Now, as a professional, when we help people transform their lives… Now, remember we don’t transform their lives for them, but we help them transform their own lives, or when you’re driving change through your own business and it could be that there’s a new strategy that you’re doing in your business, quite often, people get a little bit spooked when it comes to change. So I thought we might give you a little model called the SCARF model, which helps with understanding how you can communicate change through your business or even with a client.
Now, there’s a saying that says, people don’t hate change, they hate being changed. I’ll say that again. People don’t hate change they hate being changed. What happens is that when change is forced upon us, we often put up a barrier or we engage in what we call passive resistance. So if we just have a look at this model for a moment, if an event happens, whatever that is, if I see that as negative and a threat, I will move away from that, and that’s just classic human nature. Whereas if I see it as positive and a reward, I will move towards it.
Now it’s interesting that there are three red arrows moving away from this change than there are towards it. What that tells us is that people are much more likely to move away from something that they don’t understand and don’t know about than go towards it. And so David Rock a psychologist has formulated a great model, I think for helping people with change. And it’s called the SCARF Model.
The first thing is status. If I feel as though my status is attacked, I will not go for the change. So it could be when you do a restructure in your business, it could be that somebody feels as though they’ve been demoted or somebody’s been given greater status than them. So it’s a really important thing to remember how to deliver the message so that people’s status is not threatened. If their status is threatened, there will probably be a bit of a roadblock or an energy block to the change.
The second one is certainty. People need to know what the plan looks like. So if you’re able to tell them for instance, that this is our new strategy, and this is the way it will work, and we’ll be having these steps along the way, and we’ll be checking in, then people get an understanding of the journey that they’ll be on and they’re more likely to accept the change that you’ve got.
The next one is autonomy and autonomy is not about handing over the keys to the asylum, to the imbeciles. It really is about involving people in some of the design and some of the choices that are made there. Giving people freedom to choose what affects them within the confines of the plan, I think allows people to want to get on and move towards it rather than away from it.
The next one is relatedness. Too often when change is driven through businesses, people feel isolated. When I feel alone, I want to protect myself and I protect myself by moving away into what I already know as the status quo and I won’t engage in new things. So making sure that team meetings and you’re keeping groups together, and remember that we can get pretty much through any change if we stick together with a sense of humor. And we start to acknowledge and talk about what the real issues are. I’m feeling a bit nervous about this. That’s okay. So am I. Let’s have a look and see how we can do that.
And the last one is fairness. If it looks like you play favorites within your business, if it looks like that you don’t play fair, if it’s all about you and not about your team, then there’s a fair chance that they’ll move away from it. So as you drive change through your business, just keep thinking about these five things, status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. And if you can mold that into the communication of your new plan, there’s a fair chance that people will want to jump on board.