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Helping
Your Team to Embrace Change
By Doug
Kelley, CH, CSL • February 2006
Why
do so many people resist change?
This
is a good question when you consider that most of our lives include a lot of
change. Whenever a question such as this comes up, I like to approach it from
a fresh standpoint and get to the bottom of what it is really about. I keep
asking “Why?” until I can’t ask “Why?” anymore.
Many
reasons exist as to why so many people resist change. Among those reasons are
comfort zones. We generally like the things we feel comfortable with simply
because we’ve become accustomed to them. To change requires effort, and we
generally don’t want to expend effort to change things with which we are
comfortable. This is the human trait of seeking the path of least resistance.
But
we can go beyond comfort zones in our efforts to discover the answer to why
people resist change. The next stop is fear, and more precisely, fear of
the unknown. Most of our fears are irrational in nature and are based on
our “real,” not real “real” (whatever that is!). Zig Ziglar described
F.E.A.R. as “False Evidence Appearing Real.” While some fears are
legitimate, most of our fears are not based on real evidence, but on false
evidence.
So
why do we find fear of the unknown so prevalent in human nature? As we
continue to “peel the onion layers away,” we find at the core “loss of
control.” It all boils down to this: we resist change because we ultimately
fear losing control. A powerful and driving trait of human nature is the
“need to control” and people tend to resist change because they are afraid
they won’t know what to do, or won’t be able to do what they need to do
when things change.
Think
of a time when your organization made significant changes (beyond your
control), but didn’t inform you until after the fact. When this happened,
did you lament saying, “Why couldn’t they have told us about it before
they made these changes?”
From
a logical standpoint, this mindset makes no logical sense. When upper
management makes changes beyond our control and informs us about it before
hand, what do we often do? We gripe; we complain; we adapt, and we move on.
But what happens when they make the changes, but don’t inform us
before hand? We gripe; we complain; we adapt, and we move on. The same thing.
There is no difference, logically speaking.
But
as it turns out, we humans are not solely logical beings. We are also
emotional, and herein lies a lesson to keep in mind when helping your team to
deal more effectively with change:
People
are likely to accept change more if they have a part in it, or if they are
informed about it before hand—even when the change is beyond their control.
What’s
the lesson? When we are informed about changes before hand (even undesirable
changes), we still feel more in control than being informed after the
fact, even if it is only an illusion.
Communicate
and involve your team in change whenever possible. This is also called
“Shared Leadership.” For example, if you are instructed to streamline some
process that will involve changing your procedures, get your team involved in
the streamlining process. Have a brainstorming session to get their input.
They still may not initially like the fact that things are changing, but at
least they will be inclined to buy into the changes because they had a part in
deciding those changes. By doing this, you give them as much control as
possible, and changes are not as big a problem when we feel in control.
But
what about changes that have already been decided for you and now you must
inform your team? Get them together as you normally would, inform them about
the upcoming changes, and then let them vent. Don’t fight it. Once they have
had a chance to vent, now direct them in a positive and proactive manner to
brainstorm the best ways to adapt to the changes with the least amount of
headaches. Give them as much control as possible, and you just might get more
buy-in than otherwise.
The
key to helping people accept change is to give them as much control as
possible.
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