Managing Resistance to Change: Effective Tactics You Can Use

Posted by Paula Alsher on Tue, Apr 16, 2013 @ 09:46 AM

If you are a Change Agent who is staying awake nights worrying about how you are going to eliminate resistance to change in your organization, here's some simple advice.  Go back to sleep!

Seriously, you will never combat or overcome resistance to change.  Sure it's frustrating, especially when you think your change will make things better for the people who are affected by the change.  But the truth is that what's positive to you or your senior leaders may not be so positive to the Targets of the change. From their "Frame of Reference," the change may create a lot of uncertainty and disruption. Resistance to Change

The level of resistance to change you can anticipate is directly related to the amount of disruption the change creates for the Targets-- not from your viewpoint, but from theirs.

So what to do?  What are some effective ways to manage this unavoidable resistance to change and stop the turning and tossing at night?

Here is some tactical advice for Change Agents from the Accelerating Implementation Methodology (AIM), a structured, practical framework for managing the human side of organizational change.

Effective Behaviors in Managing Resistance to Change

  1. Create personal rapport with the Targets by asking questions to better understand their personal Frame of Reference.
  2. Establish the expectations.  For example, make it clear that this change is not going away and that here are the expectations for performance.
  3. Explain the change from Target's Frame of Reference.  In other words, be able to answer the three questions that you know the Target has:

    What's in it for me?
    What does this change mean to me personally?
    How do I fit in?
  4. Determine the source of the resistance to the change.  Is it the what, the how, a lack of trust or understanding, simple self-interest?  Is it really resistance to past changes that didn't go well, or concern about how this change will affect daily routines or habits?  Is it a sense of loss for how things worked in the past?  You need to understand the source, and acknowledge it.
  5. Ask open-ended questions.  It's the best way for Change Agents to really understand where the resistance is coming from.
  6. After both parties have a mutual understanding of each other's Frame of Reference, and the "why's" of the change are clearly established, focus on "what" we can do to work it out.
  7. Limit your own speaking time to no more than 25% of the conversation.  You will learn much more if you spend the bulk of the time in listening rather than in talking mode.  
  8. Recognize that your Target has a lot of energy invested in the resistance.  If you can re-direct this energy to helping to work it out you will be using one of the most effective resistance-management techniques-- involvement. Involvement leads to feelings of control.
  9. Create "win-win" situations when it's possible.  Make it easy for the Target to back down from his current position without losing face.

Many organizations focus on "engagement surveys" hoping that high scores will mean that they have engaged employees and have eliminated resistance to change.  But the bottom-line is that resistance is not good or bad, it just "is."

If you are looking to drive innovation or transformation into your organization, you should anticipate up-front that you are going to create high levels of disruption, and consequently high levels of resistance to change.  The question isn't, "How can we eliminate the resistance?" The question should be, "How can we best identify where the resistance is coming from, and then how can we manage it so we don't slow down our change?"

Now you can turn off the light and go back to sleep.

Free eBook:  How to Manage Resistance to Change

 

Topics: Change Agents, Resistance to change