greater ability to learn from mistakes.
What this science doesn’t tell us (yet) is whether our brain physiology is dictating our mindset or whether our mindset is having an effect on our brain activity. This reflects the ongoing brain/mind and nature/nurture debates. Bearing in mind that the brain is plastic and changes as we age, I think it is safe to say: a bit of both.
There is no doubt that undergoing change (at work, in our personal lives) is going to involve some degree of learning by trial and error. Making mistakes is rarely pleasant (I say rarely, because there are some activities where getting it wrong can be quite amusing) and the temptation might be to move on and forget about them. That’s fine, as long as before you start discarding them, you consider whether they have anything to offer, removing a bit of that bitter taste from your mouth.
Change and Our Primitive Reactions to Modern Stimuli
Imagine you are out exploring in the jungle (go on, why not?). You are alert. You are paying attention to every bit of flora and fauna around you. Suddenly, in front of you, you see a lion. A threat. Your heartbeat increases. Your blood sugar level is raised. The blood flow to your muscles increases so that you can run away, fast.
Maybe you tense your jaw, to appear more fierce.
Maybe you clench your fists, to appear stronger.
You probably lift your shoulders to protect your neck area.
You run away from the lion (he is not that hungry, so he doesn’t follow you) and you return home, where you feel safe and can relax.
Now consider a more urban setting. An office building.
Changes are happening left, right and centre.
You are continuously alert as you absorb all the new information around you, as you make sure you are not operating on an auto-pilot that is no longer suitable, as you address new problems for the first time.
You attend a meeting.
You learn about some changes that will affect you directly over the next few months. You leave the room with your shoulders up by your ears. You sit at your desk and try to relax. At least your computer is familiar to you. Then you notice the intranet has changed. You are on full alert again, your shoulders creep up to your ears once more. You find what you need and start to relax. But your mind wanders back to the meeting, and you try to assess what the new information means to you. Without you noticing, your shoulders begin to creep up to your ears again. Then you realize that the deadline for the progress report on the new project is tomorrow. Your heartbeat speeds up once again, as does your breathing.
You go home not even noticing that your shoulders are up by your ears and that you are holding your breath, as this has been the norm all day.
While the roaring lion situation is much more dangerous in the short-term, the urban setting scenario can have a long-term effect. Having your life threatened by a lion is more stressful but it is also punctual. It happens once (I hope!) and kicks off a series of physiological response, but soon these effects wear off and your body goes back to normal.
In every day life however, small stressors have an effect on your body continuously and unless you are aware of how you are reacting, the body never goes back to its original posture. This is why it is important to develop physical self-awareness, so that you know when your body is tense when it shouldn’t be and so that you can recognize the effect a new situation is having on you physically.
Why You Should Get Emotional During Change
We feel all sorts of emotions every day. In greater or lesser measure we react to the world around us by feeling and not just thinking. A delayed bus can easily irritate us; the offer of a cup of coffee by a colleague can raise our happiness levels; disappointment can make us sad. When things change around us, so do our emotions.
As we adapt to new situations, we are more alert, more receptive, more open. Change does not only affect us in the present, but it can also move us in unexpected ways as we imagine the future. A presentation can go incredibly well, opening the door to new opportunities. However, this can lead to fear creeping in as we imagine how these new opportunities also present new challenges and we begin to doubt whether we will be able to rise to the occasion.
If we are happy at work, if using some of the processes has become second nature, if we are happy to stick to our routine confident that things are under control, the smallest of changes can have an unexpected effect. We might feel anger at the change agent for disrupting our life, we might begin to doubt whether we’ll be able to continue operating at our best or we might feel happy at the thought of things changing for the better.
This sudden burst (or slow release) of emotions will have an effect on the atmosphere at work. For a start, different people will feel different emotions and at different times. You might feel happy when a new change is introduced but a colleague might feel nervous while your manager feels threatened. As time passes, you might feel uncomfortable with the way you are adapting, your colleague might have conquered his nerves and feel energised while your manager has become depressed.
This cocktail of feelings makes adapting to change an emotional process and not just a cognitive one. Our brains have to be ready to learn to adapt to the new systems and sometimes our emotions might just make that learning curve a bit steeper. If you are the change agent, or are responsible for implementing change in your team, you must accept that the road will be a rocky one as the complex beings called humans, try to adapt.
Failure and Change
Whether we welcome change or not, at some point, we will fail during our transition.
It’s inevitable and we should expect it as a sign that we are doing things differently and learning in the process.
As you change your way of working and thinking (for it’s difficult to change our ways without adapting our mindset, however slightly), you will make mistakes. If you are not making them, then you are not adapting but holding on to that which you know will help you coast along, comfortably.
Fearing “getting it wrong” will prevent you from trying out new ways of working. This means that:
You will miss out on opportunities.
If your focus is on repeating your preferred modes of working, you will not be open to new things which come your way: realising that you can learn from what a colleague is doing, finding out about a new source of information or creating a system that will save you time in the future.
You will not take risks.
I’m not saying behave recklessly; I’m not saying you should take a risk for the sake of it. But taking risks allows us to open the door to something better, more exciting, more satisfying, more productive, more profitable.
You will never learn how to get over failure.
It’s impossible not to make mistakes. But if you avoid situations just because you are likely to fail, you will never learn how to cope.
Trying something new can easily make us uncomfortable. If you are lucky, it will make you excited, but even this might make you nervous. So, if you are worried about making a mistake, here are three questions worth answering.
What is the worse that could happen?
Would you be able to cope? Yes? Go for it! No? Then make a decision not to change now, stop thinking about it and revisit in 3 – 6 months.
What will the future look like if you don’t try it out?
What will it look like if you do?
Hopefully answering these three questions will get you a little closer to reducing that fear of failure which often prevents us from trying something new.
