Addressing resistance to change
By Kris Cole | thebigchair.com.au | 08 August
Some change, such as closures, layoffs and takeovers, just can’t be couched in positive terms. The more people identify with what they’re losing, the more their responses resemble grief rather than regret or resistance.
When informing your followers of unpleasant changes, avoid blaming anyone or anything and avoid cheerily urging your followers to see the benefits to the organisation. Understand how they’re seeing the situation and be as empathetic and supportive as you can be. Offer whatever assistance you can on behalf of the organisation (counselling, outplacement consulting, further training and so on).
Now is the time to offer a formal closure to help them break with the past and move on with some positive energy.
Addressing followers’ concerns
Although change is normal, change is seldom comfortable so you can expect some resistance. After all, the status quo (no change) is easier than the effort of making a change.
Ignoring, smothering or glossing over opposition only strengthens the problem and allows problems to grow, fester and eventually erupt. Use the SHEER (Surface, Honour, Explore, Explain, Re-check) change memory jogger to bring your followers’ concerns into the open so you can discuss and resolve their qualms:
*Surface: Ask questions to bring any concerns and questions followers may have into the open. Draw out your followers’ thoughts so that you can deal with them.
*Honour: Always honour your followers’ reservations. Don’t brush aside any concerns as wrong or silly or consider the follower as just being difficult. To people facing change, concerns aren’t silly at all — they’re very real.
*Explore: Always explore concerns. Ask a few questions to find out what causes followers to feel the way they do and what lies at the heart of their hesitation.
*Explain: Answer questions as fully as you can. Review why the change is needed and what the organisation and your followers stand to gain from the change in a way that addresses your followers’ concerns, not as a rebuttal but in the spirit of sharing information.
*Re-check: Make sure you have provided the information your followers want and addressed questions and concerns fully.
Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, from Leadership For Dummies, Australian & New Zealand edition, Copyright 2008 by Kris Cole. Available now from all good booksellers, RRP: AU$39.95.
