Why your team resist change and what you can do about it
If you are managing change, whether as a single one-off event, or an apparently never-ending stream of changes, you will likely have faced resistance from one or more of your team at some point.
People resist change for many reasons, indeed dealing with people who resist is thought to be so difficult that whole books have been written on the topic. However, there are three very common reasons for resistance that you can deal with practically by yourself:
- Self Interest
- Conflicting Perspectives
- ‘Not again’ Disengagement
SELF INTEREST
Many of us fear change because we instinctively assume we will lose out in some way. Organisations talking about ‘big change’ programmes can exacerbate this fear – the more the organisation emphasises the scale of the change, the more the employees are fearful of what this might mean for them personally. You can help your team overcome their fear of the future by being as openly communicative with them as possible.
Share what you know as soon as possible.
Don’t belittle fears, and if appropriate, acknowledge that there may be changes that some might not like. Even though you may not be able to prevent ‘bad things’ (i.e. job loss), you can help them prepare for change by thinking constructively about different options for their futures.
Other fears may include the team being split up and spread around different departments (not uncommon in many restructures). This means that you definitely won’t be managing the same group of people in the future. You can help your team prepare for a new manager by making sure their skills are up to date, talking about overall organisation direction and purpose, and giving them confidence that they can do what will be expected of them in the new structure.
CONFLICTING PERSPECTIVES
Some of your team may see the expected changes as beneficial to themselves and their customers (internal or external), while others may take a different view. Your role as manager is to help people look at planned changes from multiple perspectives.
It’s vital to listen to all perspectives, not just the ones you agree with, and vital that all employees feel heard.
Perhaps those who fear that the changes will not improve things have a couple of valid points, and maybe you can take these on board locally and make small adjustments to the plans.
Those who are very positive about the changes may need to allow time for others to express their concerns so the whole team is able to understand each other’s perspectives. Using Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environments methodology is a great way for everyone to express their perspectives without fear of being judged or belittled.
‘NOT AGAIN’ DISENGAGEMENT
If your team has been through multiple rounds of disruptive change, they may feel that it is all pointless – that ‘nothing ever changes’.
I worked with a major telecoms company some years ago that had 300 live change projects and 10,000 employees. Not surprisingly, most of the employees simply ‘zoned out’ of a lot of the ‘change talk’ – and they were right – the company seemed to be continually in chaos and little actually changed in terms of how employees experienced the organisation.
If your organisation is on a change merry-go-round, it can be helpful to frame ‘change as constant’. That means building methods of navigating and managing change into BAU for you and your team. This makes ‘change’ just another thing you do, and not a disruption and distraction to getting the core job done.
And let’s not forget TRUST.
In May, I wrote extensively about trust – and all of the above will be easier if you have high trust levels with your team. You can pick up that piece here.
Navigating change is something pretty much every manager has to do, and with the advent of fast moving AI technology changing some roles and functions dramatically, everyone needs to learn how to navigate change effectively.
Next month we will think about managing motivation and morale during times of peak change.
NOTE: AI has NOT been used to write this piece.
If you would like to speak to us about tools and techniques to help managers manage change, and how we could help, drop us a quick email, and we can fix a short Teams call.
Hedda
01491 411 544
info@3cperform.co.uk
