When people decide to leave a relationship, they often say “we grew apart”.
It started to make more sense to me when I studied Stages of Development. Some people grow through different experiences and they move up to a later developmental stage every few years. Some people don’t have the capacity to learn and grow after certain stage. They stay in the same development stage for years. Growing apart becomes a natural process for many relationships.
When two organizations get merged, there are always conflicts because people are forced into working relationships without much training. Organizations have their own stage of development based on their leaders’ development stages. When merge happens, people need to learn to work together and it takes time and intentional effort. Leaders who can facilitate the learning usually can make the merge less painful. Leaders who can’t even grasp what’s happening would suffer with his/her team. Leadership coach can play an important role during this difficult time.