From Fear to Acceptance: Creating Safe Emotional Spaces During Restructuring
From Fear to Acceptance: Creating Safe Emotional Spaces During Restructuring
From Fear to Acceptance: Creating Safe Emotional Spaces During Restructuring
Whether driven by macroeconomic shifts or the pursuit of increased efficiency, the reality is that businesses often find themselves in need of regular transformation. As a result, organisations become emotional minefields that require emotional maturity, skill and finesse to navigate successfully. Instead of shying away from these, as tricky as they might be, transparency and acceptance are the keys to creating safe emotional spaces during change.
Right now, the socio-economic climate in South Africa is fragile – driven by various factors such as high unemployment, lack of physical safety and an unbearable cost of living. Emotionally, over the past 10-15 years, the nation has shifted from a space dominated by the mood of ambition and possibility to high anxiety, anger, fear and hopelessness. These permeate into workplaces and get exacerbated during organisational change and restructuring, where the worst outcome for the workforce is job losses and the repercussions thereof.
Creating Emotionally Safe Spaces
Creating Emotionally Safe Spaces
Creating Emotionally Safe Spaces
Restructuring is difficult and taxing, technically and emotionally. Leaders and employees must navigate an emotionally charged landscape for themselves and others. Multiple identities such as villain, victim and hero are assumed, and these evoke a combination of complex emotions, especially for line managers who often play the role of both victim and villain, where they are the bearers of bad news, expected to continue business as usual, whereas they may be directly impacted. Emotions such as guilt, fear, anxiety, resentment, anger and resignation are rife in the environment, driving behaviours that include quiet quitting, disengagement and, at worst, sabotage.
Organisations need to empower all employees, especially leaders, to create emotionally safe spaces. These are micro and macro spaces where emotional expression and support are provided within the community with which one is impacted. Currently, some “progressive” organisations provide emotional resources for individuals externally, which puts the onus on employees to reach out when they need support. This proves to be insufficient and underutilised as the impact of restructuring is individual and communal, i.e. team, department, role and level-based. Organisations must create spaces
where communities can openly express and access emotional resources collectively. In these spaces, employees often become the emotional support for each other, making the journey to acceptance easier and impactful – as it’s achieved en masse.
From fear to acceptance
From fear to acceptance
Acceptance is the emotion that allows us to make peace with difficult situations. It requires us to face the reality of the problem and accept it for what it is. It doesn’t mean liking it. It means accepting the reality. This provides a springboard for accessing new possibilities. Acceptance is the emotion that allows us to make peace and opens people up to other forward-looking alternatives instead of backwards-looking ones.
The slow and sometimes non-existent journey to acceptance in organisations changing is predominantly driven by the need for more openness and transparency. For various reasons, restructures are often clouded in secrecy and darkness. This creates trust erosion and extended settlement in so-called negative emotional spaces. This is because acceptance can only be achieved when the reality of the situation is known – “good or bad.”
Acceptance is prefaced on accepting the situation for what it is – but organisations often fall short of this measure as they do not fully communicate what’s happening.
Leadership Role in Transitioning to Acceptance
Leadership Role in Transitioning to Acceptance
Leadership Role in Transitioning to Acceptance
- Personal Mastery: Leaders need to equip themselves – through the proper support -with emotional literacy, maturity and skills to manage their emotions effectively. Thisongoing journey does not need to wait for a restructuring to occur.
- Create Safe Spaces: Foster an environment where individuals feel comfortable expressing their emotions. Designate times for open conversations and encourage dialogue about fears, concerns, and hopes. Enable communities to express and support.
- Demonstrate Empathy: Practice empathetic listening, validating the emotions expressed by team members. This builds trust and fosters connection.
- Seek Professional Support: If navigating emotions becomes challenging, consider bringing in professionals who specialise in facilitating conversations and emotional well-being.
- Invest in Resources: Offer resources such as collective/group coaching and counselling services. This is a proof point to leadership commitment to employee well-being.
- Lead by Example: Be open. Share your emotions and challenges, demonstrating that it’s acceptable to acknowledge the emotional impact of change
This approach, anchored in vulnerability opens up possibilities and empowers all (stakeholders) to navigate emotional landscapes with resilience and collective momentum. Hang in there. Stay transparent, have the tough conversations, and allow those conversations to unfold with openly and successfully for all involved
Written by
Phephile Simelane
CEO: Nabantu