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Models of Change That Help Us Understand Our Reactions

Rosie BarryOrganizational Effectiveness, OHRbarry023@umn.edu, 612-626-1004

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Agenda

• Traditional perspectives of change• New ways to understand and manage

change, using neuroscience• What can we each do?

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VISION

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Activity

• Discuss with a partner(s) a change that you’ve gone through. Does this model describe what you experienced?

• Can this model apply to positive and negative changes?

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What new research is showing us

• The parts of the brain used for survival are the same parts that light up under inter-personal stress

• Our social motivation is ruled by the ideas of– minimizing threat– maximizing reward

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Why do we care?

Knowing what drives threat responses and reward responses means we can adjust our behavior

• We can set up our interactions to minimize the sense of threat

• We can think about adjusting our interactions to make them rewarding

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We Are All Individuals

• What we think creates our brain pathways.

• The things we think about most have deeper brain pathways.

• We can choose to think positive things as well and build new circuits.

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The SCARF Model

A way to understand social brain stimuliand the responses that are triggered

Status

Certainty

Autonomy

Relatedness

Fairness

Rock, David, “Managing with the Brain in Mind” Strategy & Business 56 (2009): 2-10

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Status

• Our importance, relative to others

• Pecking order, sense of seniority

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Certainty• The ability to anticipate or predict

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Autonomy• Sense of control and/or the freedom

to choose

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Relatedness

• Sense of belonging to a social group or work team

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Fairness

• Feeling free from bias, dishonesty, and injustice

• An individual’s sense of fairness is linked to personal values

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What Can We Do?

• Knowing what drives threat responses and reward responses means we can adjust our own behavior.

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Impacting Status

• Reduce the threat by getting information

• Offer to participate in planning

• Help to create a safe environment for learning

• Provide regular positive feedback

• Acknowledge the positives

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Impacting Certainty

• Clarify roles and responsibilities• Create a plan, short-term if needed• Set small goals that can be achieved and

adjusted over time• Limit the number of things on which to focus• Consider, and discuss, multiple realities

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Impacting Autonomy

• Identify what I can control• Ask for clear parameters for decision-making• Break large challenges into small steps• Consider possible options• Identify my own and other talents within our

team

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Impacting Relatedness

• Find ways to reach out to new people

• Encourage casual discussions

• Create and use “buddy” or mentoring systems

• Demonstrate trustworthiness

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Impacting Fairness

• Help to create clear expectations and ground rules

• Look at things from multiple perspectives

• Increase involvement and communication about significant things

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Activity

• Discuss with a partner(s) a change that you’ve experienced. How does the SCARF model describe people’s reactions?

• Which of the SCARF characteristics is probably more important to you and is more likely to be triggered during change?

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We Can Make Choices

Situation Attention Appraisal Response

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We Can Understand Our Habits

• Habits are hard to break• Thought patterns can be changed• Paying attention to things can rewire habits• Focus on what’s right, not what’s wrong• Work at regulating your thinking

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We Can Build Resilience

• Work at building resilience; have it ready when you have challenges

• It’s about energy

• Exercise, yoga or meditation• Stop ruminating – this builds negative wiring.

Schedule a time each day for it and get over it

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More Things We Can Do

• Practice giving yourself six seconds• Focus on the positive; maintain a hopeful outlook• Consider play; think of problems as challenges• Study what works for you – modes of learning• Make connections with positive others• Celebrate accomplishments• Practice choice -- choose what you pay attention to

and opt for positive reactions; this is regulation

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Activity

• With a partner(s) discuss what you might want to start, stop or continue doing as you develop more resilience with change.

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Questions?