How To Change Without Resistance – 8 key steps to lead change smoothly

Change is the only constant. And making change without resistance is a super dynamic skill. More often it takes changing yourself to lead change around you. Very few times it requires you to implement the change forcefully. And even sometimes, leading change examines your capabilities of convincing and winning the emotions of the people around you.

 

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

______________ Winston Churchill

 

No matter whatever it takes, we all evidently know it is our dying need to stay changed with time. As change is the only thing that keeps happening all the time whether we are aware of it or not.

Here we describe eight ways to lead change without resistance. So, let’s begin:

 

1- Start with a positive attitude to lead change without resistance

No matter whether it is a personal relationship or you are dealing in occupation, starting with a negative tone will spoil your all purposes. While you start in a negative tone, you ultimately lose the authority from the conversation. Ultimately, the counterpart senses the enmity from you and turns himself on the defensive mode.

Rather a positive start is always effective. This is how you engage someone in conversation with yourself.

Whether it is your customer, boss, subordinate, supplier or it is between two individuals in a personal relationship, a positive start enhances your chances of being successful in the purpose of the conversation. It gives you the authority to succeed and lead change without resistance.

 

2- Accept If You Are Wrong

We all make mistakes. Therefore, accepting what you did wrong doesn’t put you on your feet. Rather, it gives the other person a compliment that he is correct. Thus, you open the way for him to believe that you are valuing his opinions. This is where you start to lead change without resistance.

Another positive side of accepting faults is, the conversation remains open for you to achieve the change you are conversing for.

 

3- Sending Subtle Messages Builds Up Resistance-Free Change

This is the ability that differentiates a leader from a follower. That is, all leaders are known for their ability to pass on subtle messages. Indeed, they are calling out mistakes without letting other people know. In other words, leaders know how they can encourage a particular behavior in another person.

Most often, in our occupation, the reasons why we fail are the disengagement of our minds and hearts from the situation we are dealing with. Certainly, it is not only the lack of competence that fails us always. Rather, these are the problems of our personal life mostly which divert our attention from our purposes of professional life.

Leaders know these dimensions of the distractions from work. Therefore, they isolate these personal life problems from their occupational goals. Their behavior is independent either they are dealing in personal matters or going to achieve something in a professional race.

To be one to lead change without resistance, you have to become a leader of that kind. You can use this ability to your advantage. So, you simply need to:

• Understand if the other person is facing such a situation and is distracted from work
• You will pull that person from that situation. You will send him subtle messages to let him feel that you already know what he is suffering.
• Once you make him feel the same, you win his belief. Thus, as the next step, you will bring him back to a place of confidence and self-belief.

This is how you win confidence and build trust. So, once the other person starts trusting you, you will lead the change without resistance.

 

4- Direct Orders Seldom Work, Ask Questions Instead

Giving direct orders shows your authority. Ultimately, the other person feels enfeebled and turns out to be defensive. Instead, if you ask questions, you intake the other person’s opinion. He would feel engaged in the situation and would be more confident to carry on with what you want.

By asking questions, you give enough confidence to the other person to be creative and innovative. Thus, he solves problems at hand more efficiently. It is human psychology that a person is more likely to follow something which he is involved to shape.

Questions create a conversation. Therefore, asking questions leads everyone involved in a situation and makes the place better for everyone.

 

5- Reduce Mistakes To Lead Change Without Resistance

Charles L. Bosk described a technique “forgive and remember” in his book “Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure“. This technique teaches the way how one can learn from mistakes, avoid repeating mistakes, and can change behavior accordingly.

This technique is composed of five actions. Therefore, leaders can take these actions to reduce mitigate mistakes and lead change without resistance.

Acknowledge that failure happens. Leaders are quicker in identifying failure or mistakes. Indeed, they acknowledge failures way quicker. Sequentially, they can discuss it within their team and find a way out of it.

Encourage dialogue to foster trust. It is important, to be honest with yourself and with other teammates when discussing a matter. This builds trust and derives a meaningful outcome.

Separate the person from the failure. Do not blame the person for what happened. Instead of saying “You failed”, say “The project failed”.

Learn from your mistakes. Mistakes are the best source of learning. You must not evade them, rather learn from them.

Create a risk-taking and failure system. Create processes and methods to assess failures. Thus, you will be eliminating the emotional feedbacks and will have a precise approach to problem-solving.

The purpose of all these actions and methodologies is to create a safe environment for employees who make mistakes. Thus, if it is safe for employees to make mistakes, they will more quickly by accepting and learn from their mistakes.

 

6- Magnify Improvement

To fully utilize one’s potential or improve or be a part of change without resistance, one needs to be motivated enough. And the key to motivation is encouragement and praise.

Below are a few pieces of advice from The Center for Management and Organization Effectiveness to praise people around:

“Deliver praise from your heart.” Your sincerity and genuine being should reflect.

“Deliver praise as soon as possible.” Be quick in praising. Do not wait till the next meeting, performance review, or completion of another task. This will vanish all the joy of the goodness of what the other person did.

“Make praise specific.” Always be specific in praising. You must state what remarkable another person did. Actually, people want to hear from you the value you give to their work. So you must say it all. Mere ‘Thank You’ doesn’t sound valuable.

“Praise people publicly.” Publicly praising people gets easier every day, so there is no real excuse not to do it.

The true essence of encouraging comes when you show that you believe in the talent, abilities, and skills of another person. This makes them feel important to you.

To encourage someone, you need to see the other person. And not their mistakes or faults. You have to see their strengths and capabilities. And You can do it by showing your total faith in them. Adding your words for praising the skills they possess would further boost their confidence.

 

7- Offer Them A Reputation That Is Worth Living Up To

People feel and respond to what expectations we keep from them. If you expect something from someone, you give him an understanding that you value him somehow. Likewise, if a person feels unimportant or unvalued, he will have the least confidence to advance himself. Coaches, mentors, parents, and leaders, all know this.

Following the same ideology, change the level of respect you give to someone to bring change without resistance. If you want to make other people behave as you like to change the level of respect for him.

To change somebody’s behavior, change the level of respect she receives by giving her a fine reputation to live up to. Act as though the trait you are trying to influence is already one of the person’s outstanding characteristics.

 

8- Stay Connected on Common Ground

Do you want to influence another person’s attitude or behavior effectively? First, you need to make a person feel proud of what he has been asked to do. While choosing the right target, it is equally important to choose the team of the right people to do it. And for this, you must be aware of what other people dream of.

Where their dreams and your targets coincide, it is called ‘Common Ground’. Simply follow these actions to align your targets with their goals:

Be sincere. Be truthful. Don’t ever commit what you can’t fulfill.

Be empathetic. Put yourself in another person’s place. Speak what they think.

Consider the benefits. Tell the benefits the people could get by doing what you say.

Match those benefits. Match the benefits with the goals of the other people.

Your request of asking someone to do something must include the personal benefits the other person gets. This will make him do that easily.

In the modern era, corporate activities have largely shattered humanity’s goals. While dealing in industrial or corporate activities, we must not forget that we are human and our first service should be humanity.