The inspiring story of the woman behind the Kübler-Ross change curve
The Kübler-Ross change curve is a common framework used in businesses worldwide to understand how people respond to changes in the workplace. Whilst it’s also widely known to have its origins in grief, the story of its creator: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is less well known. Given its widespread popularity, I was keen to find more about the brains behind this model. For starters, there still aren’t that many management theories that were put forward by women, and fewer that date back to the sixties. So what was it about Kübler-Ross’s work that crossed the boundaries into change management worldwide?
Elisabeth Kübler was born in Zurich in 1926. She had a rocky start in life health-wise being one of a set of triplets and weighing just 2 pounds at birth. Given the medical knowledge at the time, she faced an uncertain future, but attributes her survival to the unwavering care and love she received from her mother. At the age of five, she contracted pneumonia and was hospitalized, where she sadly experienced the death of her roommate. This experience stayed with her and is thought to be the origins of her studies into processing significant change.
Being identical to her sister, Erika, Elisabeth Kübler strived to be individual and took an interest in topics that would set her apart. She enjoyed escaping to the local woodland where she would find alone time to think and immerse herself in nature. She chose to focus on African Studies as a unique interest among her peers. Even as a child she was a keen thinker and not afraid to be different.
At 13, and following the outbreak of World War II she was already contributing to the effort where she worked with refugees in Zurich. Her desire to provide aid saw her seek roles in hospitals and set her mind to becoming a Doctor. Her father disapproved believing that women were more suited to secretarial roles, but Kubler refused to be held back. At 16 she left home, supported herself in a number of jobs funding her studies in medicine at the University of Zurich.
Her involvement with the refugees in World War II stayed with her. She visited extermination camps in Poland in the Fifties and found herself drawn to the resilience of the human spirit. She was particularly moved by the images of butterflies carved into the walls and says they directly influenced her work in later life. Hearing the words of survivors encouraged her to dedicate the rest of her life to compassion and healing. She worked to re-build cities, even turning to carpentry to physically help the effort and she became an activist in the International Voluntary Service for Peace.
Following her marriage to Emanuel Ross and re-location to America, her studies led her to work in psychiatry. The links to her work on the Change Curve are clear as she took an interest in the most challenging of medical support cases, and focused on compassion. Her work here is better known, but her endeavours to support people continued to challenge social expectations as she planned to build a hospice for abandoned children infected with HIV. She battled the local community of Virginia, who opposed the hospice for fear of infecting the local community for many years. The backlash she felt was extreme and in 1994, she lost her house and many possessions (including her medical journals) to a fire believed to be arson at the hands of her opponents.
The more I read on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the more remarkable I found her. Her work on human resilience when faced with change is undoubtedly the product of her first-hand experience. Her drive to understand and improve the world around her is inspiring. The fact that her work is used to improve change management in business seems almost inconsequential in comparison
“There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from” – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
