I would be negligent in my role as guide throughout these conversations around leading change. If we don't introduce the notion of resistance, let me share a few ideas initially about the reality of resistance. First of all, it's all very normal and natural, to some degree, at some level, we all will resist change. We will even resist change that we decide upon ourselves for any number of reasons. We really resist being changed. And that's a pretty fundamental truth I have found in organizations and unfortunately, many people are in the situation's of simply being changed.

They're being told what to do. Resistance is behavior that is perceived by others from the outside looking in, rarely ourselves. From an internal perspective, we're just trying to figure this out. Is this something that we really want to take on or not, but that figuring out gets perceived by There's SNP being resistant to change. Resistance really is simply feedback to the leaders. And it's actually good news in many ways.

And it's it's feedback that says you haven't convinced me yet. I'm not bought into this yet. And the reality is, we don't resist what we don't care about. So when people dig in and resistant to change, they still have a vested interest in the old way of doing things. So they still care. If they didn't care, they'd go along with whatever, it didn't make any difference, and their heart wouldn't be in it.

So there's a couple of basics around resistance. But let's dig into this a little bit more. Resistance can really be complicated. And there's the four dimensions that we've talked about around this integrated approach to leading change, and resistance can happen at each of those four dimensions. If you're taking this workshop with a group of people, what I'd like you to do is to answer those four questions based on your own understanding of what's going on in organization, why would people resist the strategy? And why would people resist the changes?

Why would people resist transition? And? And why on earth? Would people resist communication? So push pause, answer those questions. My guess is your conversation became fairly rich, lots of insights, let me share a couple very basic reasons why people resist.

So why do people resist the strategy? The most common reasons simply is that they don't understand it. It's too complicated. It's too obscure. It's too high level, or they may understand it, but they simply don't agree with it. They believe the organization should be heading into different direction or have different priorities or responding to different pressures or threats.

Well, let's suggest that the organization resolves all of that and we will go along with the strategy, then why would people resist the changes? Well, there's any number of reasons they may disagree with the decision. And around what the change is, not only are there too many, but it can be too confusing, changes overlapping and changes unrelated to each other. And bottom line, it just seems like this is going to be way too much work. So people dig their heels in why people resist transition. I think we can all relate to this.

In fact, we have an entire generation of employees right now who are having to let go of things that they built with their own hands. Those are the baby boomers and even some of the Gen Xers are having to let go, programs and processes and so on that they indeed came into the organization and help shape and now those processes are having to give way to new ones. So there's enormous potential loss of things that we built with our own hands. And that's a challenge. And it's not generational, we can all struggle with having to lose things. And of course, transition can be very uncomfortable and very confusing and who knows.

Wouldn't resist that. I know certainly that I do. And why would people resist communication, you'd think people would be aching for communication. Bottom line, the number one reason why people resist communication is simply there's too much of it. And it's too confusing or it's not coming from the right person, or it's not coming in the right medium, or it's not detailed enough or it's not specific enough. So there's any number of reasons why people would resist strategy, change, transition and communication.

Let's dig in just a little bit deeper to this. There's four levels of resistance. So if people don't know what's going on, what's your response as a leader? Well, my hope is, is that you find out what is it that they don't know or what are they unclear about or what are they confused about? I would encourage more inquiry than more telling. You've already told them some things and they still I don't know, well, let's find out what they're confused about.

Maybe people resist because they aren't involved. Well, rather than jump on the bandwagon of let's get everybody involved in everything, which is absolutely not what you want to do. Let's clarify what involvement is going to look like here. If there was an opportunity to share your opinion, did you get involved in that conversation? Or that feedback or whatever it was? If there was an opportunity to be a part of the project or the change planning team?

Was that known? And did you take advantage of that and do people understand? more often, though, involvement really looks like only taking the change as designed and making it work in your particular area of the organization. Let's spell that out. Organizations aren't democracies, everybody does not get a vote on everything. So we really need to spell out what environments going to look like.

And what happens People don't think they can, I'm not smart enough or I'm too busy or whatever it might be, well, lots of support and lots of learning opportunities to help people build the confidence that they indeed, need, and can find to get through all of these changes. And yet, there's one more level. And these are the people who are fundamentally dug in, and they simply won't. And they will say any number of things, but the behaviors over time, are clearly not engaging in the change. Well, this simply is where performance management is required. You really got to hold people's feet to the fire, and you've got to provide some strong clear performance management in order to ensure that these naysayers don't swing a lot of opinion in their direction.

And that's hard work. But the reality is, there will be very, very few people unwilling If the leaders have done everything around dealing with the resistance to strategy, change, transition and communication, and the first three here around don't know weren't involved in don't think they can, you'll have very few, if any of these performance management related issues, but when they do arise, you've got to deal with them right away, and very clearly, bottom line, what do people really resist? I think we all can relate to hate being coerced into a situation hate being mandated or told or forced. And most of us really are uncomfortable with prolonged periods of uncertainty. So then, as leaders, what can we do to provide the invitation as opposed to the coercion and what can we do to provide periods of time where folks do know what's going on? even in the face of a lot of decisions still being up in the air?

We do know some things And we can provide them updates on where decisions are being made and why the delays and so on. We've got to do everything we can to provide some level of certainty in a relatively uncertain time. Here's the question, what can and will you do to minimize resistance in your part of the organization. And I'd like you to find this worksheet, this action plan and make a note to yourself. And this is probably just some things for you. So it would be under that column things I'll do.

And my guess is there's some things you could do within the next week or certainly within the next month. So just one or two notes on dealing with resistance.