In the Search of Change: Are People Static or Dynamic?

A question that tends to repeat itself every so often is the debate between people that think that people change and the ones that think that, fundamentally, people do not change.

Who is right, who is wrong?

Once upon a professional lifetime I worked as a Resolutions Support Consultant, or quasi-supervisor/analyst, with a major wireless firm. The team that I belonged to was an elite group of former floor representatives in the receivables management department: When you want to pay a bill, particularly when it is past due, these are the agents to whom a person speaks. Resolutions, on the other hand, was the team that these agents turn to for technical, protocol, and procedural guidance as well as to pass on escalated callers. I have several an earlier blog post about this period in my life. Despite all this fun in handling escalated callers in suspenseful situations, we were also subject matter experts in the field of wireless phone customer service and receivables management policies and procedures and all that jazz.

There were rules in “Res:” Written rules that dictated how we could behave on escalated calls, how far we could bend, how systems worked, etc. There were also, unwritten rules: The ones that you are bound to out of a sense of honor and respect for the position. Those of us serving on the team didn’t always agree with one another. The culture that predominated was one that emphasized “go ahead and prove me wrong, because that gives us both an opportunity for growth.” Substantiating and disproving matters became part of the everyday marching orders. By virtue of our position we were just right. In reality, we weren’t necessarily always right…but as a team we were.

Say, for instance, I am speaking with a customer who has asked the floor representative to speak to a supervisor regarding a misunderstanding (which, generally, is what most conflicts are about). While speaking to the customer I validate their concerns and listen to their particular situation. I proceed to advise the customer that, despite their special circumstances, policy prohibits me from offering an exception. The customer interprets this as me taking a hard line and requests another supervisor. This first tier escalation turns into a second tier escalation. I continue by asking the customer to hold while I contact another supervisor, dial back into the Resolutions queue and get the next available Resolutions Consultant. I inform them about the basics of the caller and then warm transfer the call. What could happen from here is that the second tier escalation turns into an opportunity for the customer to be offered an exception. Likely, what happened, is that new information surfaced that changed the situation enough to warrant a different behavior be expressed.

In life the same sort of situation happens: We change our behaviors based on new information made available to us. We take in new information, process it and (perhaps) do a risk-reward assessment. Based on our interpretation of the new information we will change our behavior or personality, thus changing how we interact with our environment.

Again: New information changes our behaviors. It can, therefore, affect our personality. Our behaviors also shape our environment. Information that changes, however, isn’t always something that is welcome to the recipient. Often, information that conflicts with that which we believe in any degree is resisted. Information that reinforces is more easily accepted. In order to get the most benefit from new information one must be receptive of it and not outright resist it based on our prejudices and biases.