Wednesday evening, the Change Management Professionals Community of Practice met to discuss the impact that professional stereotypes have on how we approach change. Typical of the questions we were curious about were:

• Do you do things differently with engineers?
• Is a different style of engagement required for bankers?
• Does your communication plan change with scientists?

SHK once again gracefully provided the venue and refreshments and we were delighted to have Jenny Vandyke and Janet Barton facilitate the conversation.

thanks to Pearl Sims for photos

I’m not sure we actually got down to the nitty-gritty of how the tactics and tools change per stereotype per se, (we’d have needed another hour) but there was some great insights.

Jenny started the discussion by having us break into small groups and note the common challenges faced when working with professional stereotypes in change.

• Language & acronyms
• Capacity to tolerate risk
• Boundaries
• Culture
• Negotiating personal style versus professional style
• The differing need for evidence or artefacts

All were agreed that the challenge for the person managing change within a unique professional stereotype was to align.

As Neil Middleton so eloquently put it:

We need to be similar enough so that they can trust us, but different enough to be able to encourage change.

At the end of the day, I see professional stereotypes as tribal. They view the ‘other’ with suspicion and in the first 30 days are working out “can I trust you, are you one of us, can we work together or do we need to eat you?”

Jenny then focused the small groups on articulating what it is we do to manage this. Typical of the tactics were matching techniques.

• Changing voice
• Adapting wardrobe
• Being quick to pick up the cultural norms

We were also strong on clarification / translation activities such as reframing the vision.

Much of the real success in working with professional stereotypes came down to the emotional intelligence of the change manager. Those really successful are able to put ego aside, keep confidences when testes, demonstrate empathy and understanding.

As I said, we probably ran out of time on the details of how we work with individual stereotypes. It was noted that IT folk don’t like documentation, engineers handle change when it is presented as a problem to solve, and like direction and details. Perhaps we use the comments for further thoughts on the details. What have you noticed about working with the various stereotypes? Love to hear…