Understanding and Overcoming Resistance to Change in the Workplace

[Music] do you ever feel like you have to drag people through the mud by their hair to

get them to change does it seem like you have this giant boulder that you're rolling uphill

or that you're just spinning your wheels or that you're even banging your head against the wall because some people

just won't budge these are some of the ways I've heard people describe their frustration

with trying to get some of their co-workers to adopt new ways of doing things you get the sense from these

Expressions that when you're trying to influence people to change it can seem like you're spending an awful lot of

energy to make just a little bit of progress but if you stop things will just go back to the way they used to

be I learned this like most people do which is the hard way when I first started my career I was

an Industrial Engineer and my job was Finding ways to make the companies that I worked for be more effective and

efficient and it seemed like you I should be able to just convince people to improve the way they did things after

all it was my job but oh no that is not how the world works right I still remember the time that as

part of a software implementation project I developed a report for a plant manager so he could have instant access

to all the metrics he wanted to see and it would save his assistant about an hour every day putting that report

together manually and he wouldn't use it and then there was the time I designed a system for plant for machine

operators on the plant floor to know when to stop making production so they didn't make too much and it worked

beautifully and yes they used it for about a week before they went back to the old way of doing

things and I will never forget the day that I had an executive walk out on a meeting in Revolt of a project that he

had helped develop that one still stinks and yes just like you when things like this happened it was frustrating I

would even get angry and I was definitely confused about why people would act this way but I also became

curious and I decided to find out what does it really take to influence people to change

since then I went back to school to study leadership and change management I read as much as I could about influence

and how change works on an individual and organizational level I applied what I was learning to see what works in

practice and what really doesn't work in practice and for almost a decade I've been helping other people influence

change in their workplaces and even after all that I still have not found the secret sauce

that will make anyone do whatever you want I wish but not

really but I have learned how we can better deal with resistance the dictionary definition of

resistance is any force that slows down or prevents motion it's a scientific term and we've adopted that as

resistance to change is any force that slows down or prevents change but isn't it funny that we don't

really notice that resistance is happening unless people aren't changing as quickly or as smoothly or as

enthusiastically as we wish they would otherwise we would just think everything's for normal everything's

fine but instead we see people do things that we didn't expect or that are frustrating and we label that

resistance now these resistant behaviors go well beyond someone refusing to change or slipping back into the old way

way of doing things over time know people are way more creative than that aren't they how many of these people

have you encountered in your in your experience there's the one who they seem like they're implementing the change

just fine but it turns out they're hiding the fact that they're still doing things the old way just in case the new

way doesn't work out or there's the person who seems to have an endless supply of excuses for

why it won't work or why they can't do it and on the flip side of that there's the person who's enthusiastic and agrees

that the change should happen but they never quite seem to do it themselves they keep pushing it off and

procrastinating about it then there's the one who when they find out that you're trying to implement

a change they avoid you altogether hoping that if they hide long enough the change will just pass them by and they

won't actually have to do it and then there's one who they'll implement the change exactly the way you

say without making any decisions on their own so that when the change fails and somehow they make sure that it

does they can blame you for making it them do it that way and then there's the one who they

just take that change and run with it sure they're changing but not in any direction that you actually wanted them

to go in and at this point you're probably wondering how does she know all the same

people that I know isn't it infuriating exasperating how everyone else resists

change and when we're the ones who are trying to influence people to change and we encounter these resistant

behaviors we have some pretty unhelpful responses ourselves that actually make it more frustrating than it needs to be

first of all we take it personally after all it feels like they're pushing against an idea that we think is

important it feels like they're pushing against us it can even feel like rejection and then we become defensive

and the change becomes a battle to win and not something for us to collaborate on

together another unhelpful response we have to these resistant behaviors is that we blame the other

person for not changing we fall victim to what psychologists call the fundamental

attribution error which means that when we see someone else's Behavior we tend to attribute that behavior to their

character or their personality whereas our own behavior we attribute to our circumstances there's

something that happened to us that made us react that way well in the context of change we see someone

resisting and we tell ourselves things like well they're just resistant to change or they're just being stubborn or

they're just trying to be difficult whereas if we were in a similar situation and had the same kind of

behaviors we would say we had a valid reason there was something about that change that we needed to push back

against and the third unhelpful response we have to these resistant behaviors is that we try to focus on making those

resistant behaviors stop so if someone's avoiding us we track them down if they're coming up

with excuses we come up with all the counterarguments for why they're wrong if someone's procrastinating we can

remind them to the point of nagging and maybe even get their B or someone else with authority involved to make them do

it essentially we're trying to overcome that resistance but let me ask you something

what is your reaction when someone tries to make you do something you don't want to

do if you're anything like me you either dig in your heels even more you pull out all those resistant be behaviors that

everyone else does trying to prevent it from happening or you might actually do whatever it is

but grudgingly which if fects your attitude it affects your Effectiveness and also your Rel your

relationship with the person who it feels like is making you do something you don't want to

do when we address the resistant behaviors directly it only serves to make the resistance even

stronger because the resistant behavior isn't the real problem the real problem is what you

don't see on the surface we see a resistant Behavior which is a reaction to change

but we don't see the underlying condition that prompted that behavior in the first place you can think of the

behavior as a symptom like when you have a cold you have a cough or stuffy nose or something well those symptoms are

just your body's reaction to a hidden virus which is the real problem well resistance is the same

way we see the resistant behavior on the surface but we don't see we don't see the underlying cause or

source of resistance so let me give you some examples sometimes we don't

see that for this person it's not just a minor inconvenience this is a major disruption to their

routine or we don't always see that they're not really clear about what they're supposed to be doing but they're

embarrassed to ask and we don't see that they're not really comfortable with their ability to

do the job well and so they don't even want to try and we don't see that their boss is

sending signals that she is not on board with this change and so of course they're not going to stick their necks

out and do it anyway and we may not see that they're upset that decisions are being made

about them without them and slowing things down is just their way of maintaining some control of their

situation and we may not see that they're upset that at the insinuation that what they're already doing isn't

good enough or that it's wrong when people resist change there's something going on below the

surface when we uncover the part that we don't see at first then we found the true source of

resistance when we can understand the experience of the change from their point of view then we have something we

can deal with and we can help them through it so if you'd like to influence people to change and you don't want to

feel like you have to drag them through the mud by their hair in order to do it start by treating resistance not as

something to overcome but something to uncover thank [Applause]

[Music] you