How to Influence Behaviours During Change With The SCARF Model

David Rock, a leading neuroscience practitioner, developed the SCARF model to help us to understand the true drivers of human social behaviour and he believes that having this insight is becoming critical for our work environment. The SCARF model identifies five domains of social experience that the brain treats as survivalissues: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness. The model describes the interpersonal primary rewards or threats that are important to the brain and can be used for collaborating with and influencing people. Rock describes each element as follows:

• Status is about relative importance to others;
• Certainty concerns being able to predict the future;
• Autonomy provides a sense of control over events;
• Relatedness is a sense of safety with others, of friend rather than foe;
• Fairness is a perception of fair exchanges between people.

The brain is focused on increasing or sustaining reward and avoiding negative experiences. This focus on reward and avoidance of negativity develops various behaviours in the workplace. These five domains activate either the ‘primary reward’ or ‘primary threat’ circuitry of the brain. For example, a perceived threat to one’s status activates similar brain networks to a threat to one’s life. In the same way, a perceived increase in fairness activates the same reward circuitry as receiving a monetary reward.

Writing about working with the SCARF domains, Rock stated, “It’s a way of developing a language for experiences that may be otherwise unconscious, so that you can catch these experiences in real-time.” All of these domains form the core of the way that work is carried out; therefore, behaviour or performance is the outcome of these processes.

The model enables people to more easily remember, recognize, and potentially modify the core social domains that drive human behaviour during change. It is essential that leadership and Middle Management have some awareness and understanding of what can trigger feelings of reward and threat amongst their employees. For example, knowing that a lack of autonomy activates a genuine threat response, a manager may consciously avoid micromanaging their employees during the design stages of a change so that their employees have the opportunity to contribute to the future state design and start to feel ownership.

Additionally, having an understanding of the drivers that can activate a reward response enables people to motivate others more effectively by tapping into internal rewards, thereby reducing the reliance on external rewards such as money. For example, a line manager might grant more autonomy and decision-making powers as a reward for good performance. They could also publicly recognise their employee for a great contribution to the change project which will activate the status reward trigger.

When designing your stakeholder engagement strategy for a change it can be useful to think through ways to activate each element of the SCARF model:

Objective: To engage impacted leaders and stakeholders to ensure:

• Everyone understands the change vision and how to get there (Certainty)
• Impacted employees are adequately represented during the design phase and have input to future state recommendations (Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness)
• Providing two way dialogue opportunities for employees to give feedback and provide suggestions (Autonomy, Fairness)
• Impacted employees who excel during change are rewarded and recognized for their contribution (Status, Fairness)
• That uncertainty in the future does not cause a slow in momentum for business as usual activities (Relatedness, Fairness)