I don’t want to..

We have all heard about resistance to Change. It’s a bad thing… right? Not necessarily! And thinking that it is a sure way of running into trouble. Resistance essentially is all about communication. Either the behaviours are subtle forms of communication in themselves, or stem from incomplete or ineffective communication on the part of management. If you try to quash it, then I can almost guarantee that you will fail to implement your programme successfully. If you explore and deal with it in a respectful way, it might well ensure success.

Here is a list of some of the reasons for resisting Change, I feel that:-

1. Moving into the unknown feels more dangerous than staying ‘still’ (of course the option to stay still is an illusion as change is going on all around us all the time)
   
2. I don’t have the capabilities I will need in the new environment
3. I don’t know how to ‘do’ the new behaviours (I have no map, no role models)
4. I will be leaving behind something I value, either in terms of ideas, memories or relationships
5. I am overwhelmed by it all emotionally and can’t cope with the additional workload
6. It may not be such a good idea, and need more convincing
7. You may have some hidden agenda that I don’t understand.
8. I will somehow become a different person and my life will change in all sorts of unexpected and unwelcome ways
9. That I may loose status or somehow be worse off
10. It just won’t work!

There are all sorts of ways of handling these issues, but they all come down to communication, by which I mean doing a lot of listening before telling them why they are wrong!

I will be exploring this in more detail in forthcoming blogs

“Resistance is thought transformed into feeling. Change the thought that creates the resistance, and there is no more resistance.” Robert Conkin
“Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” Sun Tzu

Tags: Change, Communication, honouring resistance, resistance

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 08:28 and is filed under Business Change, Hints, Tips & Techniques, Mini-Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.