Understanding and Coping With Change

¶ … Coping with Change In many cases, change is a daunting prospect. Although the world effectively exists in a continuous state of change, alterations to people's daily lives -- particularly as related to their families or to their workplace environments -- can frequently generate resistance from the individuals most affected. Still, there are other times in which change is desired and readily embraced.

Therefore, it is necessary to analyze a host of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors that are responsible for producing resistance to change in people, in order to better understand this phenomenon and to ultimately cope with it. External resistance to change stems from a number of factors, particularly in an organization or workplace environment. One of the most readily identifiable of these is lack of trust in management (Pasubathy, 2010, p. ).

Quite simply, there are numerous situations in which people are not consulted about change, and it is suddenly sprang on them. When these people do not trust the underlying reasons that management has effected such a change, they tend to be more resistant to it. Another external factor relates to communication regarding change. If such communication is not sufficient -- if people do not get sufficient notice or the reasons for change and their impact upon people are not relayed lucidly -- individuals are more likely to resist it.

Internal factors for change largely involve psychological reasons. These reasons include emotional factors such as aggression and frustration -- whether directly related to the workplace, its change, or not -- (Bolognese, 2002). Also, employee perception of the reasons for change are considered internal factors that can engender resistance to change. Any sense of ambiguity related to change in the workplace, in which there are aspects of it that are not perfectly clear to employees, can produce resistance to change.

Additionally, if change involves personal aspects of an employee's life, it is likely to produce an internal reason for resistance. There is an example from my past that helps to provide a case study regarding resistance to change as it explicitly related to a lack of understanding. Very early on in his undergraduate career, my friend had obtained a job at the audio visual department of the school of the arts. The term cushy did not begin to describe this job.

So long as the various audio visual technicians would attend to the various classrooms and events in which they had to set up equipment, and come to pick it up promptly before any thievery of it could take place, the employees had almost total autonomy. They could relax in the audio visual department, do homework, watch movies, surf the internet, or do anything else that they saw fit.

In many instances they could go out to eat or engage in other activities (so long as there was at least a couple of people there to answer the phones to offer customer service). Oftentimes, set-ups would simply involve flipping a particular switch or simply turning a knob or two on the audio visual equipment already located in classrooms. Moreover, to underscore the laidback environment, it was supervised by an immigrant musician who wore very attractive clothing, which she insisted was standard professional attire in her native Spain.

One day after spring break, my friend told me he had returned to work and saw that everything was different. All of the equipment had bee recently inventoried and was positioned in different places. His supervisor was now wearing standard professional attire for the United States and was dressed like any common varieties of 'suits' which populated the nearby business school. He found that his schedule had changed, and that indeed the very hours for scheduling themselves had changed as well.

The entire environment and company culture -- which was previously relaxed and carefree, had now become staid, conservative, and stuffy. It is not surprising that young undergraduate students, my friend included amongst them, were resistance to this change. For my friend, his resistance to this drastic change was completely related to an external factor. Quite simply, he had a complete dearth of understanding about why the change had taken place.

As he explained to me, everything was fine beforehand, and there was actually no need for the change in the culture of the audio visual department.

His resistance was further fueled by the fact that only after implementing these drastic changes in scheduling, in policy (television watching and internet surfing was no longer allowed), in appearance (due to the restructuring of the equipment) and in attitude (particularly of his previously laidback supervisor who had managed to transform herself into a suit in just a few days) all took place without his cognizance. Since he did not know they were taking place, he certainly did not understand why they had occurred.

To her credit, his supervisor explained that her supervisor had desired some of the changes in the equipment and in the overall image of the organization. Still, she never explained to him why. Also, she did not explain why she had neglected to inform anyone of this profound organizational change beforehand. The type of resistance my friend offered was quiet -- he simply took in the new environment and the rules and did not say anything.

Yet he made a point to display his resistance by acting opposite of how he previously had -- he avoided all contact with his supervisor and even with his other employees. Kotter's eight step approach to organizational transformation, however, could overcome both the resistance of my friend and of his fellow employees, which should be overcome before it affects employee performance and departmental reputation.

The first step is to create a sense of urgency about the change (Wember, 2013) -- his supervisor needs to be aware of the fact that dissatisfied employees tend to do dissatisfactory work. The supervisor's manager should implement an employee satisfaction survey in which workers can identify areas of dissatisfaction to fuel change. The second step in Kotter's plan is to create an elite group to provide the basis for change (Wember, 2013). That would be the supervisor,.