THE IMPORTANCE OF POSITIVELY EMBRACING CHANGE (RATHER THAN JUST ACCEPTING IT)
There is a widely held belief that people have a universal resistance to change. If that were the case then people would not enjoy weekends, pay rises, purchasing new clothes or a new car, or going on holiday.
Despite the fact that the previous examples involve change, it would surprise us if anyone objected to a two-day break after a five-day work week, an increase in pay, or an upgraded vehicle because those are all examples of enjoyable change that in many ways might make people’s lives easier. The change that people object to, or make an effort to resist, is the change that I describe as “unpalatable”. This is change that makes our lives harder or more challenging in one way or another, especially when we fail to understand the clear rationale, or the “why” behind the “what”.
Often people’s ability to accept change diminishes the further you get from the source of that change. Some years ago, I was delivering leadership training to an infrastructure company that introduced a “long longs” policy, which meant that all frontline staff working in the field were required to wear company-issued long sleeve shirts and long pants, all year round, rather than the shorts and short sleeved shirts that had been common pace in the summer for decades. It was an incredibly unpalatable change for the frontline staff concerned, especially given that the policy was introduced in January in New Zealand which is one of the hottest months of our year.
There was almost no lead in time between the policy being announced and being enacted, so there was virtually no time to create any chance for meaningful dialogue which may have reduced opposition. On every leadership program I delivered during that time and for months after, it was by far (and please excuse the pun) the hottest topic of conversation.
When I allowed my leadership course participants a chance to ‘get it off their chest’ and discuss the matter, I was surprised to discover quite a multitude of reasons why the policy had come into play so quickly. The understanding of many of the participants was that the policy reflected a rise in skin cancer in New Zealand and was the company’s response to this health concern. However, the complaint that the participants had in reply to that rationale was incredulity, and in many cases contempt that the policy had been rolled out during the hottest season of the year with almost no time spent in researching appropriate fabrics to use.
What was quite unclear to many that I listened to was that the policy had been forced on the company by New Zealand’s National Transport Association with a policy that stated that all their contractors must immediately enact a “long longs” policy in order to retain their existing contracts.
What concerned me the most about the reaction to this new policy was how little I heard of team leaders attempting to quell the feelings and complaints around the policy. There is an old saying that states: “Speed of the leader, speed of the team”, which means that as the leader goes with his or her attitude and behaviour, the team is likely to follow. If a team leader is vocally upset about a company change, there’s a very high likelihood that his or her team will do the same. Therefore, it makes sense that if a team leader wants their team not to be resistant to change, then they themselves need to make sure that they are not at all resistant to the change, which would lead to inadvertently modelling unconstructive behaviour.
Given that the palatability of change often diminishes the further that you get from that impetus for the change (think new policy being created at senior management level and cascading down through many levels of leadership eventually to the workforce), it behoves team leaders not merely to avoid being resistant to change, but instead the business requires them to ‘positively embrace change’.
Sure, you may not entirely agree with the change, and you may not entirely understand the rationale for the change. If it is the latter and you lack understanding, then it’s your job to go and get that understanding either from your manager or from wherever you need to get it. That way, you are armed with the answers that you may need to field the questions that may come from your team.
If, in the previous example of the nationally imposed “long longs” policy, the frontline leaders were able to positively embrace the policy, then their teams would have a far greater chance of possibly embracing the change, or at the very least being less resistant because of the positivity of their team leader.
If you think of resistance to change amongst team members as being seedlings which thrive in very acidic soil, then a resistant attitude of the team leader would be like acidic soil which would encourage the growth of those seedlings. What businesses need is the attitude of team leaders to positively embrace change, which is like alkaline soil. The seedlings of resistance (which prefer acidic soil) won’t flourish in that environment, but conversely, those team members who are prepared to embrace the change, their attitudes will thrive in an alkaline environment.
