Why we shouldn’t fall back once we start change

Mostly, HR is involved in major organizational changes from the beginning. The early involvement of HR benefits organizations from improvement of employee understanding of changes and facilitation of early adaptions (SHRM).

However, it is often to hear that the management and HR rush into the battlefield to fight against contemporary culture or long-lasting traditions. Indeed, the most break-through change initiatives such as Holacracy, agile or lean management would be jaw-dropping movements to most of associates. For instance, some might have lost their front-line leadership position because of the organization flattening or some might have been deprived of the regular individual performance dialog with their boss because of new self-organization systems.

Anecdotal evidences mean most associates somehow intellectually buy in those change initiatives given that more and more organizations have adopted them and advertised their successful stories. However, it seems that associates can’t rub out the thought why their management and HR should take one-way highway which is never able to step back for soothing the anxiety when it is skyrocketing.

Why not making the change initiatives rewindable in case that we face significant anxiety from our associates?

To answer this question, we at first to check whether or not falling some steps back helps to ultimately reduce our anxiety. As a human being, it is very natural to avoid the actions which evoke discomfort and worries. These avoidance behaviors can occur in many different ways to sidestep uncomfortable situations. Katharina Star (professional counselor specializing in anxiety) argues that these behaviors can actually turn out to create a negative impact to the acceptance of the changes in the long run.

“While in the short run you may experience a temporary sense of relief, in the long-run, avoidance actually lead to increased anxiety….”

My personal experience also confirms that idea. I once faced an anxiety attack when I onboarded a domestic airplane. I wanted to get out of the plane but at that time a cabin crew told me if I escaped then, it would take far longer time for me to be able to take a flight again. After the scary flight, I realized that her advice had been valid when I talked to a psychiatrist. He explained the anxiety avoidance induces people to magnify biased thinking to justify the avoidance behaviors and enhance an urge or inclination to escape from the same thing again in the future. That’s why we must keep staying in the situation and trying to see facts around it, he emphasized.

In addition to the story about anxiety avoidance, there are many other examples where we keep moving on instead of taking back. When we learn sports or build your muscles, always our trainer challenges us to do a bit more than what we did yesterday. When we climb the mountain, we never allow the gravity to make us fall back to the previous steps we already made because we all know if we fall back, we must step them twice to move on.

So what? Am I saying that we have to neglect associates’ anxiety on the change process and ruthlessly drag them forward? No, not at all. We can find some hints from the post of Katharina. She said sharing the emotion of anxiety and the source of it with friends will help reduce it. Similarly, John Fisher (a psychologist who researched and developed the Personal Transition through Change curve, 2012) suggested that managers and change agents can make the change transition effective and painless by providing education, information and relevant supports.

All in all, to ultimately protect our associates from the anxiety and its avoidance behaviors derived from change and help them to succeed in the new environment is not about giving them a short relief by means of compromised fallback actions but about making sure effective communication channels and aid systems to support the individual change journey of our associates.