Avoid Opposition to Change: Give Workers Control
“Having others work hard to achieve a goal you’ve set — not because you’re forcing them to but because they choose to — is exactly the challenge leaders face in organizations every day,” says management consultant Peter Bregman in a recent Harvard Business Publishing column. While a leader’s job is to influence others’ behavior, this effort is made more difficult because people can innately resist change and control in the workplace. As Bregman says:
In their personal lives, people usually make their own choices. But in organizations, they feel coerced. And so they use the only power they have to regain control: resistance.
Since countering resistance is futile, how should leaders avoid resistance altogether? Give employees control. Let them make decisions, he says. But this cannot be accomplished with trickery or coercion — otherwise, managers will lose much-needed credibility. The key is defining the result you want while suggesting a path to achieve it and allowing employees to reject your path as long as they choose an alternate route to the same destination, says Bregman. As he describes:
If you’re rolling out a new technology, sales process, HR practice, or (fill in the blank), don’t sell it or try to get “buy-in.” Instead of seeking agreement, try to surface disagreement. That gives you the opportunity to allow people to make changes, there on the spot. And then they become accountable.
To embark on a new organizational development, leaders should propose a method for having those conversations. “If managers disagree, ask them what they’d prefer to do. … When they offer an alternative — as long as it gets employees and managers talking — accept it,” says Bregman.
The best outcome for leaders is for their workers to develop confidence in their own abilities to solve problems while also feeling supported by management. “For you, the leader, it’s the difference between frustrating exhaustion and inspired collaboration,” he says.
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