Prompt Personalizing to Ease Change Resistance

Employees who personalize their workspaces are more committed to successfully implementing organizational changes. The University of Queensland researchers who verified this effect explain it in terms of territoriality—the feeling of ownership of the workspace—and change self-efficacy—the confidence an employee maintains that they’ll handle the challenges of the changes. When an employee’s need for territoriality is satisfied during periods of organizational change, change self-efficacy increases. Based on results from prior studies, the researchers theorize that this is because the employee’s self-identity then better incorporates the organizational identity.
     To establish territoriality, an individual will mark their space. Examples of marking include personalization, such as displaying diplomas and curated artwork on the walls and populating the workspace with items like books which are being read and mugs which trigger happy memories. When territoriality is threatened, the individual might engage in behaviors like erecting partitions.
     By encouraging workspace personalization, managers prepare their teams to commit to changes ahead. But the researchers caution against directing employees to personalize. That would risk erasing the autonomy and, therefore, individual self-identity associated with the personalizing. Taking account of this caution, I recommend instead prompting personalizing, such as by the manager commenting positively on the personalization by some team members in order to inspire other team members to participate.
     The researchers note that the advantages of workspace personalization can be undone with organizational policies of hot desking—assigning an employee a workspace for the day when they come into the office—and clean desk initiatives—which discourage the presence of items not directly related to one’s specific work tasks.
     Not that self-confidence from personalizing is always good. Colorado State University researchers found that drivers of cars with bumper stickers are more likely to honk, tailgate, and cut off other vehicles than are drivers of cars without bumper stickers. This held true whether the sentiment on the bumper sticker was about aggression or acceptance. “My Kid Is an Honor Student” as well as “My Kid Can Beat Up Your Honor Student.” “Visualize World Peace” as well as “Don’t Mess With Texas.”
     Moreover, the “bumper sticker aggression” showed up with window decals and personalized license plates. Consumers were using the personalizing of their cars to justify the expression of aggression in socially acceptable ways.
     Acceptable doesn’t necessarily mean safe. The Colorado researchers report that aggressive driving causes about two out of three auto accidents involving physical injury.

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