cameron and green making-sense-of-change-management

Team changeit comes to change, people with different preferences react differently tochange, both when they initiate it and when they are on the receivingend of it. This is also true when you are a member of a team. Differentpeople will bring their individual preferences to the table and behave indiffering ways.When undergoing team change, individual team members will typicallyreact in one of four ways (see illustrations above):• Some will want to ascertain the difference between what should bepreserved and what could be changed. There will be things theywant to keep.• Some will think long and hard about the changes that will emergeinternally from their visions of the future. They will be intent onthinking about the changes differently.• Some will be keen to move things on by getting things to run moreeffectively and efficiently. They will be most interested in doingthings now.• Some will be particularly inventive and want to try somethingdifferent or novel. They will be all for changing things.The use of MBTI, or any other personality-profiling instrument, canhave specific benefits when teams are experiencing or managing change.It can identify where individuals and the team itself might havestrengths to be capitalized on, and where it might have weaknesses thatneed to be supported.Behaviours exhibited by team members will run ‘true to type’, and thusknowing your preferences and those of the rest of the team will help aidunderstanding. It is also true that different team tasks might be suitablefor different types – either because they are best matched or because itprovides a development opportunity. Surfacing differences helps individualssee things from the other person’s perspective, and adds to the effectiveuse of diversity within the team.Researching in the health care industry, Mary McCaulley (1975) madethe point that similarity and difference within teams can have bothadvantages and disadvantages:87