Creating awareness of UGRs

A crucial component of cultural change, and one which is most often overlooked, involves providing all people with an understanding of culture. If individuals do not understand how their personal behaviours contribute to, conform with, or work against the existing culture, there is little chance of changing the culture. This understanding can be achieved by giving people an awareness of UGRs.

Introducing people to the concept of UGRs can sometimes, of itself, create an improved culture. The concept liberates people by providing them with a simple way to verbalise what they feel and experience in their working life. Over the years a great number of people have approached me after a presentation on UGRs and asked: ‘How is it that something so simple and obvious has never been focused on?' Bringing UGRs to people's awareness can sometimes be the key catalyst for cultural change.

The way in which people are made aware of UGRs is crucial to the future of the organisation's culture. A recent email from an associate consultant licensed to run UGR sessions is testimony to the need to introduce UGRs in an appropriate way. He wanted to provide me with some feedback on his presentation and workshop on UGRs, the first with a particular company. The email read as follows (the client's name has been changed):

The presentation went well and so did the rest of the day's facilitation. From the UGRs it was clear that there are a lot of internal problems between John and his senior management team. Most of this is on an intra- and interpersonal level and concerns issues related to their levels of maturity/emotional intelligence, etc.

Had two meetings with John to make proposals for possible intervention strategies with the team. No decision was made about the road ahead.

One comment from John was that almost all examples of UGRs in our presentation focused on the negative. (Not true, because there are a number of positive UGRs.) However, I think this illustrates that we should not to focus too strongly on the negative alone, but should keep a good balance. The fact is, John's team had a number of positive UGRs, but I think he was a little overwhelmed with some of the direct negative responses by his team players.