Advertisement
- By Chris and Suzanne Styles
When any change is introduced in to a business, people immediately become fearful. They start to worry. This worry and doubt in their conscious (thinking) minds is then impressed on the subconscious (doing) mind as fear, which translates as anxiety in the body.
Nobody wants to display to their colleagues openly that they are anxious. So, they all choose to put on a brave face. As such, the anxiety they are feeling is suppressed.
As whatever is suppressed has to be expressed, the suppressed anxiety is expressed through your employees’ bodies as disease – a state of general unwellness. People get sick and absenteeism spikes. Is this the impact the executive management team want changes to have on the business? We think not!
How should you introduce change into your business?
When you introduce change into your business, remember that every person will interpret this change - and react to it – differently because ever since we were young, we have all been conditioned in very different ways. As such, we all think (and feel) in our own very unique way:
- Our thoughts cause our emotions (feelings),
- Our emotions cause our behaviours,
- Our behaviours cause our actions, and
- Our actions cause our results (how we really react to change).
So what causes our thoughts? Our conditioning does, as does our programming which, since we were young, influenced us and the way we view the world around us. This conditioning, which is a collection of habits, is locked in our subconscious mind as paradigms. Our paradigms cause us to do what we do.
There is no getting around this.
That is why sometimes, during periods of change, we see people doing ridiculous things and resist the change. When asked why they are doing what they are doing, they say “I don’t know”. Did they mean to behave in this way? In most instances, no, they do not. They are merely doing what they do (their non-serving actions which are delivering poor results) because of the way they are programmed subconsciously. Remember: People do not resist change when it is their choice; people resist being changed.
We react to change based on our inner thoughts
As you gain a deeper understanding of paradigms, it becomes obvious that logic on a conscious level and paradigms on a subconscious level shape a person’s perception and literally place them in a box beyond which they cannot see without effectively using their imagination.
Unfortunately, a person’s paradigm has such an enormous influence over how they use their conscious faculties, if and when they use their imagination, that they will generally unconsciously use it in a negative manner against themselves:
An individual will create an image in their mind where they see the conditions and circumstances as the dominant role and they become subservient to these. This puts them in a position that prevents them from moving forward.
- For the individual to effect a shift in their logic, and break out from that box, they need understanding, courage and determination.
So, if a person experiences recurring negativity around change, it is important to understand the cause of the problem does not lie with the circumstances or conditions outside these people. The cause is within. It lies within their paradigms.
Becoming aware of paradigms and their limiting ability is not going to change a person’s situation, but it is a great way to get started. Altering paradigms starts with identifying and understanding why the person is doing what they are doing and then helping them to build new, powerful, serving, thoughts around this. These new thoughts will then be constantly seeded in the subconscious mind to build new, constructive paradigms.
Bottom line: change for most people is stressful enough. If you want these changes to stick and deliver the intended results, do not attempt to roll this change out in the same way (vanilla change management) to all employees. Do this and you are guaranteed to fail and have a negative impact on your people. In addition, doing it this way will only fuel the fires of fear in the minds of all your employees that change means pain. Is this what you wanted? We think not, especially because change is necessary to stay current and sustain profits.
This article first appeared on HR Pulse.
Category