Are You Facing Resistance to Change?
Whenever you make changes, some level of resistance is almost inevitable. In fact, if people are vocalising their concerns that’s a gift, because you can do something to address their concerns or at the very least get into a productive conversation.
The bigger problem is not the resistance you can see but that which lies beneath the surface, quietly undermining your ability to make things happen.
Quiet resistance looks like people are just too busy, it looks like low adoption of new software or ways of working. It looks like lots of issues landing on your desk, or the annoying surprises when a status report goes red at the last minute.
It looks like people suffering from chronic stress or burnout.
All of these are in fact symptoms of resistance but tend not to be thought of as such because they are not so visible. They are a sign of a lack of real desire for change so will result in a very similar experience for you if you’re leading that change.
Understanding resistance (in all its forms) and turning it into energetic engagement is critical to real business change or transformation. Without it, people will grudgingly do the minimum and get distracted by other things. Sound familiar?
Recognising the Sources of Resistance
Some of the common causes of resistance are as follows:
Fear of the Unknown: Concerns about the future and how it will impact people in terms of their jobs, their status and their perceived value to the organisation.
Not Invented Here: Feeling excluded from the decision-making process. We each like to feel we have some agency or control over things that will affect us.
Comfort with Status Quo: People tend to prefer the known and the routine because it feels safer, even when it’s not great. Better the devil you know!
Not Seeing the Need to Change: It may be obvious to you but what does it look like to them? Are they seeing something different?
Lack of Time / Conflicting Priorities: Everyone is busy, so for change to succeed the desire for change must be high enough that people feel driven to put it ahead of everything else.
When Engagement is High
Imagine leading a change where people are highly engaged, looking for solutions, bringing lots of energy and excitement towards creating a bright future together, generating innovative ideas and collaborating well together.
Envision the impact on your reputation when leading that change, colleagues and bosses taking notice because you’re getting things done. The impact on your home life because you can be more present and less distracted by emails about work. Safe in the knowledge that things are progressing well, even when you’re not there chasing.
Where to Start
The key is to understand the specific concerns, beliefs and perceptions of the people involved in the change. The people who really need to be energetically engaged to make it a success.
What are they really feeling? Because when you know, you can do something about it.
We worked with a client who found that sales team was concerned about the financial impact of a change, believing their performance related pay would be impacted. You can imagine how that was affecting their desire for change!
This was actually a MIS-UNDERSTANDING!
They only found it through a confidential change assessment, specifically designed to uncover sources of low engagement.
The good news is that fixing the problem was both FAST and FREE! Before it was discovered it was costing them a fortune!
Begin the Journey to Change Mastery
It’s not rocket science. The more engaged people are in your change the easier it will be for you and the better the results at the end.
Click below to start understanding the REAL beliefs and perspectives of those people you NEED fully and energetically engaged in your change and address any concerns before they become a problem.
You could wander the wilderness in the dark with no torch…or you could take a different approach where you see the journey clearly