How to Manage Resistance Within High Performing Teams

By Studiowide 

"If you want to influence people to change, start by treating resistance not as something to overcome, but something to uncover."

Do you ever feel that you encounter resistance from team members when you’re attempting to introduce new changes within the business? 

Many of us feel this way when trying to introduce new ways of working amongst team members and co-workers. It can feel counterproductive; like you’re spending an awful lot of time and energy to make a little bit of progress. However, if you stop, the progress you have made will disappear and things will regress to the way they used to be fairly quickly.

Most, if not all, managers and supervisors have a strong ability to improve working practices and systems in their job roles and have done for decades, and in an ideal world, co-workers and colleagues would understand the need for change and instantly collaborate. However, as we all know, that’s just not how the world works.

For more than 20 years, the team at Productive Industries have been helping others influence change in their workplaces, and even with all of that experience we still haven’t found a ‘silver bullet’ that guarantees cooperation amongst teams when a fresh change needs to be introduced. However, what we have learned is how to effectively deal with resistance.

The dictionary definition of resistance is “any force that slows down or prevents motion”.  It’s a scientific term that we have interpreted as any force that creates resistance to change.  However, we only tend to notice ‘resistance’ when people aren’t adopting a change as quickly as we would like, or perhaps the change isn’t taking place as smoothly or as enthusiastically as planned.  

Instead, when we see people doing things that are frustrating or unexpected, we often label that as resistance.  Resistant behaviours go well beyond someone refusing to change or slipping back into old ways of working – it’s much more complicated than that.

Some examples of what that might look like include:

  • The team member who looks to be getting on with implementing the change – however, in reality, they’re hiding the fact that they’re doing things the old way in fear that the new way might not work out.
  • Team members who have an endless supply of excuses for why it won’t work or why they can’t do it.
  • A team member who is enthusiastic and agrees that the change should happen, however never seems to be able to do it themselves and procrastinates.
  • The team member who, when they find out that you’re trying to implement something new, avoid you altogether in the hopes that if they hide for long enough the change will simply pass them by and they won’t have to do it. 
  • The team member who’ll implement the change exactly in the way you have asked without making any decisions on their own so that when the change fails (and somehow they make sure that it does) they can blame you for making them do it that way.

Any of these sound familiar?

Some food for thought though, isn’t it exasperating and infuriating that ‘everyone else’ resists change?  

When we’re the ones responsible for influencing people to accept change and we have at times a selection of unhelpful responses that can make it more frustrating than it needs to be.  

There are many responses we have to this resistance:

1. We can take it personally

This isn’t an unusual response, after all the individual or group can be pushing against an idea that you think is important. It can feel like they’re pushing against you, possibly creating a sense of rejection. At this point, we can become defensive and change becomes a battle to win and not something for us to collaborate on together.

2. We blame the other person for not changing.

We fall victim to what psychologists call ‘the fundamental attribution error,’ which means that when we see someone else’s behaviour we tend to attribute that behaviour to their character or their personality, whereas we attribute our behaviour to our circumstances. 

In the context of change, we see someone resisting and we tell ourselves that they are naturally resistant to change, or that they are being stubborn or just trying to be difficult.  However, if we were in a similar situation and displayed similar types of behaviours we would say we had a valid reason because there was something wrong with the change that made us push against it.

3. We try to focus on making resistance stop or go away

For instance, if someone is avoiding us, we track them down. If someone is coming up with excuses, we build all the counterarguments for why they’re wrong.  If someone is procrastinating, we remind them to the point of nagging and perhaps even get their boss involved to help apply some additional pressure. Essentially, we’re trying to overcome that resistance.

Bearing all of that in mind, the obvious question we should ask ourselves is how do we react when we are asked to do something we don’t want to do? Maybe we dig our heels in, maybe we try to prevent it from happening, or maybe we do what is being asked somewhat begrudgingly, which affects our attitude, effectiveness, and the relationship we have with the person asking us to adopt the change.  

When we address the resistant behaviours directly, it only serves to make the resistance even stronger because the resistant behaviour isn’t the real problem. The real problem is what you don’t see, the underlying condition that prompted this reaction in the first place.  Think of the reaction as a symptom.

For example, sometimes we don’t see that, for a particular person, the change being implemented isn’t a minor inconvenience but a major disruption to their routine. Or we don’t always see that they’re not clear on what they are supposed to be doing but are too embarrassed to ask. Maybe we don’t see that they’re not comfortable with their ability to do the new job well so they don’t even want to try.  Maybe we don’t see that their boss is sending signals that they are not on board with this change and so of course they are not going to take the risk and do it anyway. 

Finally, we may not see that they are upset that decisions are being made about them without their involvement and slowing things down is their way of maintaining some control of their situation. Perhaps they are upset by the insinuation that what they’re already doing isn’t good enough or that it was wrong.

When people resist change, there’s usually something going on below the surface. When we uncover the part that we don’t see at first, then we’ve found the true source of resistance.  When we can understand the experience of the change from the other person’s point of view, we have something tangible we can deal with.

So, if you want to influence people to change, start by treating resistance not as something to overcome, but something to uncover.

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading our Brilliant Basics of managing resistance within high performing teams!

Finally, don’t forget that creating a high-performing team enables managers, team leaders, and colleagues to achieve world-class levels of Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost, and People performance.  However, getting there requires the adoption of an essential set of practices that when done well and done habitually combine to create a results mechanism that we call ‘The Brilliant Basics’.

If you would like to learn more, why not consider coming along to our 2-Day Management Workshop in January where you will learn how to make process improvements through effective problem-solving. Check out the event and book your place here.

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