In a post last week on the BusinessCasualBlog about The Change Curve on Death and Dying, I referenced a diagram that showed the emotional stages people tend to go through when confronted with negatively perceived change.

The root material for all this came from a book authored by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in 1969 titled, “On Death and Dying.” The rendition you’re looking at above actually shows two more stages than the original 5 presented in Dr. Kubler-Ross’ work. The reason for the discrepancy is due to some adaptations for a business context.

About 15 years ago when I used to do consulting work for a change management practice at one of the (then) “Big 5″ consulting firms, many of those in our industry found it helpful to communicate to company managers the reactions their employees were likely to experience whenever a new program, policy, procedure or technology was implemented in their company.

While somewhat incomplete, a diagram like the one above helped us to develop and schedule communication plans, training programs and coaching programs to support the employees of our clients as folks like me implemented the changes for which the client paid us a tidy sum.

I say the diagram’s somewhat incomplete because, while we used it at the time as a sort of “one size fits all” model, the fact is, this curve is based on research about a negatively perceived event–death and dying.

And while it’s true that some employees, many even, indeed viewed the changes we were there to put in place as a negative event, it wasn’t really accurate to present all change events in this way. The fact is, there were some employees who viewed the whole thing as a positive event. And that positively perceived change curve, as it turns out, looks entirely different than the one shown above.

So, what’s this all got to do with real estate?

In a word: Change. Or, in two words: Clients and Change.

You’re aware, of course, that the act of buying or selling a home is a huge change for any of your clients. Add to that the changes associated with some of reasons behind why your clients decide to buy or sell a home and it becomes clear (if not clear before) why it helps to understand the emotional phases our clients go through when buying or selling a home, or worse, managing a life changing event as they buy or sell a home.

In Part 2 of this series, I’ll dig deeper into the phases of negatively perceived change before hitting on the dynamics of positively perceived changes in Part 3.

In the meantime, I’d welcome your thoughts and experiences about managing change with your clients. Have you generally found their perspective about a residential transaction as negtive or positive? Feel free to comment.

Related Posts:

Part 2:Helping Clients Manage Change (Part 2).

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