Let’s Talk About: Change Resistors
Join the Bonavox team as we discuss our experiences, stories, and strategies for engaging people who are resistant to change.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Katherine Wallace (KW): Early in my career I learned to directly engage people who were resistant, critical, or negative to change in order to find out what was motivating them, assuming there’s a valid reason fueling their resistance.
Ron Kraft (RK): I would even take that a step further to say that those “squeaky wheels” are actually your friends because they're going to tell you what's wrong with your idea when there may still be time to fix it. Resistors can help you deliver a better product, whatever the product is. I think we should seek out – and appreciate – the naysayers because they have something very valuable to say.
Daniela Peltekova (DP): I agree. You have to be patient and create space for “resistors” to speak up… and then you have to actually listen to them. It’s hard and requires you to check your own personal reactions and remember that everybody has their own motivation and individual personality. Once I actually listen to the naysayers, resistors, or squeaky wheels, I find it often just requires updating the communication plan to address the change in a more gradual way, or to include more details regarding how the change is talked about.
“Often change requires people to give up a sense of power or status. And so resistance is not always nefarious, but is often a response to a difficult circumstance. The role of change management experts is to help people believe in the bigger value.”
RK: Exactly. Engagement is the way to overcome resistance. You have to talk to people. Through listening you may find out that you’re missing an audience that needs a more finely tailored argument or process than the one that you're deploying to other groups.
KW: I think we have a lot to learn here from exit polling. Over the last few election cycles we’ve seen that people are afraid to say some things. The way the pollsters get it wrong is also part of how change management gets it wrong. Who are we not listening to? Who are we not hearing from or accounting for?
A few years ago a client was making the huge shift from private offices to activity-based (NextGen) workspaces. If you were a VP with a corner office with a window, all of a sudden you didn't have that anymore. Or maybe you were a director and you just got your own office space and now that's actually being taken from you. Often change requires people to give up a sense of power or status. And so resistance is not always nefarious, but is often a response to a difficult circumstance. The role of change management experts is to help people believe in the bigger value. In my experience that often includes naming what people are giving up. That kind of transparency can be really helpful.
RK: That’s one thing I notice with millennials – they have no tolerance for a lack of transparency. Whatever superpowers that generation were given, they can call out a lack of authenticity quicker than any other demographic I've ever seen.
Samantha Curley (SC): Speaking on behalf of millennials then (haha), I think we are often skeptical of the way things have been passed down to us and thus more easily accept (or even enjoy) change. As change management experts, we should be creating space for everyone to understand the history and context of a change as a way of bringing more people on board.
“Engagement is the way to overcome resistance.”
DP: I think resistance hinders people from realizing that the change could actually be good.
RK: Yeah, people are looking at their feet instead of looking forward. One of the things that we as change management experts have to do is get people to look at the future.
To go back to the office design change you were talking about Katherine, what perhaps was missing from that company’s initial assessment or discovery process, was considering that for 50 years, ever since WWII, climbing the corporate hierarchy meant getting bigger and more private workspaces at every level. Your office was a reflection of your success in the company. To come along and change the workspace without addressing this cultural piece would certainly create resistance. In every kind of change initiative you have to understand both the practical and the cultural change. One might be hiding behind the other.
KW: I think we also need to change our language about people being resistors. Like Ron said, we should see these people as friends and we should be working together.
RK: Yes, we must integrate people who have diverse points of view and understand that they may be pointing out problems that the change management team or the business team didn't think of.
“In every kind of change initiative you have to understand both the practical and the cultural change. One might be hiding behind the other.”
DP: Another successful strategy is to assign change agents so there are people to go to who are not your boss, or even your teammates. This network allows people to safely talk about the change, voice their concerns, process what they’re giving up, etc.
And finally I’d say you have to find the nuances of all your different audiences so you can fine-tune your message. This can get complicated but it’s absolutely crucial to successfully navigating change.