During the pandemic I waved to many strangers sitting on balconies or porches, watched way too many streaming shows and baked and ate too much banana bread. Just sayin.' However, I also learned about, and became certified in, leading individuals, teams and organizations successfully through change. How? By using the framework of the Four Rooms of Change®.
There is a lot I could say a lot about the Four Rooms of Change®. It's a model developed by the Swedish psychologist, author and researcher, Claes Janssen, in the late 60s and early 70s as part of his groundbreaking research on the dynamics of change. The Four Rooms - or psychological states of mind - are rooms we move through (and sometimes get stuck in) as we deal with change. What the Four Rooms acknowledges is that each of us, based on our approach to life, goes through change differently. As I tell my clients, many of them working on teams, the Four Rooms of Change® allows them to surface and answer these questions:
Where are we in the change process?
How do we feel about it?
What do we choose to do about it?
It is a powerful tool that also gives the individuals and the team a shared vocabulary with which to talk about themselves in relation to this and any other change. It also "normalizes" the different responses people are having to the change as it recognizes that these are psychological states through which we all move at different times, in different ways and with different speeds.
I don’t know any organization that hasn't been, isn’t or won't be, undergoing change. Whether it’s figuring out the new world of work, rethinking their organizational structure, creating new products and services, implementing new technology, acquiring and integrating acquisitions, slowing down hiring due to economic concerns, and/or “your change here.”
It's constant, it's not stopping and we need to manage ourselves and others through it better than we currently are. The Four Rooms of Change® can help do that.
As Helen Keller wrote, "The curve in the road is not the end of the road unless we fail to make the turn." I would be happy to talk with you about how using the Four Rooms of Change® can help you successfully navigate that turn .