Changing Change

Navigating the Emotional and Cultural Components of Change

According to a Harvard Business study, seventy-five percent of all change initiatives fail to deliver the expected results at some level. The consulting group, McKinsey, conducted follow-up research to find out why. Their answer may surprise you. McKinsey found that seventy percent of the failure rate was due to “human and cultural issues.”

Organizations and their leaders often get so focused on the project and result management side of the change equation that the human and cultural elements are discounted or overlooked entirely. Additionally, very little training is available to leaders to help them navigate change’s emotional and cultural components.

We will attempt to unpack these issues and provide guidance in this article.

The Human Aspect of Change Management is Emotional

Our journey will start with the human aspect of change, which often presents as people’s “resistance to change.” Leaders typically respond to this symptom by dealing with the performance of the individual. This approach can quickly escalate from communicating key change messages to performance improvement plans and finally exiting people from the organization labeled as resistant to change, burned out, or failing to buy into the vision. These are all symptoms of the bigger emotional struggle at play during times of personal and organizational change. There is an unrecognized elephant in the room when changes are implemented. Its name is GRIEF, and its presence is massive. If you doubt this connection, search the science of change, and you will find almost every model links change to the Kubler-Ross Stages of Grief.

7 Losses and 5 Stages

Two models come into play during change. The first is the 7 Losses, and the second is the Kubler-Ross 5 Stages of Grief. These two scientific models are inseparable and are responsible for the human (emotional) component of change failures.

In their September 2020 article, The Hidden Perils of Grief, McKinsey introduces the 7 Losses humans experience during personal or organizational change. Experiencing these losses triggers the stages of grief. The more losses triggered, the more complex, deeper, and longer it will take your people to make their way through the “Grief Trough” to the acceptance stage.

The Emotional Component of Change Is Complex

Understanding these two models during times of change is important. So too, is understanding the complexity of grief. Models are great, but they are just that, models. Everyone’s emotional response will be different. Some will be superficial. Some will be deep and complex. There are 16 types of grief people experience. Let’s explore the four most likely to play out in response to change initiatives.

Anticipatory Grief – this form of grief begins long before the change occurs, likely before the change is announced. Anticipatory grief occurs when people imagine the worst outcomes that could impact them should a change occur. Maybe people see signs of a downturn in the business, or they believe you will embark on acquiring new business lines. Long before any announcement occurs, people begin to respond emotionally to the fear of process changes, job changes, or even job losses. This form of grief happens early and subtly, but make no mistake, it is very real, and failure to recognize, acknowledge, and respond to it triggers more emotional responses. In this form of grief, people project to the losses of Attachment, Territory, Structure, and Future as they play out all the potential outcomes of the assumed possible changes.

Disenfranchised Grief – the longer it takes for an organization or leader to recognize and acknowledge a grief response, the more prone it will be to the grief getting more complex. Disenfranchised grief occurs when a person’s initial emotions are not acknowledged or are discounted. When this happens, the person feels their emotions are being invalidated or disregarded, or they may feel disrespected. When this deeper form of grief occurs, people will struggle with the losses of Identity (what are the organization’s values) and Meaning. Disenfranchised grief leads to burnout and impacts morale, engagement, loyalty, productivity, and retention.

Cumulative Grief – this form of grief is very hard to uncover. Cumulative Grief occurs when one’s personal world collides with their work world. The work change may be relatively insignificant, but when piled on top of the personal issues in their lives, they experience the losses of Future, Meaning, and Control. The person caught in cumulative grief may have been exhibiting other signs like absenteeism, emotional outbursts, or performance issues well before the change.

Collective Grief– Do you remember where you were during these events? John F. Kennedy’s or Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination. How about the death of Lady Diana? Or the 9-1-1 attacks? If any of those events impacted you, then you were part of the collective grief phenomenon. One that sticks out in my mind is the death of Elvis Presley. I am a huge fan, and I remember immediately going into denial when I heard the news. Collective grief playing out in the workplace is called Organizational Grief. Organizational Grief occurs when a team or possibly the entire company experiences one or more of the 7 Losses and enters the grief cycle. Maybe you have just announced the company has been acquired. Perhaps the beloved founder or a team member has died. Or maybe your change initiatives result in significant layoffs, and no one feels safe or protected.

Culture Eats Change for Lunch

We have all heard that “culture eats strategy for lunch.” McKinsey’s research suggests the same is true for change initiatives. Unfortunately, organizations embark on significant change without considering the organization’s culture. It seems every company believes they are different and their culture can handle whatever the initiatives, no matter how big, or how many, or fast. Nothing could be further from the truth. Failure to understand the organization’s Emotional and Leadership health is critical to beating the odds and successfully implementing change. Specifically, three cultural elements need to be understood and embedded into an effective change management process. These elements are a Respect For People culture, an Emotionally/Psychologically Safe environment, and an Adaptive Leadership™ approach to leading. Let’s delve into each of these in a bit more detail.

We Treat Our People With Dignity and Respect

Every company will say they have a Respect For People culture because they treat their people with “dignity and respect.” This often means they conduct harassment training, have stated policy against sexual harassment, have an ethics hotline, and have jumped on the DEI bandwagon. All good steps, to be sure, but that is respect through governance, not leadership or culture. A true Respect For People culture requires the steps in the staircase depicted to the left. Note that not all the steps are weighted equally, as the slope of the line dramatically changes when you enter the “Leadership” components of the staircase.

Companies that approach this aspect of their culture with a sense of purpose and intentionality have high degrees of trust, loyalty, engagement, morale, retention, resilience, and capacity for change. These companies understand that no amount of governance can ever replace leadership.

Mental Health Benefits are not Emotional/Psychological Safety

Emotional/Psychological Safety is present when people feel their voice matters. That they can challenge thinking, raise issues, and admit mistakes and struggles, all without fear of negative consequences. Unlike Collective Grief, you want the entire organization to be Emotionally/Psychologically Safe. Why? Because with Emotional Safety comes the well-documented benefits of trust, engagement, morale, and better decision-making. These benefits bring with them a willingness to learn, grow, and continuously improve as people feel safe enough to challenge thinking, take risks, and fail. This then leads to improved resilience, a greater capacity for change, greater productivity, and higher performance.

Frankly, you cannot have a truly high-performance culture, as many organizations claim to have, without a Respect For People culture and an Emotionally/Psychologically Safe environment. No matter how well you may believe your company is performing, if these critical cultural elements are lacking, you are failing to meet your full potential and are leaving performance on the table.

So how do you achieve this lofty utopian state? Much like the 7 Human Losses and the 5 Stages of Grief are inseparable, so too are the cultural aspects of Respect For People and Emotional/Psychological Safety. One occurs within the steps of the other. Emotional Safety occurs in the leadership aspects of the Respect For People staircase, where leaders demonstrate Courage, Compassion, and Vulnerability.

Leadership Courage is the willingness of the leader to have the courage to make the hard decisions to do what is right regardless of policies or negative consequences to themselves or the organization. It is the willingness to make decisions based on one’s principles, not your interests. And there is a huge difference between the two. Leadership Compassion requires a leader to replace judgment with curiosity. To truly care as much about their people as they do themselves. Leadership Vulnerability is the endearing quality of a leader who admits they don’t have all the answers, make mistakes, and are willing to admit when they, too, are struggling.

When combined with an organization that is Purpose/Value Driven, these leadership characteristics hold the key to unleashing next-level performance in their teams through increased personal resilience and capacity for change.  Your organization may display elements of all of these steps.  Many do.  Here is a simple test to determine how deeply committed your company is to the staircase.  Answer this question.

Does your culture cause leaders to care about the metrics and think about the people?  OR does your culture cause leaders to care about the people and think about the metrics?

Are You Managing or Leading?

The final key to building resilience, increasing the capacity for change, and generating greater results, requires a shift from managing people uniformly to leading them individually. We call this approach Adaptive Leadership™ and it occurs when the leader takes responsibility for adapting their leadership approach to meet each employee where they are in their role, career development, situation or assignment, and even their personal lives.

What we are talking about here is a leadership culture, not a tool. Adaptive Leadership™ is a leadership approach that puts people first to accomplish a mission. It is leadership with purpose, intention, and compassion focused on developing, growing, and supporting people.

The concept is too in-depth to cover in this article. However, here are the basics. Envision plotting your people on a two by two matrix with the “X” axis representing “Potential” and the “Y” axis “Performance.” High-performing, high potentials would be in the upper right: poor performing, low-potential individuals in the lower left. Most “managers” tend to manage everyone the same. We call this managing uniformly. The problem is that every employee is different and may move around on the matrix when given new assignments, develop, or experience issues in their personal lives. On the other hand, leaders recognize that each employee requires individual leadership.

There are four leadership approaches associated with Adaptive Leadership. Command & Control, Coaching & Knowledge Transfer, Encouraging & Supporting, and Empowering/Collaborating. Which approach is best suited for which individual is determined by what level the employee performs in the areas of Stewardship, Trust, Empowerment, and Collaboration.

The key takeaway from this discussion is that when change occurs and the human (emotional) and cultural components of change set in, people will naturally shift down and to the left. Managers’ failure to address this shift is a key contributing factor to the change failure rate. Leaders, on the hand, recognize this fact and adapt their leadership approach giving their people the support they need on an individual basis, increasing personal resilience and capacity for change along the way.

Change Management or Change Leadership

If I could wave a magic wand, I would change two views on leadership. The first change would be to stop calling everyone with direct reports “leaders”. Leadership should be an earned title. Just because you have people reporting to you does not make you a leader. The second would be recognizing the difference between Change Management and Change Leadership. Change Management is prescriptive and top-down. Change Management focuses on project milestones, communication plans, and demanding results.

Change Leadership, on the other hand, occurs when Respect For People, Emotional/Psychological Safety, and Adaptive Leadership™ are present. Change Leadership occurs when the organization recognizes, acknowledges, and helps people navigate the emotional component of change. Change Leadership occurs when the concepts in this article are used to create an environment where resilience and capacity for change can flourish. Change Leadership occurs when leaders recognize that results are achieved through people, not in spite of them.  Change Leadership occurs when the organization seeks the answers to these six critical questions long before implementing change.

1. Do we care about our organization’s Emotional and Leadership health?
2. Do we understand our organization’s Emotional and Leadership health?
3. Do we have a change process that addresses the emotions of change?
4. Is our Emotional/Leadership culture ready to support change?
5. Are our frontline leaders prepared to support change?
6. Is our change process robust enough to support change?

Anthony Casablanca

Order a copy of our book, The Dying Art Of Leadership.  About Our Book

Engage in a complimentary consultation Consultation Contact Form

Follow us on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonycasablanca/