In an earlier posting, I briefly mentioned Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s grief cycle. Her cycle defines the rollercoaster we all ride during times of loss, and includes the five stages:

• Denial (this isn’t happening )
• Anger (why me?)
• Bargaining (I’ll … if …)
• Depression (I no longer care)
• Acceptance (it is what it is)

This cycle is often what employees experience during times of change. The instability from the unknown future state causes employees to feel they’ve lost their power or control over the work lives. The instability causes undue fear and doubt in themselves and their futures, causing them to get stuck somewhere between immobilization and depression.

Helping employees to move through these stages toward acceptance can be difficult, but not impossible, especially if we employ the strategies of awareness, understanding and participation to help them through it.

By creating awareness of the change to come, we help employees move through the denial phase and make the change a reality for them. Likewise, helping employees move to an understanding of the need for change helps them to deal with the anger they feel. Finally, using participatory methods helps employees to move through the depression and past just simple acceptance to a level of engagement in the change.

One place to look for a different take on creating awareness, understanding and participation is Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers helps individuals seeking weight loss through their Four Pillars. The Four Pillars are behavior, exercise, food and support that make up a comprehensive program of support, education, and encouragement.

These pillars take members through an awareness of their weight issues – why they are overweight – to understanding the best ways to address their issues -the right food choices and exercise – to engagement through participating in meetings or an online community.

Alcoholics Anonymous is another good example of personal change programs that address the need for awareness, understanding and participation. Through fellowship meetings and their 12-step program, members are encouraged to participate in their own healing. This is done by helping members acknowledge their situation and then finding ways to live with it.

Perhaps with a little effort, companies can work to apply these participatory and supportive means to their change efforts. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 10:50 am and is filed under Change Management.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.