We ended the last video talking about the things that we do as change leaders that can actually cause resistance to what we're trying to accomplish. This is the self inflicted change resistance. And I'd like to go into this in much more detail. Because if we're able to eliminate change resistance, by doing things differently ourselves, the process itself is going to go much easier, much quicker, with less resistance down the road, and life will be much more fun as a change leader versus creating battles needlessly. who defines resistance. Interesting point, in that we think of resistance from point of view of having to kill it or stamp it out of what others are doing.

Thereby, we are defining what others are doing as resistance. It is from our point of view that resistance is defined, and it can become a self fulfilling prophecy. If we expect resistance, it will happen because we end up planning differently. If you think about resistance from a battle or a warrior standpoint, you're going to be doing the project of initiating a change very different than if you think about it as a cooperative fellowship approach. Again, it's who defines the resistance and what resistance is from that point of view. We also need to make sense Have the change recipients reaction.

Again, we view others people's comments and behaviors. From our point of view, we think of what they're saying as contrary to what we are trying to do. But we may be overlooking many other aspects of what they are really thinking about or believing, or trying to tell us that we're not listening because what we're hearing is resistance, not an attempt at cooperation. It also provides an excuse. Think about this. If we expect resistance and we find resistance, it becomes an excuse for us to do things differently.

We can take a much harder line on it because after all, We're dealing with resistance, then if we were to think about things more as a cooperative fellowship approach, thinking about resistance from this perspective also, though, gives us an excuse for failure. The failure then becomes those that resist, not failure based upon what we may have done wrong in crafting the change objective, or designing the change methodology for the project. It becomes excuse for our failures by blaming others. We also need to talk about ignoring the potential benefits. If we come at resistance confrontationally. We are ignoring what we can learn from the change recipients.

We are ignoring what we can build from an awareness and the momentum of the change getting their involvement and understand it from their point of view, not our point of view, defining it as resistance. We also do corrective action for the design and the conduct of the change process differently. When we think about it from a beneficial point of view, what can we do different there's also a presupposition that resistance will occur. If you believe resistance will occur. Naturally we are going to be looking forward we will see resistance in actions that may not necessarily be resistance, but we will interpret those comments and behaviors because we're trying to frame it within the expectation of resistance to change manager then doesn't become responsible. Because if they continue to resist it, it's their problem, not our problem.

If they resist, we have to fight them harder. This sets up a trust breaking cycle and that it becomes confrontational. It's a communication breakdown. In reality, it may be a problem with reallocation of resources, time, people availability or the budget. We may have overlooked those and the resistance is really being interpreted not as opposition, but lack of resources from their point of view something we are overlooking. We also may be looking at the reasons driving decision making differently.

We have the context from a change leader perspective of having gone through the diagnosis, the problem solving, the planning We understand the total context. And then we're laying that on others, possibly with no context and expect them to have the same understanding that we do. This is a formula for resistance, we also may be violating the psychological and implied contracts. Everybody has a working relationship with some assumptions. And a change initiative may be violating those assumptions. And we may be doing that unconsciously, ourself.

So, what do you believe about where change resistance originates? And to what extent does that belief really force you or cause you to see resistance when it may not necessarily be? Resistance, but your interpretation as such. So let's talk about avoiding the contribution to resistance from what you do. mislabeling resistance is often the case when in reality, it is the poor design of the change objective and some deficiency in the change methodology. I've mentioned this before, and I'm going to continue to mention it, because is a common cause of the change resistance as we see it from our point of view, because what we fail to do in proper design and implementation, planning, it also involves from our point of view, poor organizational sense making, by sense making talking about the context, that people understand the problem and understand the challenge.

Being a solution to the problem. It is the context for how we communicate fully within that context or developing the context, or possibly misrepresenting something as being a little bit different. Because we don't want to deal with the hard issues that sometimes are involved when significant cultural change occurs. We can also then violate the trust that breaks down the psychological contracts, the implied contracts that we have with people in the organization, what they expect from us and vice versa. If that trust breaks down, it becomes a major impediment for successful change. The key point then, is the personal change resistance that you may be fostered.

Strain within the organization and how you design and plan for the change, self inflicted change resistance can also come from our fear of failure. If we are afraid of what we may be doing wrong, we may be taking a harder line aspect on forcing change being a more hardline manager, raising expectations unrealistically and having disjointed communication and misaligned actions This is seen in this too will pass it reinforces complacency within the organization because we lack consistency. See and what we say and what we do that conflicting messages as in do as they say, not as I do. When you take a look at many books that address resistance and what to do these other critical things they talk about the consistency of messages, the alignment of actions. What needs to be said though, is the reasons behind those recommendations is to avoid self inflicted damage from fear of our failure itself.

So, to what extent are we dealing with self inflicted damage as an excuse for poor management, if you can blame others for resistance, it takes blame off of you. And some managers may not want to eliminate the resistance because truthfully with some resistance that allows blame shifting to others when they need to report to their superiors about why the change is not happening. A proper response is a self reflection of To what extent is the change resistance self inflicted and not truly originating from the people involved in the change recipient point of view? The key then is when are you the cause of resistance? What are you doing? That should be done differently to avoid resistance, first place because if you can avoid resistance, then things will go smoother.