Managing Resistance to Change

Marc Maltz 1

10/9/08

1 Originally published with Frank Basler in Hiam, Portable Conference on Change Management, HRD Press,
1997.

Page 1, 10/9/08
Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
 Introduction

Change is necessary and inevitable. The quality movement, continuous improvement, action
learning organizations, advanced technology, competition, new consumer media, new
distribution methodologies, etc., all alter the landscape of the familiar. With each new day,
customer and financial markets, the environment, and most everything else about our business is
no longer the same. Managing in such tenuous landscapes is often confusing and managing any
change initiative while the ground swells is sometimes overwhelming. Sustaining competitive
advantage or parity is increasingly complex as is the effect organizational change has on its
people. Managers must understand the escalating effects change (strategic, technological and/or
structural) has on the organization and its many parts, including individuals.

Unfortunately, as change is inevitable, so is the tendency for workers to feel the change as an
indictment of their performance or an unnecessary whim of their management. Employees
quickly move to blame management for the loss of comfortable roles and tasks, seniority, income
and, sometimes, jobs rather than take up the challenge of change. As agents of change, we are
held responsible by our employees and the other major stakeholders in our business to undertake
these changes in as thoughtful and integrated way as possible. Managing any change process is
never easy and is a continuous part of organizational life.

William Bridges, in his book Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, addresses the
individual’s experience of change. According to Bridges, our personal and professional ability
to handle change is affected by our culture’s lack of attention to transitions. He writes:

“…in the modern world…transition is a kind of street-crossing procedure. One would be a

fool to stay out there in the middle of the street any longer than necessary, so once you step
off the curb, move on to the other side as fast as you can. And whatever you do, don’t sit
down on the center-line to think things over!

No wonder we have so much difficulty with our transitions. This view makes no sense out of
the pain of ending, for all that we can imagine is that our distress is a sign that we should not
have crossed the street in the first place. It also makes no sense out of the feeling of lostness
that we are likely to experience or the feeling that the emptiness seems to stretch on forever.
(‘Wait a minute,’ we want to object. ‘There is another side to this street, isn’t there?’)” 2

Change is far more complex than a street crossing. It is a challenging journey towards an
uncertain destination. Transitions are journeys that we each need to come to terms with. By
shoving people into traffic and simply pointing to an imagined “other side”, we can be sure of
one thing -- we will increase a person’s anxiety and their resistance.

Managing Resistance to Change is a methodology that is designed to help people in

organizations face resistance and cross the street -- to actually manage the transitions
experienced within organizational change.

2 Bridges, W., Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1980, p. 113.

Page 2, 10/9/08
Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
 Managing Resistance to Change

The Managing Resistance to Change workshop has been in development for over two years and
has included consultants, managers, workers, executives and clinicians as participants. We have
conducted it publicly with mixed audiences, for a major consulting firm, two corporations and
continue to develop it in-house at a large hi-tech manufacturer. The following highlights our
approach and the results we have experienced in the workshop.

Change in organizations is a constant, albeit discontinuous (Lewin, Nadler), process.

Organizations are continually immersed in transition. And, since change is an inevitable part of
organizational life, we believe that resistance is correspondingly inherent and should be
reframed, explored and worked, not eradicated or “fixed”. In fact, we have found that the
process of surfacing and discussing resistance is a part of the learning that all organizations must
do to survive. The “data” of resistance is critical to an organization’s development, productivity
and ability to make change successful.

The objectives for our workshop participants are simple:

• Learn to:
- Help yourself and others identify and talk about the feelings that are at the core of
resistance, and
- Use the energy bound up in resistance to further change.
• Develop and practice the skills needed to use this process.
• Refine a personal strategy for managing resistance to change.
• Understand what is in your control to change and what actions to take.
• Provide a safe place to stop, reflect on and explore our thoughts and feelings and learn from
each other.

One of the first learning often expressed by workshop participants is that they “resist”. Most
participants enter believing that they will learn how to manage others’ resistance rather than look
at how they participate. It is our belief that resistance is not just a personal process but systemic
in nature. We all contribute to and are a part of the “resistance” experienced and observed.
Resistance occurs at individual, interpersonal and group levels simultaneously. We must stop
and see not only how others “resist” but how we resist and how the process of resistance serves a
purpose for the organization.

As the objectives stated above suggest, the workshop combines didactic learning with
experiential process. As you read the following material, think about yourself and how this
discussion might apply to your own situation.

The workshop begins with a series of exercises that help us define our own and others’
resistance. Since our response to change is deeply set by our life’s experience, as Bridges
describes, we begin with the self and one’s own pattern or valence for resistance. We ask our
participants to think about how their current organizational role was shaped by the role they
assumed in their family of origin. Each individual explores the following:
• Her/his (technical) role in their organization.

Page 3, 10/9/08
Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
• Her/his role in their family of origin. (Participants are asked to put a name to how they
functioned as a child and adolescent. Were they a rebel, caretaker, good student or prankster,
to name a few?)
• How they take-up their role in the organization. (Participants are now asked to put a name to
how they currently take-up their role at work. Are they the rebel, caretaker, good worker or
prankster?)
• Something unique about themselves that they don't normally share.

Once individuals have had a couple of opportunities to experience their own resistance, we ask
participants to define resistance as they see it operate in organizations. We generally fill a wall
with examples of how participants observe and experience resistance in organizations. To date,
we have close to 30 “walls-of-resistance” documented that give the same message -- resistant
behavior in organizations is experienced as a negative, harmful and destructive force that is
highly individualized and can generate physical, emotional and psychological depletion --
certainly our experience of resistance is something to escape, get rid of, lop off. Quite a place to
start a workshop…

Page 4, 10/9/08
Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
 Any Change Stirs Up Resistance

As we move the workshop into the first “lecturette”, we are surrounded by personal expressions
and experiences of resistance. The participants already understand the nature of resistance and
its destructive powers. Our challenge, as stated in the objectives, is to reframe this energy and
help the participants turn the inevitable process of change and the resulting resistance into a
productive organizational experience.

Yes, any change stirs up resistance. Examples are everywhere:

• People trained in problem solving and/or statistical tools who do not use them;
• People saying yes when asked to complete a task and then not doing it or avoiding it;
• A “team” that resists confronting a particular member’s not “getting with the program”;
• Supervisors who continue to control processes and people and can’t seem to let go;
• Management postponing training or cutting back on “key” programs;
• People saying “this will never work” or “it works already, so why do we have to change it”
or “the company’s making money, why do we have to change?” or “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix
it”, and so on.
• Our reluctance to speak with someone who we are afraid of or who appears to oppose us.

The dictionary definition of resistance, “an opposing or retarding force”, is consistent with the
workshop’s “wall of resistance” and the “walls” encountered in most change efforts -- those
invisible walls that all change initiatives experience at some point, regardless of the merits of the
change. We think about resistance as both a driving and restraining force (Lewin, Agazarian).

Much as Peter Senge talks about in The Fifth Discipline 3 in his discussion about “personal
mastery”, when we walk towards our goal, we immediately face the tension of resistance (as if a
rubber band is tied around our waist and attached to the opposing wall) that is tied to our belief
in our own “powerlessness or unworthiness”. We view the two opposing forces as our
past/present individual and organizational beliefs and our future individual and organizational
goal(s). As we move towards our goal, the tension of that rubber band tied around our waist and
to the opposing wall (our past/present) pulls us back and as we turn in response to our past and
present belief systems, culture, familiarity, the tension of not meeting our future goal tugs in the
opposite direction. We find ourselves stuck in the middle of this transition (Bridge’s “neutral
zone” or middle of the street with oncoming traffic from both directions) unable to find solace in
our past or present system in which we live and unable to move forward to the promising future.
This, in our experience, is resistance.

We hear much talk about “change” management these days and change processes. Realignment,
re-engineering, reorganization, mergers and acquisitions, and the many more processes being
implemented to “transform” organizations today tend to inadvertently increase the amount of
resistance in the organization, often inhibiting the effort and increasing the resource and financial
costs. Some organizations declare that employees must make a choice and either “get on the
train or wind up under it” or “lead, follow or get out of the way”, others declare that “no one will
lose their job” and still others plan change with a few “dependable” individuals and expect the

3 New York: Doubleday/Currency, 1990, p. 157.

Page 5, 10/9/08
Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
masses will implement -- resistance to these change methodologies is obvious. Still, even in the
most socially conscious change efforts, resistance appears to cause unplanned ripples that often
swell to tidal waves. Change, then, would be easy if it were not for the people…it is our belief
that any change effort must consider all that is known about the social aspects of the change, in
addition to the technical, in order to be successful.

Resistance, as we’ve observed it, comes in two varieties, overt and covert. Overt resistance is
the most noticeable; it is what we experience as obvious opposition, disagreement, arguing,
debating, etc., to any change effort. It’s most virulent form is when people say “No!” and flatly
refuse to go along with or implement change. Covert resistance comes in two forms: conscious
and unconscious. Conscious covert resistance appears when employees are concerned about the
consequences of their actions. People sometimes covertly resist by saying yes or apparently
agreeing to a change and then avoiding or delaying its implementation. Unconscious covert
resistance is the most difficult to see and understand. It is when we are not even aware of our
resistance. When we have trouble understanding or “hearing” another, “forget”, fail to achieve
expected results, become ineffective, become ill, avoid for no apparent reason, etc., we may be
unconsciously resisting the process of change. Covert resistance provides no visible conflict or
discord yet just as successfully undermines change efforts as when overt processes are at work.

Page 6, 10/9/08
Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
 Fear of Loss

At the heart of resistance is our fear of loss. Resistance is a result of this fear, an expression of
how people feel about the change effort at hand. When things change, people begin to worry
about what they might lose, including 4:

• Job • Certainty/Security
• Income • Autonomy/Control/Freedom of Choice
• Position/Status • Effectiveness
• Reputation • Routines/Familiar Procedures
• Turf • Relationships/Mentors/Group Membership
• Influence • Meaning
• Responsibility • Future/Dreams/Plans
• Expertise • Identity

This list is not comprehensive; we can all think of more losses that we face, rationally and
otherwise, when confronted with change. These losses are real -- real feelings that are stirred
when confronted with letting go with the known during a transition. We have come to
understand how this fear of loss disables our ability to be fully dedicated to any change.

In addition to the emotions connected to these losses, most also reflect a real technical shift. We
believe that any change ultimately affects the various “boundaries” within an organization. By
boundaries 5, we refer to the technical, formal and informal structures that can be summarized
into three categories: roles, tasks and authority 6. The alignment of these boundaries is what
becomes skewed during any change process and most organizations in transition do not spend
much time thinking about how the intended or implemented change impacts role, task and
authority boundaries, particularly in a dynamic sense. Resistance, then, is the way we protect
ourselves from the binds caused by boundary shifts. The key to working with resistance lies in
the ability of an organization to understand and define the shifts in role, task and authority
associated with any change.

4 Adapted from Bridges, W., Managing Transitions, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1991.
5 Groups have multiple boundaries which effect roles, dynamics, process and task. Boundaries differentiate
people and groups and are the borders or structure between people, functions, groups, tasks, processes, reality,
etc., and can be either defined or undefined. Boundaries are defined by geography, time, role, goal, task, etc.
Productivity is enhanced and resistance diminished when boundaries are clearly defined.
6 A role is the position and place a person assumes in an organization by assignment (the tasks they are expected
to perform) or as a product of some “dynamic” (perhaps related to their gender, age, position, looks, etc.).

A task is the act of producing or achieving an output, which is required by the work of the individual and
group. A process is the known or unknown means by which tasks get accomplished.

Authority refers to the official hierarchy of an organization and the structure of power within it, i.e., how roles
and tasks are authorized, how teams are sanctioned, what decision-making authority an individual or group has.

Page 7, 10/9/08
Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
 Talking about Our Fears

There is, however, resistance to talking about resistance. We are confident that most people
could resolve their boundary differences and manage their resistance to change if they could only
find a means to talk about it. We spend considerable time in the workshop helping individuals
express their feelings, fear of loss and the resulting binds that are at the heart of resistance. In
this work, we have faced the reality that in most organizations talking about such things as
losses, fears and feelings are taboo!

The trick then (if there is such a thing) is to help people in organizations find ways to talk about
the feelings stirred by change. These feelings are an important data set for understanding the
nature of resistance and learning about the organizational system. We have found it helpful in
most systems to simply name these losses and fears. For most people resisting a change, it is
liberating to be able to list words that describe their discomfort, such as uneasiness, anxiety, fear,
distrust, resentment, anger, self-doubt, vulnerability, helplessness, lack of motivation, impotence
and so on. This begins the process of talking about what we all experience when in transitional
binds.

Too often, our impulse when facing a “resistor” is to talk them out of their resistance.
Frequently, consultants, executives, managers and the like, believe that the best way out of
resistance is to explain, in ever more detail, why change is necessary. This process, rather than
alleviate the stress of change, adds to it, making most recipients of such cool logic feel more
anxious, unsettled and not understood or heard. Our natural impulse to explain away a change
only adds to others’ resistance and can be considered symptomatic of our own resistance.

Peter Block nicely summarizes this process, as follows 7:

“There is no way you can talk clients out of their resistance, because resistance is an
emotional process. Behind the resistance are certain feelings. You cannot talk people out of
how they are feeling…

The basic strategy is to help the resistance blow itself out, like a storm, and not to fight the
resistance head-on.

Feelings pass and change when they get expressed directly. The skill for the consultant is to
ask clients to put directly into words what the client is experiencing –– to ask the client to be
authentic. The most effective way to encourage the client to be authentic is for the consultant
to also behave authentically. That’s all there is to it.”

7 Block, P., Flawless Consulting, Austin: Learning Concepts, 1981, Page 131.

Page 8, 10/9/08
Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
 A Methodology for Talking about Resistance

Authenticity and simply talking about our feelings is hard to put to practice. Our workshop
provides a number of tools and techniques to help individuals and organizations sort through,
explore and express the feelings that are at the heart of resistance -- we essentially provide a
methodology to begin the process of being authentic. We take a case approach to learning about
resistance, asking participants to document their experiences of resistance in a particular
conversation or situation. Participants move from this frustrating conversation or interaction
with another person to begin seeing their own, in addition to the other’s resistance.

We begin by asking participants to note what they were really thinking during a conversation -- a
portion of their conversation where they were reluctant (resistant) to say what they were actually
thinking. They are asked to imagine saying what they were thinking and to describe how this
makes them feel. We then examine how what was actually said protected the person from the
discomfort and loss (an indication of resistance) that they might feel if they were more authentic.

Now that one has surfaced their own resistance, we ask them to think about the dilemma that the
other might face. This is another of our key learning that another name for resistance is an
impasse or bind and when facing a bind, the only way out is to reframe it as a choice, a fork in
the road. Our preferred metaphor for this choice is the “horns of a dilemma”. We spend much
time in the workshop learning how to reframe participant examples of resistance into dilemmas
in which there are choices with consequences. Participants are asked to list what might be feared
lost by making each choice. They diagram dilemmas as a way of clearly delineating another’s
and their own resistance, bind and dilemma. Once the person has explored the other’s dilemma,
we ask that the participant diagram and express the dilemma in which they find themselves.
Participants work to find ways to express their dilemma to the other in a non-judgmental, non-
blaming way. We then test their response by exploring, again, how they feel now that they have
expressed their dilemma.

Expressing the other’s dilemma and exploring their potential losses and feelings, helps us get in
touch with our empathy for the other’s position. Embracing an empathic viewpoint enables us to
move beyond blaming, judging, anger, etc., to a place where we can be real. Expressing our
dilemma helps us manage our resistance to being authentic, encouraging the other to be authentic
as well.

Our work, however, does not stop here. The expression of each party’s dilemma and the losses
associated with each choice is the first part of a two-part process for working with resistance. In
order to take this process and make it actionable, we must be sure to use the dilemmas and losses
as data -- symptoms of a problem in the system. Dilemmas are then looked at in the context of
the organization. System issues of role, task and authority boundaries are explored, the issues
that are at the root of most binds/resistance. In summary, we work each case in the following
process:

Page 9, 10/9/08
Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
 Identify Resistant Behavior
(As apparent to the participant in conversations, experience and observations.)
|
Define the Bind
(The wall we face.)
|
My and the Other’s Dilemma
(Reframe the bind as a choice.)
|
Feelings and Losses
(What is feared lost with each choice?)
|
Role, Task and Authority Boundaries
(The system.)

One tool that we have found useful in looking at the “language” of resistance is summarized in
the following chart (see Page 8) that describes the driving and restraining forces in our
communications 8. Driving forces are those phrases and language that help improve situations,
working through resistance. Restraining forces are the language of resistance; when one uses
restraining force language and behavior, they are in the resistance.

8 Adapted from Agazarian, Y. M., who adapted her work from K. Lewin’s Field Theory using (a) the “SAVI
System for Analyzing Verbal Interaction” (Agazarian and Simon, 1967) and (b) “Theory of Living Systems”
(Agazarian, 1992).

Page 10, 10/9/08

Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
 Page 11, 10/9/08
Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
 Understanding and Communicating Dilemmas

We have referred to the concept of a “dilemma” repeatedly in the previous pages. Dilemmas
serve two purposes in helping us understand and work with resistance. First, reframing a bind in
the form of a dilemma allows one to “de-toxify” the issue they face as a series of choices that
have related consequences. This reframing provides perspective to the problem and allows
cooler heads and some “rational” process to emerge. Second, mapping or diagraming dilemmas
provides a road map for understanding systemic issues; a diagnostic tool in which common
organizational themes can be understood. Once these themes are surfaced, valuable insights into
the organizational system and its change process can be gained.

The following binds and dilemmas are from various workshops and serve as examples of how
often simple changes in role, task and authority create binds and dilemmas for people, resulting
in resistance. Do they sound familiar?

Binds
• Group leaders, supervisors and middle managers perceive themselves as being asked to give
primary leadership to a change to a “quality culture” that will have both negative and
beneficial consequences for their employees.

• Middle managers and supervisors experience a “classic” paradox for companies undergoing
change, particularly when changing to data-based decision making and delegated
responsibility and accountability:
- If we lead, we stir up negative feelings, anxiety and resistance.
- If we don’t, the work and the company suffers, and we stir up negative feelings, anxiety
and resistance.

• The performance appraisal system still rewards individual, rather than team performance.

• The measurement systems upon which individual performance is evaluated often do not
reflect, measure and reward the new tasks and behaviors that people are being asked to do
and exhibit in the new quality culture.

• The job evaluation and seniority processes reduce supervisor and manager flexibility in
organizing teams and rewarding new behavior.

• As in most TQM culture change efforts, the goals of the change and the vision of the future is
unclear, resulting in supervisors and managers having difficulty understanding the change
and explaining it to their people.

• Senior management, most of whom have little experience managing or participating in a

quality culture, are unsure of how to behave, have their own dilemmas and, consequently, do
not always serve as a consistent role model.

Page 12, 10/9/08

Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
• Most employees experience organizational change as imposed upon them by senior
management rather than jointly developed with them as is often the case in participative total
quality processes. People experience communication about change as one way.

• Group leaders, supervisors and middle managers feel that they are asked to lead the change to
a “quality culture” while many of the management systems and managerial role models
available to them contradict their efforts and send the opposite message.

Dilemmas
Situation I’m asked to support the shift to data-based decision making AND to uphold the
Company’s commitment to its people as an important value.
Dilemma If I don’t have the resources to retrain my people, they’ll be let go in favor of people
with better analytic skills AND I won’t be able to fulfill my commitment to my
existing people. Also, if I defend my people to my management team, I’m perceived
as disloyal -- as resisting the shift to data-based decision-making.

Situation In the past it was expected and sanctioned in my role to report yield data that did not
include the scrap product that we reground for reuse. The new measurement system
requires me to count and report all scrapped product.
Dilemma If I don’t cooperate, I’ll get in trouble; if I do, someone’s going to ask why our
department is experiencing a sudden decrease in yield.

Situation As an operator, I take pride and am rewarded for minimizing downtime and
maximizing production AND I am being asked to experiment with new molds and
stop the process to collect data. This means I have an additional new role as an
experimenter, scientist and learner for which I’m not rewarded.
Dilemma If I cooperate, I’ll lose production and possible rewards; if I don’t, I anger the quality
team. My solution is to say I’ll do it and then not follow through.

Situation A reorganization has resulted in a work group comprised of two operators and two
group leaders, each pair working as partners in different geographical locations. The
operator in question is resentful about having been passed over for promotion to
group leader and is working un-cooperatively.
Dilemma As a group leader on a “self-managed” team, I am in a bind when my co-worker
slows down his work. I have the choice of either picking up the slack for him or not;
if I don’t, production suffers. When I ask for more cooperation, he says it’s my
responsibility, since I make the “big bucks”.

Situation A supervisor manages both a self managed team and a traditional work group in the
same area.
Dilemma He is criticized by employees from both groups for behaving inconsistently.

Situation A supervisor has a number of people who were “bumped” into his/her group two
years ago from other departments. These people are now judged to have more
seniority than the members of the supervisor’s original group. The original group

Page 13, 10/9/08

Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
 members are now losing their shift preferences. No clear personnel policy seems to
exist for these complicated transition matters.
Dilemma The supervisor has three groups with different seniority from different parts of the
organization. Someone is going to be affected and potentially hurt regardless of how
he/she manages the problem. Productivity and morale is suffering greatly and the
employees are beginning to have a tremendous amount of animosity towards
management and change.

Situation I work for two related departments. In one, my role is changing, expanding to include
project work, reflecting the company’s shift to empowering workers, in the other, I’m
still operating as a clerk.
Dilemma I feel demeaned in my role as a clerk in the one department. As my role in the other
department becomes more substantial and fulfilling, I am increasingly disappointed
and frustrated by my other responsibilities.

Situation A lack of agreement exists among middle management on interpreting and enforcing
new rules and regulations, e.g., no smoking in the building and scheduled breaks.
Dilemma As a supervisor, if I enforce an unpopular rule, I alienate my people (particularly
when it is not being enforced by my peers in adjacent areas). If I don’t enforce the
rules, my performance may suffer and I participate in breaking company rules.

Situation As a female supervisor, I am required to give a performance review to a worker who

has asked me out for dates (which I have refused) and has physically intimidated me
when angered by my refusal and a previous performance review. I have asked my
(male) manager to be present with me during subsequent reviews; my manager
discounts the danger and tells me to be less confrontational with this employee
(essentially undermining me and protecting him).
Dilemma I am afraid to be alone with this worker; I fear that he may become angry. My
manager(s) won’t support me nor understand or believe the danger I sense. I am
forced to either not give an honest assessment of the employee’s work, endanger
myself and/or be perceived by my manager(s) as a weak, incompetent female. In
addition, I believe that I have jeopardized my performance review.

Situation My manager has sent me for intensive training to develop technical skills for
assessing production efficiency yet won’t allow me to implement my newly learned
skills.
Dilemma If I use my training, I show how the current process is inefficient, which would
require us to stop production and rethink certain processes. My manager and team
chastise me for such analyses (“I feel like a shot messenger”). They worry that they
will not meet their production quota if we use these new analysis techniques or that a
“truth” about our production may be revealed and go against our performance
evaluation.

When people find themselves in binds and dilemmas like these, it is natural (and in some cases
appropriately self-protective) for them to resist. In most of the previous examples, an employee
is resisting. She/he might understand the change, the technical process and what they are being

Page 14, 10/9/08

Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
told or asked to do. Binds in the employee’s situation prevent them from completing the task
and confuses and, most likely, stresses them -- they do not know how to proceed or to whom to
turn in their suffering. Their supervisor/manager considers the individual as a resistor,
disobeying his/her authority when, in reality, the system has left the employee and the manager
in binds that, if unresolved, could potentially explode. In using this workshop as an intervention
in a system over time, clear patterns in the dilemmas emerge yielding a diagnostic database of
cause and effect.

Page 15, 10/9/08

Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
 A Process for Managing Resistance to Change

Resistance occurs at the boundary. We have learned that when an organization institutes any
change, no matter how small or large, role, task and authority boundaries change. People may
deny that a boundary exists or may be reluctant to engage or cross it. They may lack an
understanding about it or be put into mis-cast or ill-defined roles. Tasks within these roles and
authority relationships may be unclear. To minimize resistance, a group needs to understand and
manage their dynamics and establish clear boundaries by:
• Defining purpose, goals and objectives and being explicit about the group or individual
task;
• Developing clear and understandable roles for all group members;
• Understanding and talking about the authority structure(s);
• Discussing as many of the real dilemmas, issues, situations, constraints, and so on, within
the group; and
• Measuring and evaluating individual and group performance and progress towards their
collective goals.

Resistance in groups is natural. The most difficult task of any group is to simultaneously explore
its dynamic process (including resistance), do its work and explain itself to its parts and
stakeholders -- communicating across its boundaries.

In this article, we have presented our work with resistance and some of our key learning
regarding resistance, how it operates and how to work with it. The following summarizes the
steps we consider important in managing resistance -- our own and other’s:

Resistance 1. Identify both your and the others’ resistance. One way would be to
examine a portion of a conversation that you were having with another in
which you experienced resistant behavior; where you were reluctant to say
what you were actually thinking.

Bind 2. Imagine yourself actually saying what you were thinking. What would
you say? As you say this, what are you feeling? How does your actual
response serve to protect you from these uncomfortable feelings and from
loss or the fear of loss? Can you see the bind?

Dilemma 3. Clarify the others’ possible dilemma(s) or loss(es). Explore for yourself
the other person’s dilemma; get in touch with your empathy for them.
What does she/he stand to lose? What might she/he feel?

4. Clarify your dilemma(s) or loss(es). Tell the other person about your
dilemma and what you stand to lose? How would you say what you were
actually thinking in a non-judgmental, non-blaming way?

Feelings 5. Imagine yourself actually saying these words. What are you feeling?
Compare how you felt saying it this way to your first feelings (Step 3).

Page 16, 10/9/08

Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
Role, Task and Authority Boundaries
6. Explore reasons why you and/or the system may be immobilized in light
of role, task and authority boundaries. As you examine your and the other
person’s dilemma(s), add more examples of resistance, what might be lost
and how people feel. Explore the system, looking for unclear or
misaligned role, task and authority boundaries. Find the common
thread/pattern in the data to begin seeing the systemic or organizational
dilemma(s).

7. Develop recommended changes to the system to relieve the stress.

Continue to pay attention to your own resistance. Begin this process again
to explore the potential resistance to the recommendation (a change).

8. Determine what you are responsible for changing? What might be in your
control? What actions can you take to calm the resistance? Develop an
action plan for exploring recommended changes in the system.

Yvonne Agazarian aptly summarizes the work of managing resistance to change in her “Theory
of Living Human Systems”:

“There is no right or wrong until its explored and then there are only different ways of
seeing, thinking or doing!

You can only effect change and consult to the resistance if you can “see” (identify), work
with and communicate across the many boundaries that exist. Living human systems
transform through learning to recognize differences and integrating them -- both
differences in the apparently similar and the similarities in the apparently different.” 9

Remember, resistance occurs at all boundaries and there is a choice at every boundary. When
there are choices, resistance will get talked about and diminish.

We believe that leaders of change must better understand the nature of resistance and how their
actions and the changes they are implementing effect the people and organizations they are
trying to change. We offer a way of thinking about resistance that moderates its negative
connotations into productive data that can be used to make “informed” decisions. This is a
process that helps people discuss their resistance and legitimize their feelings in order to foster
learning and manage transitions.

As Martin Buber once wrote, “The origin of all conflict between me and my fellow man is that I
do not say what I mean, and that I do not do what I say. For this confuses and poisons, again and
again and in increasing measure, the situation between myself and the other man, and I, in my
internal disintegration, am no longer able to master it, but contrary to all my illusions, have

9 Agazarian, Y., A Theory of Living Human Systems.

Page 17, 10/9/08

Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC
become its slave.” 10 If we do not learn to understand and work with resistance, we will surely
become its slave.

Note: We use a number of techniques and theories that are too complex to include in this forum
but are critical to our approach. The workshop and organizational intervention is formed from
psychoanalytic, group relations and systems theory and technology and Chris Argyris’ work in
action science/learning. The workshop has been utilized in a number of organizations with
substantial results and continued success.

10 Buber, M., The Way of Man, According to the Teaching of Hasidism.

Page 18, 10/9/08

Managing Resistance to Change
© TRIAD Consulting Group LLC