Patricia Benner’s work challenges leaders of change to consider and generate new responses to employees’ reactions to change. This is more effective than the commonly utilised grief cycle approach.
This is the fifth in a series of posts about how to view your employees’ responses to change as other than ‘resistance.’ It is based on Patricia Benner’s work described in her book The Primacy of Caring which in turn is based on Heidegger’s phenomenological approach. Phenomenology means that people can grasp a situation directly in terms of its meaning for the self.
People grasp change situations in terms of what those situations mean for them.
Previous posts have covered Benner’s four aspects of our humanness through which we deal with change situations and the associated growth and loss:
Benner’s contribution assists in redefining what is commonly known in managerial terms as resistance, or opposition to the change desired by management, an opposition that it is the leader’s job to overcome.
To me, Benner’s work challenges leaders of change to consider and generate new responses to the specific situation where the smooth operation of the participant’s background meaning, habitual bodily understanding and the individual’s concerns are breaking down.
This view is consistent with complex responsive process thinking which encourages paying attention to the micro-interaction of what is going on in the here and now.
John Shotter points out the importance of being open, of being willing to be struck by the novel moments in ordinary conversation. I think Benner’s suggestions help leaders to concentrate more on understanding the life situation of participants and to identify what is potentially new in a conversation.
This is a far cry from seeing employees as going through the stages of a grief cycle, and allows a far more personalised approach to situations of ‘resistance’ that might arise.
Psychological and emotional response to change – A new perspective…
In another interesting series of posts in his Changing Organisations blog, Stephen Billing introduces the work of Prof. Patricia Benner and draws implications from it for leaders of organizational change. I haven’t previously come across Benner’s t…
Trackback by informal coalitions — January 26, 2009 @ 7:56 am
Hi Stephen,
Thanks again for this excellent series of posts.
As you will see, I’ve produced an intital post in response. This recognises the value for change leaders in the insights you have drawn from Benner’s work, whilst arguing that, in my view, these don’t necessarily sit in opposition to those implicit in Kubler-Ross’s research into the grief process.
I would hope to use a future post – or posts – to highlight the similarities I have seen between those aspects of Benner’s work that you have identified here and the informal coalitions view of the psychological, emotional and behavioural responses to change.
Best regards,
Chris
Comment by Chris Rodgers — January 26, 2009 @ 8:31 am