Shaping Readiness

Communication plays a crucial role in how employees react to organizational change. It can determine whether change recipients show positive reactions, like change readiness, or negative reactions, like perceived resistance. In short, reactions to change emerge and are shaped by the interactions between change agents and change recipients.

A 3-part study by Endrejat, Klonek, Müller-Frommeyer et al (2021) found that change agents can foster positive reactions to change through communication that provides change recipients with opportunities for participation and decision latitude. This is done through autonomy-supportive communication and reflective listening. Autonomy-supporting communication involves providing choices, acknowledging employees’ perspectives, and encouraging personal initiatives. Examples include seeking cooperation and establishing a cooperative atmosphere.

Reflective listening entails understanding and verbalizing the perspectives of change recipients. It involves rephrasing change recipient observations to build rapport and selectively highlight past successes to strengthen recipients’ resources. The effectiveness of autonomy-supportive communication is linked to the fulfillment of basic psychological needs such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy-supportive communication fosters change recipient need satisfaction, which in turn mitigates resistance to change.

In contrast, the authors found that autonomy-restrictive communication from change agents, such as giving orders or commands, undermines change readiness in change recipients. While change agents might believe they can redirect change recipients by using autonomy-restrictive communication, these behaviors can have detrimental effects and undermine the sense of freedom of change recipients. Change recipients might resist an imposed change initiative simply to restore their freedom and self-esteem.

Employee support was found to be critical for the success of organizational change because it directly impacts how employees react to the changing environment. They found that several factors highlight the importance of employee support:

When change recipients express resistance, change agents tend to respond by using more autonomy-restrictive communication rather than autonomy-supportive communication. This autonomy-restrictive communication undermines change recipients' positive responses to change and their psychological need fulfillment.

One explanation for change agents' use of autonomy-restrictive communication may be rooted in the "righting reflex," which is a tendency to offer help or try to convince change recipients by giving unsolicited advice or providing "reasonable" arguments for why a change is better than the status quo. Another explanation could be that resistance is relational. That is, resistance is not solely an individual trait or response but, rather, emerges from the interactions and relationships between change agents and change recipients.

Overall, the authors find that the fulfillment of basic psychological needs mediates the relationship between change agents' communication behaviors and change recipients' positive reactions to change. They also conclude that change agents tend to use autonomy-restrictive communication when confronted with resistance to change, even though such communication undermines recipients’ change readiness. In contrast, autonomy-supportive communication and reflective listening address the basic psychological needs of change recipients during an organizational transformation, serving as a mechanism enabling change agents to elicit recipients’ positive reactions to change.

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Source:

Endrejat, P., Klonek, F., Müller-Frommeyer, L. & Kauffeld, S. (2021), "Turning change resistance into readiness: How change agents’ communication shapes recipient reactions", European Management Journal, 39(5), 595-604.