When Managing Change - Understand The Grief Cycle

In 1969, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a book, called ‘On Death and Dying’ in which she described a cycle of emotional states experience by people who lose a loved one. She called this the “Grief Cycle”. The Grief Cycle is now recognized as a process that is experienced more generally by people working their way through bad news.

Bad news can include: losing a job, divorce, illness in the family, or other negative changes in life. The Grief Cycle is a roller-coaster ride as a person tries to navigate through their, often desperate, efforts to avoid the change. The initial state before the cycle is stable, at least in terms of the subsequent reaction on hearing the bad news. And then, into this calm a bombshell bursts. The process that ensues typically follows a pattern:

• Shock - Initial paralysis at hearing the bad news.
• Denial - Trying to avoid the inevitable.
• Anger- Frustrated outpouring of bottled-up emotion.
• Bargaining - Seeking in vain for a way out.
• Desperation - Final realization of the inevitable.
• Testing - Seeking realistic solutions.
• Acceptance - Finally finding the way forward.

A common problem with the change cycle is that people get stuck in one phase. Thus a person may become stuck in denial, never moving on from the position of not accepting the inevitable future. When it happens, they still keep on denying it, such as the person who has lost their job still going into the city only to sit on a park bench all day. In these troubled economic times, those of us in leadership positions would do well to recall and appreciate the impact of the Grief Cycle on our employees when we implement necessary organizational change.