Enabling ChangeNathan Loynes

How do we affect change?

Oh?!? That’s EASY then!

Well… Erm… “Not Really”.

Theory into practice

Although a lot of literature and theories of ‘change’ and ‘change management’ have evolved following Lewin, actually ‘putting change into practice’ [making change happen] continues to be a challenge for individuals, organisations and sometimes ‘whole’ societies!!!

Denial: A Sociological Exploration

In his book, States, Denial of Denial: Knowing About Attrocities and Suffering (2001), Stanley Cohen explores how human atrocities such as genocides, war crimes, or even public beatings can take place without anyone intervening.According to Cohen, denial has a number of components to it, involving cognition, emotion, morality and action.

How do we deny?

According to Cohen, this denial can be;Literal.

Interpretive.Implicitory.

Literal denial is when someone actually does not know about something (either because they don’t know, they block it out, or they choose to forget).

Interpretive denial is when someone does not interpret something as problematic or immoral.

Implicitory denial is when the implications resulting from the behavior or the issue are either ignored or interpreted as unproblematic or nonexistent.

‘Levels’ of Denial

• Literal denial is when someone actually does not know about something (either because they don’t know, they block it out, or they choose to forget).

• Interpretive denial is when someone does not interpret something as problematic or immoral.

• Implicitory denial is when the implications resulting from the behavior or the issue are either ignored or interpreted as unproblematic or nonexistent.

• "One common thread which runs through the many different stories of denial: people, organisations, governments or whole societies are presented with information that is too disturbing, threatening or anomalous to be fully absorbed or openly acknowledged.

• ...The information is therefore somehow repressed, disavowed of pushed aside or reinterpreted. Or the information 'registers' well enough, but its implications - cognitive, emotional or moral are evaded, neutralized or rationalized away"

Literal

• The assertion that something did or did not happen.

• The assertion refuses to acknowledge facts - for what ever reason.

“My husband could not have done that to our daughter -

she is making it up”.

Interpretive

• The raw facts are not being denied. Rather they are given a different meaning from what seems apparent to others.

“I am a social drinker - not an

alcoholic”.

Implicatory

• There is no attempt to deny either the facts or their interpretation. What is denied is the psychological, political, or social implications that conventionally follow.

i.e. When seeing someone being mugged you deny any

responsibility as a citizen. (Rationalisation)

Literal Interpretive Implicatory

Level of sophistication

Cognitive Flexibility (Canas, 2005)

• Cognitive flexibility is the human ability to adapt the cognitive processing strategies to new and unexpected conditions in the environment.

• Performance in dynamic complex problem tasks is affected by cognitive inflexibility, whereby people are sometimes unable to adapt their strategies to unexpected changes in their surroundings.

Therefore;

• The more cognitively inflexible someone is, the more resistant to change they might be.

• This resistance might take the form of denial.

• Denial can be more or less sophisticated.• Which of Cohen’s three types of denial do you

think is most cognitively inflexible?Literal; Interpretive; Implicatory?

The ‘Denial’ Stage

Are you able to identify the ‘denial’ stage or its equivalent in each of these theories of change?1.Kubler-Ross.2.Fisher.3.Protraska & DiClemente.If you can, you are beginning to make synthetic links between theories!

How do we move people out of denial?

“When something as simple as reinforcement explains someone's

behaviour, there is no sense embarking on a complex intra-

psychic wild-goose chase”.

[Kazdin, & Mahoney, 1976, cited in Peltier, 2010:83]

But as wesawlasttime:

[So… ‘motivating’ people to change is ‘hard work’!]

Ruby and Dececy (2003:2475)

A large body of social psychological studies has demonstrated that we make frequent and predictable errors in the way in which we assess the conceptual perspective of other persons.

[see Fong & Markus, 1982; Gilovich et al, 2000, and others].

Egocentrism (Ruby and Dececy, 2003)

• It has been hypothesised that such mishapprehensions are grounded in an automatic tendency to impute ones own perspective onto others.

• This has been labelled ‘the egocentric assumption of shared perspectives’ by Fenigstein and Adams, 1993.

• Vorauer and Ross (1999) hold that this tendency comes from an inability to suppress ones self.

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in

expressing personal opinion.

[PROVERBS 18:2]

Cognitive Flexibility

• These studies suggest that a degree of cognitive flexibility is required in order to counteract the effects of this egocentric bias. (Ruby & Dececy, 2003:2475).

• This cognitive flexibility enables us to generate and consider ideas that are different to ours.

The Premack Principle

David Premack's (1962) principle says that you can use a high-probability or frequently occurring behaviour to reinforce a lower-probability behavior. For example, if you know that you are going to run the disk defragmenter on your computer at some point in each day, you can make a rule that you will not run it until you get at least one project done first. This is especially useful if you prefer one of your routine tasks to the others.

Cost Benefit Analysis

Force Field Analysis

Remember this?

What not to do

1. Arguing for change. The counselor directly takes up the pro-change side of ambivalence on a particular issue and seeks to persuade the client to make the change.

2. Assuming the expert role. The counselor structures the conversation in a way that commu nicates that the counselor "has the answers." This includes the question-answer trap of asking many closed-ended questions, as well as lecturing the client.

3. Criticizing, shaming, or blaming. The counselor.s underlying intent seems to be to shock or jar the client into changing by instilling negative emotians about the status quo.

4. Labeling. The counselor proposes acceptance of a specific label or diagnosis to charac terize or explain the client's behavior. The Focus is on what the client "is" or "has" rather than on what he or she does.

5. Being in a hurry. Sometimes a perceived shortness of time causes the counsel.or to be lieve that clear, forceful tactics are called for in order to get through"if you act like you only have a few minutes" it can take all day to accomplish a change. Whereas "if you act like you have all day," it may take only a few minutes.

6. Claiming preeminence. Finally, resistance is invoked when a counselor claims preeminence: that the counselor's goals and perspectives override those of the client. The quintessential form is a paternalistic, "I know what is best for you" approach.

Conclusions

Additional Sources

• Peltier, (2010) The psychology of executive coaching - theory and application.