One of the core themes of our book is about inclusion. This is a theme throughout the book, however, one particular conversation was particularly resonating with reviewers, colleagues and readers at our book launch event earlier this year.
We discuss what inclusion means in relation to resistance to change. We introduce students to traditional theories of resistance to change, but also wanted to challenge what it means to label individuals as ‘resistors’ We ask the following questions:
❓ Are we sure that change makers and change leaders are always correct? , and, on the contrary, are we sure that resisting employees are always wrong?
❓ Are we sure that we are really reaching the people who know the most about the kind of change actions needed to achieve this change?
❓ Are we inadvertently diminishing the voices of some employees or privileging the voices of others?
We argue that engaging with resistance is about creating dialogues with people and establish fair analytical business practices.
At our book launch Ian Roper, Reader in Organisation Studies and HRM at Essex Business School commented “These are the right questions! Don’t see these in conventional change management textbooks”
We discussed at length the way that we talk more subtly about resistance to change. We questioned what it means for an employee to raise an issue or ask a question. Is it just because they want clarity? Is it because they’re raising a genuine issue that we should be listening to? Or is it an objection based on very good reasons.
Victoria Collier, a change management consultant who was a reviewer of our book commented:
“I 100% agree with this perspective. Whenever I’m running a transformation program and we’re at the engagement stage the worst thing in the world is apathy. And so, if you are in a session and there aren’t excited people who are either passionately agreeing or passionately disagreeing, Nobody cares. That either means you’re not making enough of an impact. Or it means that they’re so disengaged they’ve switched off completely. And so for me, I would much rather have lots of questions, even though they may be challenging questions that I can’t answer than quiet because then at least you can address them”
She went on to reflect on how, as change makers, we might need to adjust our mindset about resistance to change:
“As a change maker, as humans, we are the people running the sessions. We often feel we have our own internal emotional turmoil around, how we look and how we’re perceived, and how we’re handling the session and that can be a distraction. What we need to do is be stepping out of our own emotions and trying to reframe our mindset that these questions are good things, they add value.”
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Dr Danielle A Tucker 