Peter Bregman on the Harvard Business site writes an interesting article on how to handle resistance to change
He says, ‘People resist being controlled. And so 70% of all corporate change efforts fail.
Here’s what’s interesting: people freely choose to make major life changes every day. We move, get married, start families, face challenges, learn new technologies, change jobs, and develop new skills. Not all of these changes are smooth. But most of the time we seek those changes ourselves and make them successfully.
So why are people willing to change in one situation and resistant to it in another? Because people don’t resist change, they resist being changed.’
He advises three steps to overcome this issue:
- Define the outcome you want.
- Suggest a path to achieve it.
- Allow people to reject your path as long as they choose an alternate route to the same destination.
In other words, set the destination but empower people to choose how they get there.
Paul Sloane
Tags: change, empowerment, harvard, resistance