Change is a skill

In 1993, WHO defined psychosocial skills as the ability to respond to daily challenges. Thirty years later, research confirms the intuition of practitioners. Change is not a personality trait. It's a skill. She's working out. It can be measured. It is developing.

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Why change is inherently difficult

It's obvious: change is inherently demanding. It's true for individuals. This is also true for organizations. Nothing new from this point of view.

According to the principle of free energy, formalized by Karl Friston, the brain functions as a prediction system. It is constantly building models of the world in order to anticipate what is going to happen and to reduce uncertainty.

Change is disrupting these models. It invalidates established benchmarks, generates prediction errors, and forces the brain to revise its hypotheses. This work is neither neutral nor automatic: it mobilizes more cognitive and emotional resources, and activates stress systems.

Uncertainty is not experienced as a lack of information. It is treated as a signal of a potential threat. In the absence of stable landmarks, our brain remains alert... and is exhausted.

So change is challenging by nature. Not because individuals resist it on principle, but because it requires a real effort of cognitive and emotional reconstruction.

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What has changed

Of course, the real novelty is not the change itself.

It is its acceleration. And its intensity.

Linear models for supporting change, those that promise a transition from state A to state B through predefined steps, no longer hold up. The 2008 IBM study of 1,500 change practitioners shows that only 41% of projects achieve their goals. The others fail on at least one criterion.

Planned approaches no longer work. Not because they are poorly designed. But because the world no longer moves incrementally.

By developing skills such as agility or resilience, individuals reduce the gap between their predictive system and reality. This decreases prediction errors and, therefore, the free energy needed to adapt. The underlying neurobiological mechanisms allow the brain to update its internal models in a more efficient and less expensive way.

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What it costs decision-makers

The majority of leaders are suffering from this acceleration of change.

Let's face it: suffering is the natural fate of decision-makers.

But today, the difficulties are piling up.

84% of leaders feel unprepared for the current period of change

75% of HR managers think that managers are overwhelmed by constant change.

In a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, what differentiates organizations is no longer access to information. Infobesity has become the norm.

The difference now lies in the ability of an organization as a whole to withstand and exploit this tsunami.

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Change as a psychosocial meta-competence

Psychosocial skills. More precisely: change as a metacompetence.

WHO in 1993: “A person's ability to respond effectively to the demands and challenges of daily life. The ability to maintain a state of mental well-being through appropriate and positive behaviour.”

This definition comes from public health. It applies to the professional world. Why? Because it describes functional abilities. Not personality traits.

Crucial point: psychosocial skills are about “doing”, not “being.” Developable. Trainable. measurable.

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Where does it come from

This approach is based on a triple filiation: behaviorism, cognitive psychology, management sciences.

Behaviorism is concerned with observable and modifiable behaviors. Cognitive psychology analyzes the mechanisms that condition these behaviors. Management sciences connect these abilities to performance.

This is in contrast to positional approaches, which pose personality as a set of stable traits. Here, we prefer an ontology of the activity rather than an ontology of the trait. The individual is not a prisoner of who he is. He can develop what he does.

Curtis Bateman from FranklinCovey formalized that. Change is not a one-time skill. It is a transversal skill (competency). It integrates knowledge, skills, behaviors, abilities, attitudes.

What does that change? Instead of freezing individuals into profiles (“you are INTJ”, “you are dominant blue”), we identify developable abilities. Instead of measuring stable traits, modifiable behaviors are evaluated.

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A concrete example

The work of Thomas Braun and his team.

They built a scale to measure individual agility and resilience. Agility: “the ability to create opportunities or overcome obstacles by rethinking typical approaches.” Resilience: “the emotional and psychological transition linked to change.”

Their research shows that agility predicts performance. Resilience reduces stress. And, most importantly, when resilience is high, agility can be achieved without creating additional stress.

The results after deployment: 70% of participants apply the concepts learned. 54% see a positive impact on their team. The scores increase after 3 to 4 months.

What is remarkable? These capabilities have been developed. Not revealed.

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What does that mean

If change is a competency, organizations need to revise their practices.

One: get out of crisis management. Stop developing capacities for change only during periods of major transformation. Change is not a project.

Two: target observable behaviors. Programs should focus on specific competencies. Sensemaking. Active problem solving. DIY (in the sense of Lévi-Strauss: do with the means at hand). Collective effectiveness.

Three: measure before and after. If change is a skill, its development must be objectifiable and quantifiable. Psychometric scales make it possible to monitor progress. Not for judging. To develop and protect.

Four: take into account the organizational context. An individual can possess a skill without expressing it if his environment prevents him from doing so. Excessive workload, role conflicts, lack of resources inhibit performance.

It is precisely this shift, from trait to behavior that can be measured in context, that we sought to operationalize at UNREST.

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The mission of UNREST

Our mission: to contribute to a professional world where change is seen and experienced as a source of development.

Not by incantation. By training.

Change as a skill opens up possibilities where personality typologies close doors. It's more pragmatic. It focuses on what can change. It produces measurable results.

It's also more humanistic. It recognizes that each individual has the capacity to evolve. It refuses to condemn anyone to remain a prisoner of a profile.

Organizations that develop this skill in their decision makers are not preparing for change. They transform it into a comparative advantage.

Organizations are no longer looking to “drive” change. They develop the ability to deal with it.

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References

Bateman, C. (2023). Successfully Leading Change Is a Competency, Not a Skill. Franklin Covey.

Braun, T.J., Hayes, B.C., Frautschy DeMuth, R.L., & Taran, O.A. (2017). The Development, Validation, and Practical Application of an Employee Agility and Resilience Measure to Facilitate Organizational Change. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 10 (4), 703—723.

Jorgensen, H., Owen, L., & Neus, A. (2008). IBM Global Making Change Work Study. IBM.

World Health Organization (1993). Life Skills Education in Schools. Mental Health Program, Mental Health and Addiction Prevention Division.

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