This text has been published first on 04. June 2024 as an article on LinkedIn
Organization Development and Change Facilitation – Importance of individual stability pillars
Reflecting on the growing insecurities perceived in our society, I would like to share some thoughts on how this impacts business transformations and related change facilitation approaches.
Change is individual
All - who have been affected by or involved in major transformations - will confirm, that changes affect individual persons in different ways. While some seem to not even notice the changes, others will struggle heavily and might even leave their job and the company. Some are immediately enraged and angry, but calm down and accept the future state quickly after. Others require some time before realizing the potential impact. And some will never be willing to accept changes to their area of responsibility.
Partially, these different effects are based on the individual personality. But there are other aspects from the individual environment, decisively impacting how heavy a given change affects a person.
Sometimes employees can get out of balance by changes to their work environment. When this happens change facilitation needs to think about individual measures to help employees to cope with the changes.
Pillars of identity
For these situations it is helpful to get a picture of potential influencing factors causing the intense reaction. I found the model of "Pillars of identity" quite useful.
It goes back to H.G. Petzold, a German psychologist, and is often used in individual coaching. I got to know it during my organizational development and change management qualification. Later, I adjusted it while using it in internal transformation and in customer projects.
pillars of identity
One idea is that not all of the pillars need to be fully stable to carry a person's identity and to provide sufficient stability for changes. Ideally, a person will always have at least 2 stable pillars to be able to cope with changes in the other pillars.
Taking this into consideration, it is not surprising that transformations at the workplace are having much more impact on individuals in recent years than before.
Let's quickly check the stability of each pillar:
- Body - A lot of people struggle with their weight and too little exercise for relaxation.
- Social life - Covid-19 and related lockdowns were limiting or denying social contacts. These impacts are still present, with personal contacts still reduced and much more virtual communication than before.
- Work life - Also here, the limited face-to-face contact is reducing the feeling of belonging and the recognition received is at least emotionally muted. Remote meetings are just not the same.
- Material safety - Inflation, economic downturn, populistic politics are having destabilizing effects.
- Purpose - Many people are leaving churches or religious groups for various reasons. The search for purpose in life is a viral topic since years.
Reflection on current situation
As said in one of my previous posts, what people feel has relevance even if it might not be measurable or might not be fully comprehensible for other people. Still, we have to deal with these feelings in Change Facilitation and Organization Development.
Bringing this thought to the wider picture, I am writing all this from a western-hemisphere - maybe even German-European perspective. Other areas of the world have been facing unstable times for much longer. It might seem we have been spoiled by economic and political stability and mostly peaceful decades. We are not used to fundamental changes. That's why many people feel insecure and fear losing what they have.
For me, this concludes into:
- The importance of change facilitation and organization development during transformation can't be neglected.
- The more guidance and security you can provide in transformation, the easier for the involved and affected to cope.
- All that are capable to do so, need to wake-up, stand-up, speak-up to avoid populists to further increase the perceived insecurities.
Looking forward to your thoughts and comments.
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