The great American Humorist, Will Rogers once said, "Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there." Change, it is the one constant that we can count on, and yet it is also the one constant that we may fear the most. Within a broad psychological context, change is described as people moving from patterns of thinking and acting, volition, or overt behavior. In that context change may seem a bit esoteric, so lets try another less obscure way to describe change. Change happens, get ready for it!
As science and technology marches on, so too must the people who are affected by it. In the workplace, this often necessitates the need for learning new ways to do what we have already been doing for years. Out with the old and in with the new. This may be a simplistic mantra for those who want to implement the change, but also a point of contention for those whose patterns of thinking and acting are about to be moved.
As often as change occurs, more often than not, change meets with resistance. In the mid 20th Century, noted social psychologist Kurt Lewin wrote that “moving (change); creates states of confusion, angst and transition, resulting in the deployment of human defense mechanisms of resistance and a strong desire to return to the way things were before.” What Lewin was describing was how people become too entrenched into routines and psychologically attached to their jobs, to merely rollover and accept change.
Since the days of Will Rogers and Kurt Lewin, there have been a plethora of follow-on research and books delving into the psychological theories of change management and the rudimentary human reactions to change. In most aspects, these theories can also be applied to human reactions of resistance to training precipitated by change. However, I would like to present a more simplified approach to mitigating the confusion, angst and transition of change through training.
Given that change is going the happen, there are one of two approaches to training that individuals and organization will take, being either proactive or reactive to change. Rarely does change jump out of the bushes unexpectedly. There are always signs such as changes in market conditions, technology, and even good old rumors that may be the breadcrumbs of a coming change. As we colloquially like to put it, the handwriting is on the wall. Seeing the handwriting is merely a reaction of going with the flow. Reading the handwriting is proactively putting a plan into place in preparation for change.
When change is thrust onto an individual, one of three reactions will occur:
1. They accept the change and hope for new opportunities, or stay and wait.
2. They do not accept the change and seek opportunities elsewhere or quit and leave.
3. They do not accept the change, do not seek new opportunities, or quit and stay.
In order of rank, the most deleterious of these three reactions to change is obviously the one of highest resistance to change, number three – quit and stay. So how can a person or organization simply mitigate the confusion, angst and transition of change through training? A two-word answer to that question is communication and inclusion.
One of two great misfires that companies and individuals are equally guilty of in relation to change, is a lack of accurate and timely communications. Being the object of many changes over my career, a glaring lack of communications as to the coming change and the potential impacts of change is a contributor to the states of confusion, angst and transition. Timely and accurate communications will run interference to the good old rumor mill as well as diffusing resistance to change.
The second great misfire, inclusion’s role in the states of confusion, angst and transition, is to mitigate the alienation of affected individuals within the social strata of the organization. No one likes being left out of the loop in regards to coming events that will have an impact on not only their jobs but also quite possibly their lives. Alienation creates pockets of resistance as individuals will look for and form enclaves of support that will potentially run interference to the change process. Misery loves company and if individuals begin to feel alienated within the organizational social strata, they will begin to cling to others who are feeling the same sense of alienation and band together in the pockets of resistance.
So what is the role of training in this whole process? Several years ago, I was on a discussion panel at a training conference reflecting on the role of an instructor in facilitation training models. An audience participant asked each of the panel members to give their one-sentence description of training/education. My answer to that question was “Knowledge Transfer,” which is also the role of training in the process of change. Transferring the knowledge of impending change will help to diffuse the resistances to the change process.
The social interactions of groups within an organization, is not a static affair but a live process like a river which moves but still keeps to a recognizable form. Changing or diverting from a state of the way things were can affect the social psyche of individuals and groups resulting in alienating them. Moving from one system to another will be less alienating when a transfer of knowledge through communications and inclusiveness is part of the process. This helps the affected parties to maintain a recognizable perspective of the organization in which the end result can diffuse the states of confusion, angst and transition, and keep oneself from getting run over by just sitting there.
