Managing Resistance To Change

“Managing” resistance is one of the most disconcerting and taxing tasks faced by the organisations the world over. Organisations need to be concerned about the feelings of people, understand the cause/s of their resistance, and accordingly moderate their responses. As a manager, you would be required to master various strategies and approaches to moderate resistance. Kotter and Schlesinger (1978) have put forward six approaches to manage resistance to change:

• education and communication;

• involvement and participation;

• facilitation and support;

• negotiation and agreement;

• manipulation and co-option; and

• explicit and implicit coercion.

There are four practical steps that all managers can embark on to reduce dysfunctional anxieties and motivate constructive behaviour. Otherwise, failed change efforts would be very costly. Cost includes decreased employee loyalty, lower probability of achieving corporate goals, a waste of money and resources, and difficulty in fixing the failed change effort.

•Convince People: The first and probably the most important step is to ensure that people understand emotionally, not intellectually, why they have to change (Fig.)

Convince People!

• Build in Participation: A clear result from the research on change management is that employee participation increases individual ownership and excitement, and, in turn, decreases individual resistance to change.Do you agree with this finding? Does your utility practice participatory decision making?

• Recognise and Reward Desired New Behaviour: If individuals see that new attitudes and behaviours are being rewarded, they are more likely to accept change and behave accordingly.

• Provide Time and Opportunity to Disengage: Individuals often respond to strategic change with a sense of personal loss. They mostly mourn the passing of the old order before they become psychologically committed to the future state. You can facilitate this psychological transition by providing time, opportunity, and settings for individuals to celebrate the past as well as to see the promise and opportunities in the future.

These are some useful strategies but, there is no universal strategy for overcoming resistance to change. Hence, managers need a complete repertoire of change strategies. Keeping in view the four distinct response patterns and transition behaviours discussed in next sec, many strategies can be used to help individuals to successfully cope with change (Table).

Strategies to Manage Difference Response Patterns