Kubler-Ross
The Kubler-Ross curve maps the emotional stages people move through in loss or unwanted change - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance - so leaders can meet people where they actually are instead of where the announcement assumed they'd be.
A line dips and climbs across five stages, tracing the emotional dip most people pass through before it levels out into acceptance.
Reach for this when…
- A restructuring announcement lands and the reaction is nothing like the plan assumed.
- Someone is stuck and repeated logical arguments are not moving them.
- You need language for a team's mixed, shifting reactions to bad news.
How to run it
- Introduce the five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
- Apply it to the change at hand: where does each person seem to sit right now.
- Map the team, individual by individual, without forcing anyone into a stage.
- Identify what support fits each person's actual stage.
- Plan communication and engagement paced to where people are, not where you want them to be.
A worked example
Situation. Jack Ngata ran a precision tooling firm in Wellington, New Zealand, and announced a restructuring that would cut one production line - the response ranged from flat denial to open anger within the same week.
Applied. Mapping the floor against the curve showed most operators were still in denial while supervisors had moved into anger, so he ran two different conversations rather than one all-hands.
Result. The operators got a slower, fact-based briefing; the supervisors got a direct session to vent and ask hard questions. Both groups reached acceptance faster than his HR lead had predicted.
The catch
The stages were developed for terminal grief, not organisational change, and they are not a fixed sequence - people skip stages, loop back, or sit in two at once. Using it as a checklist to tick off ('they must be in bargaining by now') turns a useful lens into a script that ignores the actual person in front of you.
Acceptance is not compliance. Someone can accept the change and still think it was the wrong call.
Origin: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross