When things change, our world shifts, and we must adapt. Grieving illustrates this process vividly, shaking our emotional landscape and prompting us to reshape our understanding of events. The classic stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – describe the emotional journey we undergo when facing significant change.
Laughter and tears
My experience of the process is to have my emotions raging, forcing me to test out different justifications, rationales and explanations for what’s happened to make it seem more comfortable. My emotions force my rational brain to work overtime, gradually making sense of the new circumstances and what they mean to me. To get there, I’ve had to explore all the anchor points of my new story to check if they fit my worldview, morality, guilty feelings, intimate memories, aspirations dashed, and allegiances realigned. I may have cried, talked a lot, or got drunk. The result is a new identity story that I can live with. Grieving is the process of rewriting a story.
The grief model of change
While grieving is an extreme example, the same process is at work when we encounter any change. First, we deal with emotions, and as we process them, we explore new possibilities and interpretations of facts to see what comforts us. Eventually, a new model of the world has been constructed, and we can leave the emotional processing space behind and move on to the everyday.
Harnessing video drama for emotional exploration
When there is a significant change in the workplace, we think everyone will adapt rationally. However, change triggers emotional responses, and the behavioural results can be unpredictable. Video drama provides a means to bring our emotional difficulties into the open in a medium that presents them objectively. It’s easier to talk about the emotions on the screen than it is our own.
The video is designed to focus on the main blockers that people feel, presented in a scenario where the concerns manifest as a conflict that builds into a crisis. A crisis demands a decision. Now, the audience can’t help but think, “What would I do in that situation?”. This is the launch point for a discussion – an exploration of the issue. People in the group understand that you can’t do anything; choices must be made. This forces emotional exploration of areas that they might, till now, have been avoiding.
The scenarios might involve modelling the new way of working and the expected challenges. We can explore these unknown areas together.
Promoting Emotional Exploration
The social element of the experience, watching it in a group, whether in a room or via shared social media, allows the group to mediate the sense-making. What is the rational response? The emotional processing is shared, and the new story that is built is shared through a group bonding experience.
The campaign surrounding this experience has two main functions: it sends a message that this process is deemed important by the management, broadcasts the message, and keeps the conversation and story-building rolling.
What do you do to facilitate team story-building at times of change?
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