7 Reasons Teams Can’t Just Get Over It

by. Matt Monge

Yesterday we looked briefly at employees — humans — working through change, as well as the notion that they could “just get over it.” Here are a few of the reasons I’m just not sure it’s reasonable to think it’s that simple.

1. They’re human.

We feel. We see. We hear. We hurt. We laugh. We cry. We experience. And we remember. Try as we might, none of us gets to start with a clean slate, so to speak. We’re imperfect humans living imperfect lives in an imperfect world while working in imperfect organizations filled with other imperfect humans living imperfect lives. It’s often so, so much deeper than someone “just getting over it.”

2. There may be emotional scars.

See above. We remember past hurts, don’t we? Forgive and forget is cute and all, but entirely unrealistic. We don’t literally forget past injustices. We choose to move forward and attempt to live in such a way that we’re not holding people hostage to their screw-ups for their entire lives. But the scars are there. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bitter. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re stubborn. It just means they’re human.

3. There may be psychological scars.

See previous two reasons.

4. They believe they’ve seen this episode before and they remember how it ends.

Many times, when folks feel like something is being forced onto them, it reminds them of the last time something was forced onto them. And obviously it didn’t go extremely well if it’s being changed again…

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