People Aren’t Resistant To Change…

Posted by Rich Crowley in Change, emotions, psychology, teams

I was thinking today of a seminar I attended several years ago by Tim Daniels of Knoll and Associates. It was really exceptional and I couldn’t remember if I blogged about it or not. As it happens, I did (you can read about it here) but this post was pretty light on detail and I thought I would expand on one of the more interesting tidbits I took from that seminar.

Early on, Mr. Daniels asked the audience to raise their hands if they believed, in general, that people are resistant to change. Predictably, a fair number of people in the audience raised their hands. He then went on to firmly debunk this assertion. He did so by creating a role play with he as the boss and a member of the audience whom he selected randomly to play one of his direct reports.

He started by describing a scenario where he’d been offsite for several days with other senior managers of his company and they had come to the conclusion major changes were needed in the organization. Some of these changes were going to directly affect this employee. He then stepped out of the role and asked the audience member how they were feeling at that point as his employee. More than a little nervous was the reply.

He then stepped back into role and outlined that this employee was going to be given a significant pay increase because the company was really going to need more from them. Again, he stepped out of role and asked how this person felt. Much better this time they said, much to the audience’s delight. Back into role he went and then announced there was a gotcha, a condition, a “but”. Out of role one more time and one more question to see how the employee was feeling. I recall something about a lump forming in their stomach. Back into role one more time and he finished by suggesting that anyone getting a significant pay increase would need a significant increase in vacation allocation.

Out of role for the last time, he asked the audience member how they were feeling and the lump was gone, replaced apparently with glee at more vacation.

The lesson – people aren’t resistant to change, they are resistant to the things they will lose when change comes along. In this case, the change meant good things and the person was a-ok with those.

Mr. Daniels went on to explain a long list of weird things that happen to people in the midst of change. If you ever get a chance to see him speak, take it. If you don’t, have a look at their seminars online on their website.