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Individual change

INTRODUCTION

This chapter draws together the key theories of how individuals go through change, using various models to explore this phenomenon. The aims of this chapter are to give managers and others experiencing or implementing change an understanding of the change process and how it impacts individuals, and strategies to use when helping people through change to ensure results are achieved.

This chapter covers the following topics, each of which takes a different perspective on individual change:

• Learning and the process of change – in what ways can models of learning help us understand individual change?

• The behavioural approach to change – how can we change people’s behaviour? • The cognitive approach to change – how change can be made attractive to people and how

people can achieve the results that they want. • The psychodynamic approach to change – what’s actually going on for people. • The humanistic psychology approach to change – how can people maximize the benefits of

change?

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Personality and change – how do we differ in our responses to change? • Managing change in self and others – if we can understand people’s internal experience and we

know what changes need to happen, what is the best way to effect change?

As the box points out, a key point for managers of change is to understand the distinction between the changes being managed in the external world and the concurrent psychological transitions that are experienced internally by people (including managers themselves).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT It was the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, who maintained that you never step into the same river twice. Of course most people interpret that statement as indicating that the river – that is, the external world – never stays the same, is always changing: constant flux, in Heraclitus’s words again. However, there is another way of interpreting what he said. Perhaps the ‘you’ who steps into the river today is not the same ‘you’ who will step into the river tomorrow. This interpretation – which might open up a whole can of existential and philosophical worms – is much more to do with the inner world of experience than with the external world of facts and figures.

Immediately, therefore, we have two ways of looking at and responding to change: the changes that happen in the outside world and those changes that take place in the internal world. Often though, it is the internal reaction to external change that proves the most fruitful area of discovery, and it is often in this area that we find the reasons external changes succeed or fail.

To demonstrate this we will draw on four approaches to change. These are the behavioural, the cognitive, the psychodynamic and the humanistic psychological approaches, as shown in Figure 1.1.

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Figure 1.1 Four approaches to individual change

We will also look at Edgar Schein’s analysis of the need to reduce anxiety about the change by creating psychological safety. This is further illuminated by discussion of the various psychodynamics that come into play when individuals are faced with change, loss and renewal.

Finally, we will explore tools and techniques that can be used to make the transition somewhat smoother and somewhat quicker. This will include a summary of how the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator™, which is used to develop personal and interpersonal awareness, can illuminate the managerial challenges at each stage of the individual change process. But first we will begin our exploration by looking at how individuals learn.

LEARNING AND THE PROCESS OF CHANGE

Buchanan and Huczynski (1985) define learning as ‘the process of acquiring knowledge through experience which leads to a change in behaviour’. Learning is not just an acquisition of knowledge, but the application of it through doing something different in the world.

Many of the change scenarios that you find yourself in require you to learn something new, or to adjust to a new way of operating, or to unlearn something. Obviously this is not always the case – a company takes over your company but retains the brand name, the management team and it is ‘business as usual’ – but often in the smallest of changes you need to learn something new: your new boss’s likes and dislikes, for example.

A useful way of beginning to understand what happens when we go through change is to take a look at what happens when we first start to learn something new. Let us take an example of driving your new car for the first time. For many people the joy of a new car is tempered by the nervousness of driving it for the first time. Getting into the driving seat of your old car is an automatic response, as is doing the normal checks, turning the key and driving off. However, with a new car all the buttons and control panels might be in different positions. One can go through the process of locating them either through trial and error, or perhaps religiously reading through the driver’s manual first. But that is only the beginning, because you know that when you are actually driving any manner of things might occur that will require an instantaneous response: sounding the horn, flashing your lights, putting the hazard lights on or activating the windscreen wipers.

All these things you would have done automatically but now you need to think about them. Thinking not only requires time, it also requires a ‘psychological space’ which it is not easy to create when driving along at your normal speed. Added to this is the nervousness you may have about it being a brand new car and therefore needing that little bit more attention so as to avoid any scrapes to the bodywork.

As you go through this process, an external assessment of your performance would no doubt confirm a reduction in your efficiency and effectiveness for a period of time. And if one were to map your internal state your confidence levels would most likely dip as well. Obviously this anxiety falls

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off over time (see Figure 1.2). This is based on your capacity to assimilate new information, the frequency and regularity with which you have changed cars, and how often you drive.

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Figure 1.2 The learning dip

Conscious and unconscious competence and incompetence

Another way of looking at what happens when you learn something new is to view it from a Gestalt perspective. The Gestalt psychologists suggested that people have a worldview that entails some things being in the foreground and others being in the background of their consciousness.

To illustrate this, the room where I am writing this looks out on to a gravel path which leads into a cottage garden sparkling with the sun shining on the frost-covered shrubs. Before I chose to look up, the garden was tucked back into the recesses of my consciousness. (I doubt whether

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it was even in yours.) By focusing attention on it I brought it into the foreground of my consciousness. Likewise all the colours in the garden are of equal note, until someone mentions white and I immediately start to notice the snowdrops, the white narcissi and the white pansies. They have come into my foreground.

Now in those examples it does not really matter what is fully conscious or not. However, in the example of driving a new car for the first time, something else is happening. Assuming that I am an experienced driver, many of the aspects of driving, for me, are unconscious. All of these aspects I hopefully carry out competently. So perhaps I can drive for many miles on a motorway, safe in the knowledge that a lot of the activities I am performing I am actually doing unconsciously. We might say I am unconsciously competent. However, as soon as I am in the new situation of an unfamiliar car I realize that many of the things I took for granted I cannot now do as well as before. I have become conscious of my incompetence. Through some trial and error and some practice and some experience I manage – quite consciously – to become competent again. But it has required focus and attention. All these tasks have been in the forefront of my world and my consciousness. It will only be after a further period of time that they recede to the background and I become unconsciously competent again (Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3 Unconscious competence

Of course there is another cycle: not the one of starting at unconscious competence, but one of starting at unconscious incompetence! This is

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where you do not know what you do not know, and the only way of realizing is by making a mistake (and reflecting upon it), or when someone kind enough and brave enough tells you. From self- reflection or from others’ feedback your unconscious incompetence becomes conscious, and you are able to begin the cycle of learning.

Kolb’s learning cycle

David Kolb (1984) developed a model of experiential learning, which unpacked how learning occurs, and what stages a typical individual goes through in order to learn. It shows that we learn through a process of doing and thinking (see Figure 1.4). The labels of activist, reflector, theorist and pragmatist are drawn from the work of Honey and Mumford (1992).

Figure 1.4 Kolb’s learning cycle

Following on from the earlier definition of learning as ‘the process of acquiring knowledge through experience which leads to a change in behaviour’, Kolb saw this as a cycle through which the individual has a concrete experience. The individual does something, reflects upon his or her specific experience, makes some sense of the experience by drawing some general conclusions, and plans to do things differently in the future. Kolb would argue that true learning could not take place without someone going through all stages of the cycle.

In addition, research by Kolb suggested that different individuals have different sets of preferences or styles in the way they learn. Some of us are quite activist in our approach to learning. We want to experience what it

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is that we need to learn. We want to dive into the swimming pool and see what happens (immerse ourselves in the task). Some of us would like to think about it first! We like to reflect, perhaps on others’ experience, before we take action. The theorists might like to see how the act of swimming relates to other forms of sporting activity, or investigate how other mammals take the plunge. The pragmatists amongst us have a desire to relate what is happening to their own circumstances. They are interested in how the act of swimming will help them to achieve their goals.

Not only do we all have a learning preference but also the theory suggests that we can get stuck within our preference.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT If you were writing a book on change and wanted to maximize the learning for all of your readers perhaps you would need to:

• encourage experimentation (activist); • ensure there were ample ways of engendering reflection through questioning (reflector); • ensure the various models were well researched (theorist); • illustrate your ideas with case studies and show the relevance of what you are saying by giving

useful tools, techniques and applications (pragmatist).

So activists may go from one experience to the next, not thinking to review how the last one went or planning what they would do differently. The reflector may spend inordinate amounts of time conducting project and performance reviews, but not necessarily embedding any learning into the next project. Theorists can spend a lot of time making connections and seeing the bigger picture by putting the current situation into a wider context, but they may not actually get around to doing anything. Pragmatists may be so intent on ensuring that it is relevant to their job that they can easily dismiss something that does not at first appear that useful.

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STOP AND THINK!

Q 1.1 A new piece of software arrives in the office or in your home. How do you go about learning about it?

• Do you install it and start trying it out? (Activist) • Do you watch as others show you how to use it? (Reflector) • Do you learn about the background to it and the similarities with other programmes? (Theorist) • Do you not bother experimenting until you find a clear purpose for it? (Pragmatist)

THE BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH TO CHANGE

The behavioural approach to change, as the name implies, very much focuses on how one individual can change another individual’s behaviour using reward and punishment, to achieve intended results. If the intended results are not being achieved, an analysis of the individual’s behaviour will lead to an understanding of what is contributing to success and what is contributing to non-achievement. To elicit the preferred behaviour the individual must be encouraged to behave that way, and discouraged from behaving any other way. This approach has its advantages and disadvantages.

For example, an organization is undergoing a planned programme of culture change, moving from being an inwardly-focused bureaucratic organization to a flatter and more responsive customer- oriented organization. Customer-facing and back office staff will all need to change the way they behave towards customers and towards each other to achieve this change. A behavioural approach to change will focus on changing the behaviour of staff and managers. The objective will be behaviour change, and there will not necessarily be any attention given to improving processes, improving relationships or increasing involvement in goal setting. There will be no interest taken in how individuals specifically experience that change.

This whole field is underpinned by the work of a number of practitioners. The

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names of Pavlov and Skinner are perhaps the most famous. Ivan Pavlov noticed while researching the digestive system of dogs that when his dogs were connected to his experimental apparatus and offered food they began to salivate. He also observed that, over time, the dogs started to salivate when the researcher opened the door to bring in the food. The dogs had learnt that there was a link between the door opening and being fed. This is now referred to as classical conditioning.

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING Unconditioned stimulus (food) leads to an unconditioned response (salivation).

If neutral stimulus (door opening) and unconditioned stimulus (food) are associated, neutral stimulus (now a conditioned stimulus) leads to unconditioned response (now a conditioned response).

Pavlov (1928)

Further experimental research led others to realize that cats could learn how to escape from a box through positive effects (rewards) and negative effects (punishments). Skinner (1953) extended this research into operant conditioning, looking at the effects of behaviours, not just at the behaviours themselves. His experiments with rats led him to observe that they soon learnt that an accidental operation of a lever led to there being food provided. The reward of the food then led to the rats repeating the behaviour.

Using the notion of rewards and punishments, additions and subtractions of positive and negative stimuli, four possible situations arise when you want to encourage a specific behaviour, as demonstrated in Table 1.1.

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Table 1.1 Rewards and punishments

Actions Positive Negative

Addition Positive reinforcement Desired behaviour is deliberately associated with a reward, so that the behaviour is displayed more frequently.

Negative addition A punishment is deliberately associated with undesired behaviour, reducing the frequency with which the behaviour is displayed.

Subtraction Positive subtraction An unpleasant stimulus previously associated with the desired behaviour is removed, increasing the frequency with which that desired behaviour is displayed.

Negative subtraction A pleasant stimulus previously associated with undesired behaviour is removed, which decreases the frequency of such behaviour.

STOP AND THINK!

Q 1.2 What rewards and what punishments operate in your organization? How effective are they in bringing about change?

So in what ways may behaviourism help us with individuals going through change? In any project of planned behaviour change a number of steps will be required:

• Step 1: The identification of the behaviours that impact performance. • Step 2: The measurement of those behaviours. How much are these behaviours currently in

use? • Step 3: A functional analysis of the behaviours – that is, the identification of the component

parts that make up each behaviour. • Step 4: The generation of a strategy of intervention – what rewards and punishments should be

linked to the behaviours that impact performance. • Step 5: An evaluation of the effectiveness of the intervention strategy.

Reinforcement strategies

When generating reward strategies at Step 4 above, the following possibilities should be borne in mind.

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