This video to share with you my model of how people respond to change my model of change curve. And it all starts with denial. Except I don't think of denial as being a response to change. In fact, it's a lack of response to change, which is why I show it if you like off the grid. Our first response to change tends to be highly emotional and negative. It may be anger, it may be frustration, bitterness, sadness, grief, fear, it could be any emotion or any combination of emotions, it could be expressed very strongly or very weakly.

It could be felt strongly or weakly and its expression may or may not match the way it's felt. But our first response is almost always emotional. And that's tricky because we don't come to work has changed manages to manage powerful emotions like these. So perhaps it's a relief when people work through their emotions. And they come to the next stage, which is far more rational, it's resistance. But really and truly, resistance is out of the frying pan of emotion and into the fire.

Because when they were emotional, they could analyze an argument. And they weren't going to be receptive or even rational in their thinking. Now they're resistant and they are rational, they'll give you a dozen good reasons why the change is wrong, and you're an idiot for promoting it. And it can feel even harder here. But the good news is because they're in an irrational state, they will be open to listening to rational argument and if your vision for the future and your case for this change is compelling, they will then move around to a more Positive state of mind and they will explore the benefits. And eventually, if there are positive net benefits for them, they will realize that, but they haven't changed.

Because we can't make a change purely at a rational level, we have to make a change in an emotional level as well. And that's when we move into acceptance. And that is the final stage of our response to the change. When we move beyond that, we start to integrate that acceptance when we become advocates for the change. That's when we commit to the change, and we start acting to promote it, as well as simply accepting it. Now what we know about this cycle is that everyone will move through the cycle, but different people will move at different speeds and the transition from the highly emotional rejection whether it's anger or sadness or fear or frustrate To the rational resistance is best facilitated by getting people to talk about their anger, talk about their frustration and their upset, which is one of the reasons why the Mad sad, glad exercise is such a powerful one.

And likewise, moving people from exploration to acceptance is difficult because it's a transition from rational to emotional. And often the only way you can do that is to allow people time. Although what you can sometimes do is link the external benefits to something that they deeply, deeply feel that's important to them. One of their values and that often triggers the jump from exploration to acceptance. And don't forget that people can get stuck at the bottom because the change may not be right for them. There may be benefits for the organization to change.

There may be a net benefit across all the organization stakeholders, but for them they're stuck at the bottom because Actually for them, there isn't a benefit in the change and you have to be honest with them and look them in the eye and say there is no benefit for you. We need to think about what your options are and what we can do to support you in making the choices that you have to make. But once you understand this change curve, you can predict what's going to happen, you can plan for it, you can plan communications that advanced people along the curve. And you can recognize what's happening and calibrate the pace of your actions. accordingly. The change curve is one of the most valuable and powerful ways of understanding what's going on in a change.