My life motto is “the more you know, the more you know you don't know” (Aristotle). This motto drives me to be an advocate of learning agility, incremental change, and continuous personal, leadership, and organisational development.
Despite the fact that I would put myself into the category of people with a growth mindset (i.e. those are always in favour of change), I also sometimes observe a tendency of mine to belong to the category of people with a fixed mindset that stubbornly resists change.
Why this is so? What are the reasons that lie beneath this behavioural resistance to change?
Lately, this question has become extremely important for the business context, where companies have to reinvent themselves in order to stay innovative and relevant for current and future business challenges. As well, in order to be able to constantly reinvent themselves, they have to have employees who will embrace the change, and who will change their behaviours in order to integrate change management initiatives in a successful and sustainable way.
However, reality tells us that many change management initiatives fail. According to McKinsey (2015),
only 27% of business transformations succeed, while the other 73% of change efforts fail miserably.
There are several reasons that lead to these failures. One of the reasons is also resistance to change.
The most common reasons why people resist change are as follows:
Uncertainty, insecurity, and a perception that we might lose control or autonomy trigger all sorts of negative emotions inside ourselves (i.e. fear, anger, frustration, doubt, sadness). The two most frequently experienced related to change in an organisation are fear and frustration, which usually evolve into fight or flight response. Both result in resisting behaviour.
According to Aaron T. Beck (globally recognised as the father of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)) "thoughts create certain emotions, and these emotions create certain behaviours". If we experience either fear or frustration, then we have negative beliefs or thoughts about the planned change in our organisation which results in the resistant behaviour.
This tells us two things:
1) Firstly, resistant behaviours toward change in business settings should not be perceived as something that people do in order to oppose or attempt to prevent the planned change per se, but is mainly related to fear and frustration, and it should therefore be perceived and dealt with compassionately and not with autocracy and dictatorship.
2) Secondly, if fear is induced by a perceived danger or threat, and frustration arises from being unable to do something regarding the planned change, then there is a simple solution available to us. We should simply remove the threats in order to lead and manage change in a successful and sustainable way.
According to Hilary Scarlett, who wrote a fascinating book “Neuroscience for Organizational Change: An Evidence-based Practical Guide to Managing Change” (2019), the challenge for organisations going through change is that it creates a threat state. Those who lead and manage change in business settings should, according to Scarlett (2019), move their employees from the threat to the reward state.
The question is how this can be done?
I have recognised that the following 7-Cs: Clarity, Certainty, Choice, Control, Communication, Consistency, and Coaching might support those who lead and manage change in addressing resistant behaviour.
CLARITY
Employees like to understand the meaning and purpose behind the change management initiative and the new direction. If employees do not get a clear change story around three main questions:
1) Why change is needed for their organisation?
2) What will change mean for the organisation and other stakeholders?
3) How change will be implemented and what are the expectations (on an individual, team, and organisational level)?
they will likely resist change because they will either be afraid of the unknown or frustrated by being unable to do something regarding the planned change.
Those who lead and manage change should develop storytelling skills and understand that the change stories that would be conveyed to their employees should clearly address why, what, how questions and be in line with the interests and values of their stakeholders.
2. CERTAINTY
Employees need more than just clarity about the planned change, they also need some certainty otherwise the change will drive them to the threat state.
I am aware that absolute certainty does not exist and that all of life is an uncertain adventure. However, if we do not also have some structures in our lives that are certain, we will end up nervous wrecks.
Just imagine that your boss tells you that the company will go through a huge business transformation, but does not say anything about your role, your position, or your status. What would you do? Speaking for myself, I would definitely turn on my imagination button, follow Stephen King’s creativity, and create a novel that would combine horror, supernatural fiction, and fantasy. My mind, heart and soul will be dedicated to this masterpiece, instead of working.
Regardless of the uncertainty that is connected to a change management initiative, those who manage and lead should find some elements of certainty which can be conveyed to their employees frequently and consistently. A clear understanding about what stays the same and what will be new (on an individual vs organisational level) will give some certainty to the employees and push away overwhelmed feelings.
3. CHOICE
If change is imposed on employees without integrating them in the decision-making process about the change management initiative or without asking for their advice, they will quickly move to the threat state and resist change strongly. Employees should have a choice to determine how change management initiatives are performed in order to have some influence on decisions (Scarlett, 2019). They should also have a choice about how they will feel when facing the change management initiative, or basically how they will cope with it.
4. CONTROL
Employees will also stay in the threat state if they feel that change would take away some of their existing control while at the same time the expectations to deliver and perform are high. The discrepancy between having no control and high levels of expected performance will drive them to resistant behaviour towards change. Instead of fear, they will experience a lot of anger and frustration. According to Scarlett (2019), change that is unpredictable and uncontrollable is very stressful, therefore those who lead and manage change should give control to their employees in order to reduce cortisol and stress.
5. COMMUNICATION
In any business transformation, communication is crucial. Not only, that employees would like to have a change story with a clear purpose and an expected impact for all stakeholders, they need to hear it as often as possible. The way how the story is communicated to employees is also important. Instead of communicating the change story with the belief that people will do what we instruct them to do, those who lead and manage change should show compassion and respect, otherwise they will be confronted with resistant behaviour.
6. CONSISTENCY
Employees will believe that the change story is real if they hear it, see it, and sense it. If only one segment is missing, the change story will have an unsuccessful ending. What do I mean by that?
The change story has to be communicated frequently and consistently. Additionally, if those who lead and manage do not walk the talk it would be like “sound and video are out of sync.” This will result in broken trust, low motivation, and resistant behaviour towards change. So, there are only two pieces of advice to those who lead and manage change management initiatives: 1) communicate, communicate, communicate; and 2) take care that the “sound and video is not out of sync.”
7. COACHING
We have already learned by now that “communication, communication, communication” is the main component of any change management journey. My personal belief is that talking to people should be the most important job of those who lead and manage change in their organisations.
They have to understand what their employees think, what they value the most, and what they do not want to lose when change management initiatives are introduced. They have to become ‘Chief People Officers’ and genuinely try to understand each employee, their beliefs and emotions. For this role they have to develop coaching skills, like: active listening, raising powerful questions related to beliefs, assumptions and thoughts, creating actions.
They should also develop compassion and replace judgement with curiosity.
Unfortunately, the reality is that those who lead and manage change are often more focused on projects, processes, and policies as on their employees and their beliefs, emotions, and behaviours. Another insight that I got from an HBR article is that “many leaders think that they’re coaching their employees, but they’re just telling them what to do” (Milner and Milner, 2018). This does not help in addressing resistant behaviour and it usually results in another failure, and which ensures that they are part of the group of 73% failed business transformations.
Still, there is one shiny example coming from Microsoft which currently goes through a cultural and managerial change. The CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, would like to reach a cultural shift with an overall emphasis on the growth mindset through a new leadership style related to modeling, coaching, and caring.
Through modelling, managers show that they practice a growth mindset; through coaching, managers create a space where employees can learn from their mistakes, and emphasise their potential to grow and learn; through caring, managers are enthusiastically interested in understanding each person’s capabilities and aspirations, and in investing in the growth of others (Lebowitz and Shibu, 2019).
WHAT NEXT?
We have learned that due to thoughts related to uncertainty, insecurity and a perception that employees might lose control or autonomy they enter the threat state where they experience fear and frustration that result in resistant behaviour.
Therefore, when those who lead and manage change in business settings face employee resistance to change they should not point at their employees and claim that they resist change because they belong to the category of people with a fixed mindset that stubbornly resists any change. Rather they should ask themselves two questions:
1) What are the reasons (beliefs, assumptions, thoughts, emotions) that lie beneath this behavioural resistance to change?
2) Have I correctly led the change management process?
The 7-Cs: Clarity, Certainty, Choice, Control, Communication, Consistency, and Coaching might be a helpful reminder of what not to miss.
Only after getting answers to these two questions will they be able to succeed in addressing the resistant behaviour towards change. But then, they will recognise another challenge. They will recognise that behavioural change is really, really difficult. But, this will be the subject of another article.
References:
1. Lebowitz, S., Shibu, S. (2019). Microsoft is rolling out a new management framework to its leaders. It centers around a psychological insight called growth mindset. Business Insider. Retrieved from: https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-is-using-growth-mindset-to-power-management-strategy-2019-11?_lrsc=88aab445-abfc-4e46-adb2-2e7cac7db539
2. McKinsey. (2015). Changing Change Management. Written by: Boris Ewenstein, Wesley Smith, and Ashvin Sologar. Retrevied from: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/leadership/changing-change-management
3. Milner, J., Milner T. (2018). Most Managers Don’t Know How to Coach People. But They Can Learn. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from: https://hbr.org/2018/08/most-managers-dont-know-how-to-coach-people-but-they-can-learn?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hbr
4. Scarlett, H. (2019). Neuroscience for Organizational Change: An Evidence-based Practical Guide to Managing Change (2nd Edition). KoganPage
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