Resistance to Change: Why is it Inevitable but also Healthy?

Note: this is a five-part series. Read Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

By Katherine Sanders and Patrick Farrell

INTRODUCTION

Change is inevitable in business, across society and within individuals. Under the best of circumstances, change is difficult. Recent challenges in the world have made change much more difficult for people to manage on top of other changes in their lives.

We can’t stop these changes or their pace, but we can evolve traditional change management approaches to meet our people where they are. We can build humane and sustainable approaches to change by understanding resistance and addressing it without stigmatizing people or lamenting a slower pace.

WHY RESISTANCE TO CHANGE IS INEVITABLE

To supporters, change is rational, obvious and needs to be done quickly. In many cases, resistance to change arises immediately. This resistance can take many forms, most of which seem irrational to supporters and overwhelmingly frustrating.

People come to the change conversation with a host of emotions, from excitement about a potentially different future, to worry about whether their job will still exist in this future. The status quo can feel like a resting place for some. Even if it’s not perfect, it’s not necessarily bad enough (for them) to take a risk. Members of an organization might feel that they understand their current role and believe they know what the future looks like.

Major change could upend the status quo people rely on, suggesting a future that is less clear and certain. When people are exhausted, this reliance on the known is even more understandable, as a form of self-preservation.

WHY RESISTANCE TO CHANGE IS HEALTHY

We tend to think of resistance as friction, dragging leaders down and preventing them from doing what they want and/or need to do for the organization. We often imagine we can get rid of resistance entirely with the right communication strategies and we can get everyone aligned and on-board.

But resistance serves some important functions. It’s a way for individuals to raise issues that have been ignored and are meaningful to them. If issues arise that are outside the scope of the change initiative, it can show leaders that additional forums are required to address these issues.

Further, resistance can be healthy because it:

Helps highlight what we’ve forgotten or overlooked, it doesn’t mean we stop and re-do or start over, but resistance is an opportunity to ask, “What have we forgotten or overlooked?”
Is an opportunity to acknowledge that not everyone is thrilled with the proposed changes and that these changes will be more difficult for some than others.
Requires that change proponents and change resistors clarify their positions on the issues and their responsibilities to the community in terms of engagement and supporting the community’s vision.

Although it can be annoying and downright frustrating, these conversations can show us our organization’s capacity for change. When we improve our understanding of where people are, we can find ways to support the distances we’re asking them to travel. In our next post, we’ll consider how we can use our understanding of resistance to build our capacity for future change.