Even when not included in the change management team, a team leader or manager will still be expected by superiors to ‘make the change go smoothly’. The focus is usually on leading your team through the change process. It is all well and good to manage your team through major changes in the workplace, but what about yourself? What impact does the process have on leadership and how does one cope with it?

Laying some groundwork, let us turn to neuroscience.

David Rock's SCARF model outlines five social domains that influence how people feel and act within a team. The factors include Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness.

A threat - perceived or otherwise - to any one of the domains activates the same threat/reward responses in our brain that we rely on for physical survival, even stimulating the same region of the brain as physical pain. In short, change kicks up powerful emotions because our instincts often treat it as an existential threat. This response is instinctive, and there is no ‘turning it off’.

Picture it as a man riding an elephant. The prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that handles decision making) is the man, while the amygdala (which handles emotional regulation and the fight-or-flight response) is the elephant. If something scares the elephant, the man riding it loses control. Regaining control can be nearly impossible.

To better understand all this, let’s take a closer look at the social domains.

Status:

Our importance relative to others.

A company I once worked with had a policy of avoiding promoting people to leadership positions in teams they were already members of. The moment you pick a leader from an existing group, their peers feel less important by comparison.

Certainty:

Our ability to predict the future.

In a previous video, I posed the question “What if Head Office manages the change?”. The employees won’t know ‘Head Office’. It isn’t a person they can connect with, it is a black box that makes decisions for them, doesn’t listen to them, and never explains itself satisfactorily. The idea sparks uncertainty, “Who is managing the change? What do they think of our role? Do they understand our work? Are they taking our concerns into consideration? How do they plan on managing the change process?”

Autonomy:

Our sense of control over events.

‘Events’ here refers to almost anything and everything, including a person’s control over their work. If an employee is locked out of a system they previously had access to - regardless of whether they needed that access - will still feel that they are losing control over something.

Relatedness:

How safe we feel around others.

People know who they feel safe with. This safety can even take the form of organisational safety. Knowing you can rely on your team members to weather the storm with you makes things far less frightening. On the other hand, if someone is aware they are the poorest performer on the team, they likely already don’t feel safe, with oncoming change worsening matters.

Fairness:

How fair we perceive exchanges to be.

How fairly does a person believe they are being treated? A simple difference in status often leaves more junior employees feeling that they are being treated unfairly or that they will be treated unfairly when change comes.

When you find yourself unsteady in the face of change, ask yourself which of the social domains the change is threatening – your status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, or your sense of fairness? Before supporting your team through change, it is important to first make yourself aware of how change is impacting you, because you cannot guide others when you don’t know where you stand.

Other articles in this series include:

• Understanding Why Change is Difficult
• The Roles People Play in Change
• Addressing your Team’s Concerns about Change

View the video related to this blog.

See the playlist for more topics.