5 Strategies to Manage Resistance to Change

Leadership is all about change, but what is a leader to do when faced with ubiquitous resistance? Resistance to change manifests itself in many ways, from foot-dragging and inertia to petty sabotage to outright rebellions. The best tool for leaders of change is to understand the predictable, universal sources of resistance in each situation and then strategize around them. 

We often take it for granted that our organisations, large, medium or small, need to change in order to stay competitive. In business, particularly, in the Post COVID world, it is the one thing we all can be assured of. There is no choice, we must change to survive. When dealing with this much change though, we are bound to run into roadblocks and barriers of resistance. In this article, we will try to look at strategies to help overcome these resistances to change.

Organisational change can be of different types. Organisations can change their strategy, their use of technology, structure or culture or any combination of these. Understanding how the organisation is going to change, and how this will affect the people involved, makes it much easier to plan how to make that change happen and what barriers or roadblocks may arise.

The implementation phase has an important local, cultural and political dimension. It needs to address the extent to which people are ready for, and accepting of change, and whether the process threatens them in any way. People issues at all levels are paramount to successful change, and these must be addressed continually at all stages of change. In order to effectively manage the implementation process of change as a manager, it is important to be aware of reasons why people might resist changes and find ways of encouraging their cooperation. Resistance can delay or slow down the change process, obstruct its implementation and increase its cost.

As per Prosci’s change management, following are the 5 strategies that we all can look into and follow as per our environment and need: 

1. Change the First Time

Much resistance to change can be avoided if effective change management is applied on the project from the very beginning. While resistance is the normal human reaction in times of change, good change management can mitigate much of this resistance. Change management is not just a tool for managing resistance when it occurs; it is most effective as a tool for activating and engaging employees in a change. Capturing and leveraging the passion and positive emotion surrounding a change can many times prevent resistance from occurring—this is the power of utilizing structured change management from the initiation of a project.

Consider the following change management activities:

• Utilise a structured change management approach from the initiation of the project
• Engage leadership team as active and visible sponsors to change. One shouldn’t proceed without their buy-in
• Seek management team’s support as well, including middle managers and frontline supervisors, as advocates of the change
• Communicate explicitly the need for change, the impact on employees and the benefits to the employee (answering "What's in it for me?" or WIIFM)

2. Expect Resistance

I still recall a simple instance where a big MNCs in one of the South East Asian countries decided to introduce egalitarian culture with free seating arrangement at the corporate headquarters which created quite a huge resistance from nearly all management cadres. It actually came as a cultural shock as they thought that it was their birth right to have dedicated offices or cubicles for the managers and above.

When preparing for resistance, spend time before the project launches to look at likely sources of resistance. All too often, a project team will reflect back on resistance and say, "We knew that group was going to resist the change," but nothing was done to address this upfront in the project. When the project is getting started, be proactive and specific about where resistance is likely to come from and the likely objections that drive this resistance. Then, act on this knowledge ahead of time before the resistance impacts the project. These are some likely sources of resistance for most any project:

• Employees who are highly invested in the current way of doing work
• People who created the current way of doing work that will be changed
• Employees who expect more work as a result of the change
• Those who advocated a particular alternative, say Option B, when Option A was ultimately selected
• People who have been very successful and rewarded in the current way of doing work

3. Formally Manage Resistance

Formally addressing resistance ensures that it is understood and dealt with throughout the lifecycle of the project. It moves managing resistance to change from simply a reactive mechanism to a proactive and ultimately more effective tool for mobilizing support and addressing objections.

Managing resistance to change should not be solely a reactive tactic for change management practitioners. There are many proactive steps that can be used to address and mitigate resistance that should be part of the change management approach on a project.

Always keep the following three points in front of you: 

• Preparation
• Management
• Reinforcement

4. Identify Root Causes of Resistance

Managing resistance is ineffective when it simply focuses on the symptoms. The symptoms of resistance are observable and often overt, such as complaining, not attending key meetings, not providing requested information or resources, or simply not adopting a change to process or behavior. While they are more evident, focusing on these symptoms will not yield results. To be effective at managing resistance, you must look deeper into what is ultimately causing the resistance. Effective resistance management requires identification of the root causes of resistance—understanding why someone is resistant, not simply how that resistance is manifesting itself.

• Change management best practices research provides following root causes of resistance:
• Lack of awareness of why the change was being made
• Impact on current job role
• Organisation’s past performance with change
• Lack of visible support and commitment from managers
• Fear of job loss

5. Engage the ‘Right’ Managers

The "right" resistance managers in an organization are the senior leaders, middle managers and frontline supervisors. The change management team is not an effective resistance manager. Project team members, Human Resources or Organization Development specialists are not effective resistance managers either. Ultimately, it takes action by leadership in an organization to manage resistance.

Senior Leaders

At a high level, senior leaders can help mitigate resistance by making a compelling case for the need for change and by demonstrating their commitment to a change. Employees look to and listen to senior leaders when they are deciding if a change is important, and they will judge what they hear and what they see from this group. If senior leaders are not committed to a change or waver in their support, employees will judge the change as unimportant and resist the change.

Managers and Supervisors

Managers and supervisors are the other key group in terms of managing resistance. They are the closest to the frontline employees who ultimately adopt a change. If they are neutral to or resistant to a change, chances are that their employees will follow suit. However, if they are openly supportive of and advocating for a particular change, these behaviors will also show up in how employees react to the change. Benchmarking data shows five key roles of managers and supervisors in times of change, and two of these roles are directly connected to managing resistance to change: demonstrating support for the change and identifying and managing resistance (read more about the five roles of managers and supervisors). Remember, though, you must address resistance from managers first before asking them to manage resistance.

The change management team or resource can do much of the leg work in understanding and addressing resistance, but the face of resistance management to the organization is ultimately senior leaders, managers and supervisors. The change management resource can help to enable the "right" resistance managers by providing data about where resistance is coming from, likely root causes of resistance, potential tactics for addressing resistance and tools to identify and manage resistance, but the "right" resistance managers must act to address objections and move employees forward in the change process.

Final Thoughts

It’s a cliché, but it’s true that change is hard. While you might find that even your most loyal employees put up resistance when it comes to change in the workplace, by following the above simple but practice strategies and a well thought out plan, you can reassure your team members that, while things may be changing, you are just as committed to their overall success as ever before.

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Muhammad Sajwani is the Founder, Managing Director and Principal Consultant at Evolve HR which aims at transforming, enriching and evolving Human Capital of Pakistan, At Evolve HR thrives in challenging assumptions that hinder organisational aspirations, by creating innovative solutions that yield maximum impact, scalability & benefit to a wider base of stakeholders. As a Business Coach and Organisational Consultant, Sajwani knows how to combine business insights with people insights to transform organisations and put them on the path to growth.