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have very similar experiences, though perhaps less dramatic and less traumatic.

The Kübler-Ross model

Kübler-Ross published her seminal work, On Death and Dying in 1969. This described her work with terminally ill patients and the different psychological stages that they went through in coming to terms with their condition. Clearly this research was considered to have major implications for people experiencing other types of profound change.

Kübler-Ross realized that patients – given the necessary conditions – would typically go through five stages as they came to terms with their prognosis. The stages were denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance.

Figure 1.6 The process of change and adjustment Source: based on Kübler-Ross (1969)

Denial

People faced with such potentially catastrophic change would often not be able to accept the information. They would deny it to themselves. That is, they would not actually take it in, but would become emotionally numb and have a sense of disbelief. Some would argue that this is the body’s way of allowing people to prepare themselves for what is to follow. On a more trivial scale, some of us have experienced the numbness and disbelief when our favourite sports team is defeated. There is little that we can do but in a sense ‘shut down’. We do not want to accept the news and expose ourselves to the heartache that that would bring.

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Anger

When people allow themselves to acknowledge what is happening they enter the second stage, typically that of anger. They begin to ask themselves questions like, ‘Why me?’, ‘How could such a thing happen to someone like me? If only it had been someone else’, ‘Surely it’s the doctors who are to blame – perhaps they’ve misdiagnosed’ (back into denial). ‘Why didn’t they catch it in time?’

Anger and frustration can be focused externally, but for some of us it is ourselves we blame. Why did we not see it coming, give up smoking? ‘It’s always me who gets into trouble.’

In some ways we can see this process as a continuation of our not wanting to accept the change and of wanting to do something, anything, other than fully believe it. Anger is yet another way of displacing our real feelings about the situation.

Bargaining

When they have exhausted themselves by attacking others (or themselves) people may still want to wrest back some control of the situation or of their fate. Kübler-Ross saw bargaining as a stage that people would enter now.

For those who themselves are dying, and also for those facing the death of a loved one, this stage can be typified by a conversation with themselves. Or if they are religious, this may be a conversation with God, which asks for an extension of time. ‘If I promise to be good from now on, if I accept some remorse for any ills I have committed, if I could just be allowed to live to see my daughter’s wedding, I’ll take back all the nasty things I said about that person if you’ll only let them live.’

Once again we can see this stage as a deflection of the true gravity of the situation. This is bargaining, perhaps verging on panic. The person is desperately looking around for something, anything, to remedy the situation. ‘If only I could get it fixed or sorted everything would be all right.’

Depression

When it becomes clear that no amount of bargaining is going to provide an escape from the situation, perhaps the true momentousness of it kicks in. How might we react? Kübler-Ross saw her patients enter a depression at this stage. By depression we mean mourning or grieving for loss, because in this situation we will be losing all that we have ever had and all those we have ever known. We shall be losing our future, we shall be

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losing our very selves. We are at a stage where we are ready to give up on everything. We are grieving for the loss that we are about to endure.

For some, this depression can take the form of apathy or a sense of pointlessness. For others it can take the form of sadness, and for some a mixture of intense emotions and disassociated states.

Acceptance

Kubler-Ross saw many people move out of their depression and enter a fifth stage of acceptance. Perhaps we might add the word ‘quiet’ to acceptance, because this is not necessarily a happy stage, but it is a stage where people can in some ways come to terms with the reality of their situation and the inevitability of what is happening to them. People have a sense of being fully in touch with their feelings about the situation, their hopes and fears, their anxieties. They are prepared.

Further clinical and management researchers have added to Kubler-Ross’s five stages, in particular Adams et al (1976) as follows and as illustrated in Figure 1.7:

Figure 1.7 Adams, Hayes and Hopson’s (1976) change curve

• shock and/or surprise: really a subset of denial but characterized by a sense of disbelief; • denial: total non-acceptance of the change and maybe ‘proving’ to oneself that it is not

happening and hoping that it will go away; • anger: experiencing anger and frustration but really in an unaware sort of way, that is, taking

no responsibility for your emotions; • bargaining: the attempt to avoid the inevitable;

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depression: hitting the lows and responding (or being unresponsive) with apathy or sadness; • acceptance: the reality of the situation is accepted; • experimentation: after having been very inward-looking with acceptance, the idea arrives that

perhaps there are things ‘out there’: ‘Perhaps some of these changes might be worth at least thinking about. Perhaps I might just ask to see the job description of that new job’;

• discovery: as you enter this new world that has changed there may be the discovery that things are not as bad as you imagined. Perhaps the company was telling the truth when it said there would be new opportunities and a better way of working.

The authors have noted that there can be a preliminary stage around the initial stage of shock – one of relief: ‘At least I now know what’s happening, I had my suspicions, I wasn’t just being paranoid.’

Virginia Satir model

Virginia Satir, a family therapist, developed her model (Satir et al, 1991) after observing individuals and families experience a wide range of changes. Her model not only has a number of stages but also highlights two key events that disturb or move an individual’s experience along: the foreign element and the transforming idea; see Figure 1.8.

Figure 1.8 Satir’s model

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She describes the initial state as one of maintaining the status quo. We have all experienced periods within our lives – at home or at work – where day-to-day events continue today as they have done in previous days, and no doubt will be the same tomorrow. It may be that the organization you are working in is in a mature industry with well-established working practices which need little or no alteration. This is a state in which if you carry on doing what you are doing, you will continue to get what you are getting. The situation is one of relative equilibrium where all parts of the system are in relative harmony. That is not to say, of course, that there is no dissatisfaction. It is just that no one is effecting change.

This changes when something new enters the system. Satir calls it a ‘foreign element’ in the sense that a factor previously not present is introduced. As with the examples from the two previous models, it might be the onset of an illness or, in the world of work, a new chief executive with ideas about restructuring. Whatever the nature of this foreign element, it has an effect.

A period of chaos ensues. Typically this is internal chaos. The world itself may continue to function but the individual’s own perceived world might be turned upside down, or inside out. He or she may be in a state of disbelief – denial or emotional numbness – at first, not knowing what to think or feel or how to act. Individuals may resist the notion that things are going to be different. Indeed they may actually try to redouble their efforts to ensure that the status quo continues as long as possible, even to the extent of sabotaging the new ideas that are forthcoming. Their support networks, which before had seemed so solid, might now not be trusted to help and support the individual. They may not know who to trust or where to go for help.

During this period of chaos, we see elements of anger and disorganization permeating the individual’s world. Feelings of dread, panic and despair are followed by periods of apathy and a sense of pointlessness. At moments like this it may well seem like St John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul (2003) when all hope has vanished.

But it is often when things have reached their very worst that from somewhere – usually from within the very depths of the person – the germ of an idea or an insight occurs. In the Kübler-Ross model, the individual is coming to terms with the reality of the situation and experiencing acknowledgement and acceptance. He or she has seen the light, or at least a glimmer of hope. An immense amount of work may still need to be done, but the individual has generated this transforming idea, which spreads some light on to the situation, and perhaps shows him or her a way out of the predicament.

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Once this transforming idea has taken root, the individual can begin the journey of integration. Thus this period of integration requires the new world order to be assimilated into the individual’s own world.

Imagine a restructuring has taken place at your place of work. You have gone through many a sleepless night worrying what job you may end up in, or whether you will have a role at the end of the change. The jobs on offer do not appeal at all to you at first (‘Why didn’t they ask me for my views when they formulated the new roles?’, ‘If they think I’m applying for that they have another think coming!’). However, as the chief executive’s thinking is made clearer through better communications, you grudgingly accept that perhaps he did have a point in addressing the complacency within the firm. Then perhaps one day you wake up and feel that maybe you might just have a look at that job description for the job in Operations. You have never worked in that area before and you have heard a few good things about the woman in charge.

You begin to accept the idea of a new role and ‘try it on for size’. Perhaps at first you are just playing along, but soon it becomes less experimentation and more of an exploration. As time moves on the restructure is bedded into the organization, roles and responsibilities clarified, new objectives and ways of working specified and results achieved. A new status quo is born. The scars are still there perhaps but they are not hurting so much.

Gerald Weinberg (1997), in his masterly book on change, with a title that might not appeal to everyone (Quality Software Management, Volume 4: Anticipating change) draws heavily on the Satir model and maps on to it the critical points that can undermine or support the change process (see Figure 1.9). Weinberg shows that if the change is not planned well enough, or if the receivers of change consciously or unconsciously decide to resist, the change effort will falter.

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Summary of the psychodynamic approach

The psychodynamic approach is useful for managers who want to understand the reactions of their staff during a change process and deal with them. These models allow managers to gain an understanding of why people react the way they do. It identifies what is going on in the inner world of their staff when they encounter change.

As with all models, the ones we have described simplify what can be quite a complex process. Individuals do not necessarily know that they are going through different phases. What they may experience is a range of different emotions (or lack of emotion), which may cluster together into different groupings which could be labelled one thing or another. Any observer, at the time, might see manifestations of these different emotions played out in the individual’s behaviour.

Research suggests that these different phases may well overlap, with the predominant emotion of one stage gradually diminishing over time as a predominant emotion of the next stage takes hold. For example, the deep sense of loss and associated despondency, while subsiding over time, might well swell up again and engulf the individual with grief, either for no apparent reason, or because of a particular anniversary, contact with a particular individual or an external event reported on the news.

Individuals will go through a process which, either in hindsight or from an observer’s point of view, will have a number of different phases which themselves are delineated in time and by different characteristics. However, the stages themselves will not necessarily have clear beginnings or endings, and characteristics from one stage may appear in other stages.

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Satir’s model incorporates the idea of a defining event – the transforming idea – that can be seen to change, or be the beginning of the change for, an individual. It may well be an insight, or waking up one morning and sensing that a cloud has been lifted. From that point on there is a qualitative difference in the person undergoing change. He or she can see the light at the end of the tunnel, or have a sense that there is a future direction.

Key learnings here are that everyone to some extent goes through the highs and lows of the transitions curve, although perhaps in different times and in different ways. It is not only perfectly natural and normal but actually an essential part of being human.

STOP AND THINK!

Q 1.8 Think of a current or recent change in your organization.

• Can you map the progress of the change on to Satir’s or Weinberg’s model? • At what points did the change falter? • At what points did it accelerate? • What factors contributed in each case?

THE HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY APPROACH TO CHANGE

The humanistic psychological approach to change combines some of the insights from the previous three approaches while at the same time developing its own. It emerged as a movement in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. The American Association of Humanistic Psychology describes it as ‘concerned with topics having little place in existing theories and systems: eg love, creativity, self, growth… self-actualization, higher values, being, becoming, responsibility, meaning… transcendental experience, peak experience, courage and related concepts’.

In this section we look at how the humanistic approach differs from the behavioural and cognitive approaches, list some of the key assumptions of this approach, and look at three important models within humanistic psychology.

Table 1.4 charts some of the similarities and differences between the psychoanalytic, behavioural, cognitive and humanistic approaches. Although taken from a book more concerned with counselling and psychotherapy, it illustrates where humanistic psychology stands in relation to the other approaches.

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Table 1.4 The psychoanalytic, behavioural, cognitive and humanistic approaches

Theme Psychoanalytic Behavioural Cognitive Humanistic

Psychodynamic approach – looking for what is behind surface behaviour

Yes No Yes Yes

Action approach – looking at actual conduct of person, trying new things

No Yes Yes Yes

Acknowledgement of importance of sense-making, resistance, etc

Yes No No Yes

Use of imagery, creativity No Yes Yes Yes Use in groups as well as individual Yes No No Yes Emphasis on whole person No No No Yes Emphasis on gratification, joy, individuation No No No Yes Adoption of medical model of mental illness Yes Yes Yes No Felt experience of the practitioner important as a tool for change Yes No No Yes Mechanistic approach to client No Yes Yes No Open to new paradigm research methods No No Yes Yes

Source: adapted from Rowan (1983). Note: Although the humanistic and psychoanalytic approaches are both psychodynamic, we have differentiated between them to focus on the maximizing potential aspect of the humanistic school.

Humanistic psychology has a number of key areas of focus:

• the importance of subjective awareness as experienced by the individual;

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the importance of taking responsibility for one’s situations – or at least the assumption that whatever the situation there will be an element of choice in how you think, how you feel and how you act;

• the significance of the person as a whole entity (a holistic approach) in the sense that as humans we are not just what we think or what we feel, we are not just our behaviours. We exist within a social and cultural context.

In juxtaposition with Freud’s view of the aim of therapy as moving the individual from a state of neurotic anxiety to ordinary unhappiness, humanistic psychology has ‘unlimited aims… our prime aim is to enable the person to get in touch with their real self’ (Rowan, 1983).

Maslow and the hierarchy of needs

Maslow did not follow the path of earlier psychologists by looking for signs of ill health and disease. He researched what makes men and women creative, compassionate, spontaneous and able to live their lives to the full. He therefore studied the lives of men and women who had exhibited these traits during their lives, and in so doing came to his theory of motivation, calling it a hierarchy of needs (see Figure 1.10).

Figure 1.10 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs Source: Maslow (1970)

Maslow believed that human beings have an inbuilt desire to grow and develop and move towards something he called self-actualization. However, in order to develop self-actualization an individual has to overcome or satisfy a number of other needs first.

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