Unleash change. Don't force it.

People develop change fatigue, and then they get cynical. And it feels like?nothing?ever gets better. The biggest obstacle to successful change is human resistance. People often have scepticism about change, and everything you hear about it is often pessimistic. People often say, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks". But is there another way we can look at change??

We are surrounded by it constantly if you look around in your own life. You get married, have kids, take a new job, move cities, make new friends, buy a new iPhone and join Instagram. We encounter it in our lives every day. Yet, for some reason, we interpret the more challenging things as change, and everything else feels like an easy choice and part of everyday life.??

But, if we stop and think about it,?it's all change.?

I often consider, why don't we research and discuss the differences between the painful and hard changes versus the really easy ones? The easy ones we make every day in our life all have one thing in common: you?want them.?You want to get married. You want to have kids, you want to take the new job and you want the new iPhone, so it looks and feels like an easy change right?

But then there are more nuanced cases like addicts who want to quit but don't or find it near impossible. They?want?to change but have a real tough time doing it. Then, there are middle ground cases where parts of us want some change, yet we have difficulty realizing it. This is an example of the quintessential organizational change story because it doesn't look like we expect it to look, and we assume everything is just going to fall into line.?

Unfortunately, it doesn't usually work that way. The number one mistake of leading change is that we try to change things with only information, testing, data and analysis. We often think if we just give people enough information, we're going to get change, but people need to have an emotional response that opens them up to accept it.?

So, what if we put a new lens on it, see it from an emotional perspective, and?feel change??When people have an experience that makes them feel something: they feel either motivated, surprised, or appalled, and it sparks a change. We can't just recycle an analysis to figure out the right way to go; people have to feel an emotional response to it. Don't try to change people's values; instead, appeal to the values they already hold.?

Think about a change you'd love to see at work. How can you convince people that trying it will help them live their values or express their own identities??

Sometimes the change just feels too big, so we place it in the too-hard basket. What if we alter our mindset and start thinking about?how to shrink the change by making it easy for people to find small wins?

We can try to lead change slightly differently than the traditional method by vividly depicting why it needs to happen, appealing to people's values and identity, and then shrinking the change. This can help motivate people to try new things and embrace them.

Shrinking the change can break a meaningful goal into manageable pieces. But what if the change you're trying to champion is impossibly significant? We can use what psychologists call the foot-in-the-door technique. Start with a small initial ask that's likely to get a "yes." Then follow up with a bigger ask that raises the stakes. Having committed to supporting you, people are more likely to agree and buy into your more significant request.

We continue to hear from leaders that managing change is the hardest thing they do. Not only do you have to figure out what's broken, but you also have to find the correct fix. And then, the most challenging job is to convince the people in your team to support and run with the change.

Too many people try to force change when they should be looking for ways to unleash it.?Your workplace is full of people with ideas for improvement; all they're missing is the authority to try them. Change doesn't have to be about walking away from something good. It can be about growing and expanding into something better.