making-sense-of-change-management

Individual change• Fear of punishment for incompetence: theapprehension that you will somehow lose outor be punished when this incompetence isdiscovered or assessed.• Fear of loss of personal identity: the innerturmoil when your habitual ways of thinkingand feeling are no longer required, or whenyour sense of self is defined by a role or positionthat is no longer recognized by the organization.• Fear of loss of group membership: in the same way that your identitycan be defined by your role, for some it can be profoundly affected bythe network of affiliations you have in the workplace. In the same waythat the stable equilibrium of a team or group membership can fosterstates of health, instability caused by shifting team roles or the disintegrationof a particular group can have an extremely disturbing effect.What gets in the way of change: resistance to changeLeaders and managers of change sometimes cannot understand why individualsand groups of individuals do not wholeheartedly embrace changesthat are being introduced. They often label this ‘resistance to change’.Schein suggests that there are two principles for transformative change towork: first, survival anxiety must be greater than learning anxiety, andsecond, learning anxiety must be reduced rather than increasing survivalanxiety. Used in connection with Lewin’s force field (see Chapter 3), we seethat survival anxiety is a driving force and learning anxiety is a restrainingforce. Rather than attempting to increase the individual or group’s sense ofsurvival anxiety, Schein suggests reducing the individual’s learning anxiety.Remember also that the restraining forces may well have some validity.How do you reduce learning anxiety? You do it by increasing thelearner’s sense of psychological safety through a number of interventions.Schein lists a few:• a compelling vision of the future;• formal training;• involvement of the learner;57