Last week I shared how the discussion of ethics and leadership has grown dramatically in recent years. Books like Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last and Kouzes and Posner’s The Leadership Challenge are only examples of the many focused on ethics and values based leadership. The topic is also current in the scholarly dialogue, with a popularity that is converging on that of strategy. There is good reason. Values based leadership has a profound effect on the long term success of organizations, the people who work there, and their shareholders.
Certainly this should be reason enough to subscribe to a leadership ethic. However, there has been far less discussion of ethics from the perspective of the leadership of change. Browse the web and you will find guides and advice regarding how to make change a painless experience. However, if you have been on either side of the change management equation your response to the idea of painless change might be, “wouldn’t it be nice?”
Painless change flies in the face of how the human brain works. Neuroscientists David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz identified that change triggers the pain centres in our brain almost ten years ago. However, business gurus like Warren Bennis have erroneously dismissed the neuroscience of leadership as only confirming things they have always known to be true.
So what? You may well ask. Deliberately inflicting pain has ethical ramifications that cannot be ignored. Indifference to the suffering of others has been described by Auschwitz survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel as worse than anger and hatred; it strips us of our humanity. The knowledge that change creates pain calls for compassionate leadership of change. Change managers will probably exclaim, "But compassion is one of the four C’s of change management!" They are right; neuroscience confirms the received wisdom. However, compassion is difficult; you can’t fake it. It requires a trusting relationship, authenticity, and genuine empathy. Research has identified compassion as foundational to successful transformational leadership in organizations as discussed two weeks ago. If it were easy would the cries for more compassionate leadership in our communities, governments, and organizations be so loud?
None of this is to say we should shy away from change. After all, nothing endures but change! It is essential to our survival and success. However, it seems unavoidable that compassion is not just a good practice; it is an ethical obligation for leaders who would create successful change.
What do you think?
Post Script
In another thread Dr. Eli Sopow asked me to expand on the argument that we experience change as pain. I was introduced to the concept by Rock and Schwartz's Strategy+Business article, "The Neuroscience of Leadership." The article draws together research into the commonality between social pain (e.g. separation anxiety) and physical pain, the functioning of primitive parts of the brain triggers the amygdala in the face of stimuli that do not meet expectations, and the exhausting effect of having to process novel information. Subsequent work has also identified a commonality in pain responses when people are faced with threats to personal meaning and experiences that defy expectations. the good news out of this last study is that while the brain experiences changes as pain responses, Tylenol acts to moderate that pain. Better change through chemistry anyone?
