I am now going to continue along what we started in the last video on a new path for overcoming organizational change resistance. It's a thought process and how you approach resistance. So let's rethink resistance. A lot of times, normal actions can be Miss understood. People procrastinate all the time. Not everybody is attentive to detail and foot dragging, sometimes happens.

These though, are often interpreted as change resistance, when in reality, they're just normal everyday activities. Also, how can resistance really be determined? What are the behaviors that makes up resistance? And how do you differentiate normal behavior If you're from resistant behavior, and how does it change to be done? Are you micromanaging and that then is causing the problems you're seen as resistance? Again, it's how you view things versus how others are viewing the change.

Also, who should label resistance? we as leaders, and managers of the change initiative, we generally are the ones that label resistance, but we do it from our point of view, when in reality, we should be doing it from those being impacted, because they're the ones that are really making a conscious or possibly unconscious decision as to are they resisting or embracing that change it in many cases also, think about resistance, if you will. labeled resistance, are you then using unwarranted management actions that are justified by the resistance that had you not labeled it resistance, you would be doing things quite differently. So in reality, the change initiative is a request for action. You cannot mandate a change, even under the most severe force, they have the option to walk with their feet and leave when you're trying to lead by a request that they can't accept or decline.

The key is how can you get them to accept the change initiative and not decline it with resistance? rethinking resistance. Let's further talk about how we can look at resistance from what people say versus the behaviors that they exhibit because They're interrelated. What we need to get to is behavior. But at the same time, the attitudes that are expressed verbally have dynamics within the organization and how people are encouraged to be one over to the change or possibly join a change resistance movement. We then want to get to commitment.

This is where they are talking the walk and walking the walk. This is where people are having positive messages and what they say, but are also doing the change with their behavior. Compliance is one step less that commitment and that you're getting the behavior, but you're not necessarily getting them to fully commit in what they say. The case here. Is that why you're getting behavior They can easily backtrack, because they're not yet committed with their full attitude itself. We then have the act of opposition.

This is hard to know, they're not really taking any action and they're speaking negatively. This is where we can learn things. And we don't really know whether we are dealing with something that has to be challenged to deal with, or whether there is a learning process that can easily overcome the negative attitudes and move them toward positive behavior. There's also then what we talked about last video, the more negative point of view the passive aggressive, in which case, they're giving you positive feedback in that they are saying they're on board, but their behavior doesn't exhibit that. So we're going to try to seek active engagement while ignoring resistance per se, because the resistance is how we interpret it, not necessarily what it is. So moving on, let's talk about the alternative point of view the active engagement.

This is an input on the change objective in the process, what they know and how they feel about it being brought into the change itself, and we enter into a dialogue. This is the slowing down early to go fast later, doing early on. What if you don't do you'll have to do later. This is also determining when to lead and when to manage, you lead the change vision, you manage the change process, but there's also a third component, the active engagement. This is elements of both leading and management but it involves People pulls the people into the process itself. It pulls them into determining the change objective, it flips around, so they're not being changed, but they're becoming changed through their action.

We also have the possibility of having to ramp up pressure as necessary. Too often, we use pressure early on to deal with resistance, when in reality, we ramp up as needed after you try the first three first. So taking action to avoid resistance, the employee engagement, giving them a sense of ownership, the leveraging of their knowledge, too often, the leadership team lacks knowledge of what really is going on in the organization. And that's information that can feed into not only the change objectives But the process of managing the change initiative, we can also realign the reward structure with the change goals. This is getting into the alignment, that everything in the organization is self reinforcing. If you don't do this alignment, there'll be a conflict with what people are seeing elsewhere in the organization.

Learn from resistance, improving the change objective and the change process and self analyze your leadership style. Eliminate, how you are creating problems. Sometimes though, it is impossible to avoid resistance. So what do you do? Not all pain can be avoided. Mergers and competitive threats sometimes are going to cause pain, you cannot avoid it.

Also, you cannot anticipate all possible problems and all possible areas of resistance. Face it. Not everything is possible to be foreseen in advance. Also, mistakes will be made. No matter how much you plan. No matter how much you foresee some mistakes will occur, you will have to deal with them as they occur.

So let's acknowledge the pain from the change objective, but mitigate that resistance through the process. Again, you acknowledge the pain from the objective, but you deal with it in the change process itself. If you fail to deal with it in the change process, that resistance will compound itself and may become insurmountable and sync the entire change initiative. We also can lower the learning anxiety but ramp up to survive. anxiety, we should always lower learning anxiety learning goes back to the mental work, that you have to consciously think about doing something different. That is always going to be the case.

And we should always do what we can to lower the learning anxiety, the fear that people have of failing. f the end though, it may be necessary to ramp up the survival. What if the implied What if they don't get on board with the change? This becomes more of the threat that you really don't want to go to. But you may have to slowly ease your way in that direction. Where are you now in becoming a change leader?

How are you seeing change resistance differently? Are you employed a different approach is setting your change objective and managing the change process.