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How Embracing Change Resistance Can Make You A Successful Leader
Talking About Resistance Will Be Old-school
Have you ever tried to bring about change? How many people have understood the why? How hard were people fighting you? It's like trying to scratch your left ear with your right foot. Right?
We believe change resistance can be harvested, meaning you can actually get people on board and drive necessary change in your organisation.
Understanding change resistance can be your key to success.
Understanding Change Resistance
Change fundamentally involves changing people's minds, yet the most recent research shows that providing facts may strengthen resistance.
For instance, in today's businesses, with change expertise only in the hands of specialists, it is an error to assume people will play nicely.
Moreover, qualitative studies show that people become more engaged with the change when their emotions are acknowledged and treated with respect.
Start to embrace your employee's reactions as engagement. Create an emotionally safe space to open the way for better collaboration, problem-solving and sustainable change outcomes.
Change experts and ourselves speculate that change-agile business cultures, resilient growth mindsets, flexible structures, and processes could make change resistance a thing of the past.
How can you replace resistance with engagement?
Build a change-agile organisation
First, by building a learning culture, you're less likely to have trouble adjusting your values in the face of new information or reality. With this, you will find less resistance.
How can I achieve a win-win solution during change resistance?
Sometimes it's easier to bail out when you face conflict and resistance. If only you had the knowledge, time and skills to create and execute a highly effective risk and resistance management plan. Worry no more. The Conflict Resolution in Change course equips you to use conflicts as a healthy stimulus for success.
Understand why - and meet "resistors" where they are
Second, some individuals resist change for one reason or another. The good news is that most individuals are willing to change for the better. Seek to understand how to better serve those with a different information or value system. This helps you to build relationships based on respect and care for one another. A line in St. Francis' prayer says, "seek first to understand, then to be understood."
Value resistance when it is openly expressed
Lastly, appreciate individuals who openly express their resistance to change. Unresponsive and passive resistance is far worse and impossible to deal with. Learning how to use conflict resolution in change is more important now than ever.
Successful change leaders understand that corporate transformations start with them.
For a change leader, channelling a significant disruption into opportunities and innovation is like swimming against an undertow or fighting gale-force winds while balancing on slippery waxed floorboards.
Leaders must stay agile to steer their organisations toward the next inevitable disruption.
Our leadership development program trains leaders to become change-agile, focusing on driving change without getting overwhelmed by disruptive challenges. We focus on resilience, adaptability, and change-specific technical skills.
How can I achieve a win-win solution during change resistance?
Sometimes it's easier to bail out when you face conflict and resistance. If only you had the knowledge, time and skills to create and execute a highly effective risk and resistance management plan. Worry no more. The Conflict Resolution in Change course equips you to use conflicts as a healthy stimulus for success.
Eva is one of the masterminds behind Approach Services' blog and The 6 Cents of Change. She is an innovator, trainer and change manager. Her work has been published in the Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research. In her spare time, she enjoys camping with her two little boys and permaculture gardening.
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