Cathartic Nature of Our Work
Helping Clients Through the Deep Emotions of Change
In this series, I have been talking about recognizing and responding to the deep emotion of transformational change.
Serving as a professional change facilitator is challenging under any circumstances but this is especially true when attending to people in the midst of deeply emotional, or cathartic, breakthroughs. The intense struggle associated with trying to hold on to the status quo, the anxiety of letting go, and then the difficulties of opening up to new possibilities generates extremely profound emotions that we must be prepared to recognize and respond to properly.
The following items represent aspects of practicing our craft that most of us employ in our work anyway. When dealing with people expressing cathartic-level emotions, however, these components of our work are particularly important. more
ChangeThinking.net
©2012 Conner Partners, Inc.
www.connerpartners.com
Adjusting to the Unfamiliar Is an Emotional Process
In the last post, I hope I made the case that both logic and emotion are employed in successful transformational initiatives. Although a balance between the two is our ultimate aim, there are times when we need to attend more to the client’s emotions than to their rational processing of change, and that is the focus of this series.
When working with clients, it’s important to note that there is a wide range of situations that evoke strong emotions:
- Some surface positive feelings, others negative.
- Some are transient, others sustained.
- Some are easy to interpret; others are complicated with conflicting signals.
- Some are indicative of singular issues; others reflect multiple dynamics.
- Some dissipate once “venting” takes place; others linger and become embedded.
- Some are associated with holding on to the past, others with the ambiguity of the present, while still others are associated with the dangers/opportunities of the future.
I’d like to share with you some observations and learnings around what I consider the most challenging emotion-based work our profession engages in with clients… more
ChangeThinking.net
©2012 Conner Partners, Inc.
www.connerpartners.com
The Emotional Side to Facilitating Change
(1) CommentTo the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.” —Arnold Bennett
A great deal of emotional investment is necessary to achieve the desired outcome of strategic initiatives, yet most change endeavors lean heavily toward the intellectual components (data reviews, critical activities and milestones, logical presentations, rational decision-making, etc.). Several factors contribute to this, one being that intellectual commitment typically precedes emotional commitment and thus, in some ways, is easier to come by. That is, people may quickly grasp the implications of a change at a rational level but then find that they need more time and effort to make the necessary emotional adjustments.
When emotional accommodation is too far behind the logical acceptance of change, dual—often contradictory—signals are sent by the person facing the transition. This kind of split-level commitment can produce confusion, mixed signals, and ambiguous communication for all involved. People may think that they have accepted a recent approach or policy shift only to find more
ChangeThinking.net
©2012 Conner Partners, Inc.
www.connerpartners.com
