Speaker 1: Do you ever feel like you have to drag people through the mud by their hair to get them to change? Does it seem like you have this giant boulder that you're rolling uphill, or that you're just spinning your wheels, or that you're even banging your head against the wall because some people just won't budge? These are some of the ways I've heard people describe their frustration with trying to get some of their co-workers to adopt new ways of doing things. You get the sense from these expressions that when you're trying to influence people to change, it can seem like you're spending an awful lot of energy to make just a little bit of progress, but if you stop, things will just go back to the way they used to be. I learned this, like most people do, which is the hard way. When I first started my career, I was an industrial engineer, and my job was finding ways to make the companies that I worked for be more effective and efficient, and it seemed like I should be able to just convince people to improve the way they did things. After all, it was my job, but, oh, no, that is not how the world works, right? I still remember the time that, as part of a software implementation project, I developed a report for a plant manager so he could have instant access to all the metrics he wanted to see, and it would save his assistant about an hour every day putting that report together manually, and he wouldn't use it. And then there was the time I designed a system for machine operators on the plant floor to know when to stop making production so they didn't make too much, and it worked beautifully, and, yes, they used it for about a week before they went back to the old way of doing things. And I will never forget the day that I had an executive walk out on a meeting in revolt of a project that he had helped develop. That one still stings. And, yes, just like you, when things like this happened, it was frustrating. I would even get angry, and I was definitely confused about why people would act this way. But I also became curious, and I decided to find out what does it really take to influence people to change? Since then, I went back to school to study leadership and change management. I read as much as I could about influence and how change works on an individual and organizational level. I applied what I was learning to see what works in practice and what really doesn't work in practice. And for almost a decade, I've been helping other people influence change in their workplaces, and even after all that, I still have not found the secret sauce that will make anyone do whatever you want. I wish, but not really. But I have learned how we can better deal with resistance. The dictionary definition of resistance is any force that slows down or prevents motion. It's a scientific term. And we've adopted that as resistance to change is any force that slows down or prevents change. But isn't it funny that we don't really notice that resistance is happening unless people aren't changing as quickly or as smoothly or as enthusiastically as we wish they would? Otherwise, we would just think everything's normal, everything's fine. But instead, we see people do things that we didn't expect or that are frustrating, and we label that resistance. Now these resistant behaviors go well beyond someone refusing to change or just slipping back into the old way of doing things over time. No, people are way more creative than that, aren't they? How many of these people have you encountered in your experience? There's the one who they seem like they're implementing the change just fine, but it turns out they're hiding the fact that they're still doing things the old way just in case the new way doesn't work out. Or there's the person who seems to have an endless supply of excuses for why it won't work or why they can't do it. On the flip side of that, there's the person who's enthusiastic and agrees that the change should happen, but they never quite seem to do it themselves. They keep pushing it off and procrastinating about it. Then there's the one who, when they find out that you're trying to implement a change, they avoid you altogether, hoping that if they hide long enough, the change will just pass them by and they won't actually have to do it. And then there's the one who they'll implement the change exactly the way you say 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. And then there's the one who they just take that change and run with it. Sure they're changing, but not in any direction that you actually wanted them to go in. And at this point you're probably wondering, how does she know all the same people that I know? Isn't it infuriating, exasperating how everyone else resists change? And when we're the ones who are trying to influence people to change and we encounter these resistant behaviors, we have some pretty unhelpful responses ourselves that actually make it more frustrating than it needs to be. First of all, we take it personally. After all, it feels like they're pushing against an idea that we think is important. It feels like they're pushing against us. It can even feel like rejection. And then we become defensive and the change becomes a battle to win and not something for us to collaborate on together. Another unhelpful response we have to these resistant behaviors is that 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 behavior, we tend to attribute that behavior to their character or their personality, whereas our own behavior we attribute to our circumstances. There's something that happened to us that made us react that way. Well, in the context of change, we see someone resisting and we tell ourselves things like, well they're just resistant to change, or they're just being stubborn, or they're just trying to be difficult, whereas if we were in a similar situation and had the same kind of behaviors, we would say we had a valid reason. There was something about that change that we needed to push back against. And the third unhelpful response we have to these resistant behaviors is that we try to focus on making those resistant behaviors stop. So if someone's avoiding us, we track them down. If they're coming up with excuses, we come up with all the counter arguments for why they're wrong. If someone's procrastinating, we can remind them to the point of nagging and maybe even get their boss or someone else with authority involved to make them do it. Essentially, we're trying to overcome that resistance. But let me ask you something. What is your reaction when someone tries to make you do something you don't want to do? If you're anything like me, you either dig in your heels even more, you pull out all those resistant behaviors that everyone else does, trying to prevent it from happening, or you might actually do whatever it is but grudgingly, which affects your attitude, it affects your effectiveness, and also your relationship with the person who it feels like is making you do something you don't want to do. When we address the resistant behaviors directly, it only serves to make the resistance even stronger because the resistant behavior isn't the real problem. The real problem is what you don't see. On the surface, we see a resistant behavior, which is a reaction to change, but we don't see the underlying condition that prompted that behavior in the first place. You can think of the behavior as a symptom. Like when you have a cold, you have a cough or stuffy nose or something, well, those symptoms are just your body's reaction to a hidden virus, which is the real problem. Well, resistance is the same way. We see the resistant behavior on the surface, but we don't see the underlying cause or source of resistance. So let me give you some examples. Sometimes we don't see that for this person, it's not just a minor inconvenience. This is a major disruption to their routine. We don't always see that they're not really clear about what they're supposed to be doing, but they're embarrassed to ask, and we don't see that they're not really comfortable with their ability to do the job well, and so they don't even want to try, and we don't see that their boss is sending signals that she is not on board with this change, and so of course they're not going to stick their necks out and do it anyway. We may not see that they're upset that decisions are being made about them, without them, and slowing things down is just their way of maintaining some control of their situation, and we may not see that they're upset at the insinuation that what they're already doing isn't good enough or that it's wrong. When people resist change, there's 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 their point of view, then we have something we can deal with, and we can help them through it. So if you'd like to influence people to change, and you don't want to feel like you have to drag them through the mud by their hair in order to do it, start by treating resistance not as something to overcome, but something to uncover. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.